income, recently sold for about $100 per square foot, the basis being the estimated earning power of the land improved with modern buildings.

Eliminating the individual and special causes controlling the location of small settlements, commerce and industry, operating on the basic material of topography, establish three principal types of city according to the method of transportation which first serves them. All settlements spring from other settlements and start at the most convenient point of contact with the outer world, this being usually a wharf where deep water and a high bank meet, if transportation is by water, the intersection of turnpikes topographically located, if transportation is by wagon, and a railroad depot placed for the convenient shipping of products, if transportation is by rail. At the start external factors control the internal structure of cities, the first buildings clustering around the first transportation terminal. Whatever the type of city, growth consists of movement away from the point of origin and is of two kinds: central, or in all directions, and axial, or along the water courses, railroads, and turnpikes which form the framework of the city. Electric street railroads and suburban railroads have greatly stimulated axial growth, producing star-shaped cities by contrast with the more circular form of the ancient walled towns. The chief modification of the shape of cities comes from the distorting effect of severe topographical faults, such as water surfaces or sharp elevations.

Starting with the origin of any city, utility in land arises when the first buildings are erected, but until there is economic rent there is no value in the land. Thus in New York, "Each settler was permitted to build his house where he pleased and to surround it by an inclosure of any convenient shape and size." Also in Los Angeles, "Any one who wished a piece of land, either for building a home or for cultivation, applied to the ayuntamiento and received oral permission to go ahead and do whatever he pleased as long as he did not interfere with his

p. 4.

1 History of Real Estate Building and Architecture in New York City, 1898,

neighbor." Later, when population increases so that lots less conveniently located are utilized, economic rent measures such advantage, and value arises, the prices for land being at first nominal, varying from $10 to $100 a lot. An apparent exception to the general law of no value in the site when the city starts, occurs where cities are speculatively undertaken and the future is discounted, lots selling at comparatively high prices in advance of utility. The difference between price and value is usually demonstrated before many years, the swing of the pendulum carrying these lots as far below their value as prices were formerly above it. Thus lots in Columbus, Ohio, which sold in 1812 at $200 to $300, sold in 1820 at $7 to $20,2 and of recent instances there are many, such as the collapses in the early history of the speculatively started towns of West Superior, Wisconsin; Tacoma, Washington; Everett, Washington; and Birmingham, Alabama. The attempt to force economic rent from city land seems to be uniformly unsuccessful, history showing that cities grow and are not made, and that human beings cannot be uprooted and moved in large numbers and immediately adjust themselves to the new opportunities of a new environment.

The total value of the site of a city is broadly based on population and wealth, the physical city being the reflex of the total social activities of its inhabitants. The distribution of value follows closely after the distribution of utilities, the problem involving a classification of utilities, of the causes which influence their location, and of the resulting scale of values which they normally produce.

In villages of but a few hundred population, land may sell by the acre, and include some agricultural features; but when the population has increased to a few thousand a business center arises, the residences become separated from it and are driven to the circumference, and values run from $10 a front foot for residence property up to $100 or $150 a front foot for business property.

1 C. D. Willard, History of Los Angeles, p. 176 [1901].

2 J. H. Studer, History of Columbus, p. 25 [1873].

The smaller cities of under fifty thousand population exhibit normally along transportation lines a warehouse and wholesale section, which changes into a manufacturing section as the city is left, a retail-shopping district at the center, adjoining it an indeterminate zone utilized for institutions and boarding houses, then an outer zone of high grade or medium residences, and finally laborers' cottages at the periphery.

As cities grow, increasing specialization in business causes new subdivisions in the industrial organization whose integration tends continually to greater complexity in the city's structure.

Hence in the largest cities there arise many centers for various classes of business, a banking center, women's shopping centers, artisans' shopping centers, wholesale-retail centers, manufacturing specialized in small centers, amusement centers, club centers, and residence districts, divided into many grades, from the tenement sections near the factories and docks to the fashionable sections near the parks, while the axes of traffic run out in all directions from the city's center and carry retail shops of different grades through residence districts, the general result being great complexity in detail, with fairly simple and uniform succession of districts. Whatever the size or shape of a city the order of dependence of one utility upon another remains the same, as exhibited by the pursuit of the residence sections of different classes by the shops of similar classes which supply them, the following of the higher wholesale houses after retail shops which are their customers, and the slow advance of the banking and office section into the older retail or wholesale districts. The general characteristic of a business district is to move slowly and continuously from the point of origin, while residences, attracted by turnpikes or street railroads, move more rapidly, leaving sometimes vacant or otherwise utilized land behind them.

Change is a law of life, and since utilities in cities continually shift in location and area, the value of all urban land is in a state of unstable equilibrium. Change occurs not only at the circumference but throughout the whole area of the city, outward growth being due both to pressure from the center and

to aggregation at the edges. The method of progression in the outward pressure of one zone upon another is not always a superior utility displacing an inferior, since in some cases a superior utility moves on and leaves behind a vacuum, into which an inferior utility moves. Outlying residence districts, in proportion to their mass, quality, and distance from the center, exert an attracting force upon it, unless modified by topography.

In examining the distribution of values in some typical cities. we may divide the land into two principal classes: business land and residence land, giving less consideration to land used for manufacturing, transportation, and special purposes, which, although having occasional high prices, lacks convertibility and has a more variable scale of values.

In the series of plats submitted the figures are intended to represent the value per front foot of the corners, except for New York, where the value per square foot is given, the naked land alone being valued and it being assumed that all lots are of the same depth, from 100 to 120 feet. An average valuation only can be given for the intersection of two streets, although the value of four corners often varies from 30 to 70 per cent. The value of inside property adjacent to these corners is almost always lower and may be figured at 25 per cent to 50 per cent less. The many variations which occur in adjacent lots are too complex to show on a small plat, the figures given being approximations based as far as possible on actual sales and known rentals.

Salt Lake City (population 53,531) is located where the Mormon trail through Emigration Pass reached the valley floor of the Great Salt Lake, and was laid out to the east of the river Jordan. The first dwellings were erected on the block bounded by Third and Fourth streets south, and Second and Third streets west, but the first store was erected at the intersection of Main Street and First South, this corner being now the second in value in the city. The Mormon Temple was the center around which the early life of the city revolved, and probably the reason that Main Street has always been the 1 R. F. Burton, The City of the Saints, p. 201 [1862].

principal street is because it ran from the city to the temple, and to Brigham Young's tithing yard on the adjacent block.

The chief peculiarity of the original plat is the size of the blocks, which are 660 feet square, as compared with normal blocks of about 300 feet square. This results in one fourth as many corners in Salt Lake City as in the normal city, so that the two good intersections, those of Main Street with South

First and South Second streets, have an abnormal value reaching $1800 per front foot. The further results are to concentrate business, on account of the small number of streets leading away from the center, and to remove almost all the value from a tract 400 feet square at the center of each block, since a depth of only 100 to 120 feet can be utilized. Thus we find in a distance of 300 feet a drop from $1800 to $75 a foot, owing to the non-accessibility of the interior locations.

1 Stanbury's Report on Salt Lake, 1853, p. 126.