PRELIMINARY REMARKS Town-planning--the art of laying out towns with due care for the health and comfort of inhabitants, for industrial and commercial efficiency, and for reasonable beauty of buildings--is an art of intermittent activity.

It belongs to special ages and circumstances.
For its full unfolding two conditions are needed.

The age must be one in which, whether through growth, or through movements of population, towns are being freely founded or freely enlarged, and almost as a matter of course attention is drawn to methods of arranging and laying out such towns.

And secondly, the builders of these towns must have wit enough to care for the well-being of common men and the due arrangement of ordinary dwellings.

That has not always happened.