tion and all rents are based on utility. Utilities in cities tend constantly toward specialization and complexity, business being broadly divided into distribution, administration and production, and then indefinitely subdivided; and residences being divided into as many classes as there are social grades. In so far as land is suitable for a single purpose only, its value is proportionate to the degree to which it serves that purpose and the amount which such utility can afford to pay for it. When land is suitable for a number of purposes, one utility competes against another and the land goes to the highest utilization. Different uses of land. The factors distributing values over the city's area by attraction or repulsing various utilities are, in the case of residences, absence of nuisances, good approach, favorable transportation facilities, moderate elevation and parks; in the case of retail shops, passing street traffic, with a tendency towards proximity to their customers' residences; in the case of retail wholesalers and light manufacturing, proximity to the retail stores which are their customers; in the case of heavy wholesaling or manufacturing, proximity to transportation; and in the case of public or semi-public buildings, for historical reasons, proximity to the old business center; the land that is finally left being filled in with mingled cheap utilities, parasites of the stronger utilities, which give a low earning power to land otherwise valueless. Proximity and accessibility. Value by proximity responds to central growth, diminishing in proportion to distance from various centers, while value from accessibility responds to axial growth, diminishing in proportion to absence of transportation facilities. Change occurs not only at the circumference but throughout the whole area of a city, outward growth being due both to pressure from the center and to aggregation at the edges. All buildings within a city react upon each other, superior and inferior utilities displacing each other in turn. Whatever the size or shape of a city, and however great the complexity of its utilities, the order of dependence of one upon another is based on simple principles, all residences seeking attractive surroundings and all business seeking its customers. HOUSING AND RENTS IN AMERICAN TOWNS [THE British Board of Trade Report on working-class rents, etc., in the principal industrial towns of the United States (made in April, 1911), presents a comparison by means of index numbers, of average rents for working-class houses and apartments in the various towns investigated. The dwellings are classed merely by the number of rooms (the mean between the lowest and highest rates that predominate being determined); and thus the comparison between large and small cities leaves out of account differences in yards and gardens, in height of building, etc. A four-room apartment on the fifth floor, without a foot of yard enters into the estimate just as does a separate one-story, four-room cottage with a yard. The difficulties are recognized in the report, where they are deemed unavoidable. The method of computing the averages, by a somewhat elaborate process, having been explained, the report says (p. xxv. ff.):] In the following table the index numbers so calculated are given, showing the relative level of rents in each of the towns investigated as compared with New York, the predominant rents in that town being taken as the base (=100): RENTS INDEX NUMBERS IN DESCENDING ORDER. It will be observed from the above table that, while the index number for St. Louis is slightly higher than that for New York as a whole, the figure for the great borough of Manhattan, still often regarded as New York proper and still the center of the most congested areas in the world, is 109, while that for the borough of Brooklyn is 88. Apart from St. Louis, Pittsburg (a rapidly growing industrial center), Memphis (a city hardly less Western than Southern in temper and stage of development), and Cincinnati (still somewhat hampered in the development of its housing accommodation by physical conditions), also stand out as towns in which the range of rentals is relatively high. Brockton, the highest among the New England towns, is the center of a staple industry in which wages and the standard of comfort are not only generally high but more approximately uniform than in most towns. Baltimore and Detroit, with index numbers respectively 46 and 43 per cent., lower than that for New York, are the most important towns included among the more cheaply rented, although the position of Cleveland, Milwaukee and Chicago is not far removed, with index numbers of 64, 66 and 70 respectively. Between New York and Detroit, which ranks as one of the "home cities" of America, Philadelphia, which is best known by this title, occupies a middle position with an index number of 79. Although wide differences are thus shown in rents as between town and town, the local variations, apart from the unique position occupied by New York itself, are much less marked when these are grouped geographically, as the following table shows: RENTS INDEX NUMBERS FOR GEOGRAPHICAL GROUPS. The lowest index number is that for the New England group, 66, a figure to which that for the other Eastern towns closely approximates. The six Central towns include Muncie, a small town in which industrial conditions, largely owing to the closing of steel-rolling mills, had been recently depressed and in which rents in 1909 were exceptionally low in consequence. Omitting Muncie, the index number of the Central group is 76, or nearly as high as that for the Middle West, the towns in which, with a mean index number of 79, stand out as the most highly rented geographical group of all. The Southern group includes Memphis, a town that is largely dominated by the Western spirit and where rents are high. It differs in tone and character from the other five towns in this group and, excluding Memphis, the mean index number for dwellings in the occupation of whites for the remaining five Southern towns is 72, a figure which still seems a relatively high one for a part of the country in which the temperature is never low and in which shelter is perhaps equally important as a protection from heat as from cold. In these towns, however, homes are generally self-contained and sites relatively liberal, and there is practically no congestion, while the towns themselves are largely representative of the new industrial South. In spite of the complex and often local causes that help to determine rent levels, when the towns are grouped on the basis of population a general conformity with the rule that the rents of large towns tend to be higher than those of smaller ones is shown, and in this respect the position is illustrated in the following table: BENTS INDEX NUMBERS FOR POPULATION GROUPS. Population group. NEW YORK (population 4,766,883). 78 73 69 5 64 Other towns with more than 500,000 inhabitants 8 |