Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thoughtWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Anticipations of the reaction of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thought
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Civilization; Communication and traffic; Social prediction; Twentieth century -- Forecasts
But, indeed, these great cities are no permanent maelstroms. These new
forces, at present still so potently centripetal in their influence,
bring with them, nevertheless, the distinct promise of a centrifugal
application that may be finally equal to the complete reduction of all
our present congestions. The limit of the pre-railway city was the limit
of man and horse. But already that limit has been exceeded, and each day
brings us nearer to the time when it will be thrust outward in every
direction with an effect of enormous relief.
So far the only additions to the foot and horse of the old dispensation
that have actually come into operation, are the suburban railways, which
render possible an average door to office hour's journey of ten or a
dozen miles--further only in the case of some specially favoured
localities. The star-shaped contour of the modern great city, thrusting
out arms along every available railway line, knotted arms of which every
knot marks a station, testify sufficiently to the relief of pressure
thus afforded. Great Towns before this century presented rounded
contours and grew as a puff-ball swells; the modern Great City looks
like something that has burst an intolerable envelope and splashed. But,
as our previous paper has sought to make clear, these suburban railways
are the mere first rough expedient of far more convenient and rapid
developments.
We are--as the Census Returns for 1901 quite clearly show--in the early
phase of a great development of centrifugal possibilities. And since it
has been shown that a city of pedestrians is inexorably limited by a
radius of about four miles, and that a horse-using city may grow out to
seven or eight, it follows that the available area of a city which can
offer a cheap suburban journey of thirty miles an hour is a circle with
a radius of thirty miles. And is it too much, therefore, in view of all
that has been adduced in this and the previous paper, to expect that
the available area for even the common daily toilers of the great city
of the year 2000, or earlier, will have a radius very much larger even
than that? Now, a circle with a radius of thirty miles gives an area of
over 2800 square miles, which is almost a quarter that of Belgium. But
thirty miles is only a very moderate estimate of speed, and the reader
of the former paper will agree, I think, that the available area for the
social equivalent of the favoured season-ticket holders of to-day will
have a radius of over one hundred miles, and be almost equal to the area
of Ireland.[17] The radius that will sweep the area available for such
as now live in the outer suburbs will include a still vaster area.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that the London citizen of the year
2000 A.D. may have a choice of nearly all England and Wales south of
Nottingham and east of Exeter as his suburb, and that the vast stretch
of country from Washington to Albany will be all of it "available" to
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