Strassen und Plaetze sind unbebaute Reste.' In other periods towns have been founded in large numbers and full-grown or nearly full-grown, to furnish homes for multitudes of common men, and their founders have built them on some plan or system.
One such period is, of course, our own.

Within the last half-century towns have arisen all over Europe and America.

They are many in number.

They are large in area.

Most of them have been born almost full-grown; some have been established complete; others have developed abruptly out of small villages; elsewhere, additions huge enough to form separate cities have sprung up beside towns already great.
Throughout this development we can trace a tendency to plan, beginning with the unconscious mechanical arrangements of industrial cities or suburbs and ending in the conscious efforts of to-day.
If we consider their size and their number together, these new European and American towns surpass anything that the world has yet seen.