Municipal engineering and sanitation by Baker M. N. (Moses Nelson) 1864-

Author:Baker, M. N. (Moses Nelson), 1864-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Engineering, Sanitary engineering, Municipal engineering
Publisher: New York : Macmillan
Published: 1902-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

MUNICIPAL ENGINEERING

The most extended park systems of this kind in the United States are the Metropolitan Park System of Boston and near-by towns, and the Essex County Park System, embracing Newark and adjoining towns in New Jersey. The Metropolitan Park System includes 8090 acres of parks, and about ten miles of driveways, or parkways. The Essex County Park System, at the close of 1898, already covered 2500 acres of land, some of which, located on the ridge and slopes of the Orange Mountain, includes as fine scenery as is to be found in the state. Both of these systems include large reservations selected for the views which they command and their own natural beauty. To such areas little is done by the commissioners in charge, except to make their various parts readily accessible and to cut and plant trees judiciously. The combined holdings of the Metropolitan Commission and the local park boards of Boston and the other towns in the metropolitan district, include a large portion of the river front, besides many miles of ocean beach. On the latter is located a large and handsome bathing establishment. The Essex County Park System will include eventually, it is expected, a number of parkways, some on the Passaic River, others on the mountain crest, and still others joining these and the several parks. New York and other cities have also provided chains of parks and parkways.

The aesthetic side of city parks and squares constitutes one of the chief reasons for their existence.

MUNICIPAL PARKS

Beautiful in themselves, when properly selected and developed, they afford rare settings for works of art. But statuary and architecture should be subordinated to the more natural effects, except in the case of public squares designed to set off a public building or monument.

ADMINISTRATION, FINANCE, AND PUBLIC POLICY

CHAPTER XXXIII City Charters

In no respect has popular government, as it is carried on in the United States, been more criticised than in the conduct of the affairs of cities. It is also true that more genuine effort has been made to improve municipal administration than any other division of government. Our national and state constitutions have gone on with little change in the methods of administration; but our cities have many of them passed through the most kaleidoscopic changes in the organic laws under which they are ruled, and the search for the city charter which shall make good government most easy and misrule most difficult still goes on.

It may be said at the outset that there has been too great a tendency, therefore, to believe that some particular type of charter or form of administration is the cure-all for our municipal evils, and that faults for which the whole body politic is responsible can be remedied by the intervention of a few reformers in the halls of the state legislature. Men are always more important than methods; good men and a bad charter are to be preferred to the best of charters in the hands of ignorant or vicious officials. Most

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