Such abstract counsels of perfection as the descriptions of the ideal
city, from Augustine through More or Campanella and Bacon to Morris,
have been consolatory to many, to others inspiring. Still, a Utopia is
one thing, a plan for our city improvement is another.

Some concrete, if still fragmentary, materials towards such a volume
are, of course, to be found in all municipal offices, though scattered
between the offices of the city engineer and health officer, the
architect and park superintendent; while the private architect and
landscape gardener, the artist, sometimes even the municipal voters and
their representatives, may all have ideas of their own. But though our
cities are still as a whole planless, their growth as yet little better
than a mere casual accretion and agglomeration, if not a spreading
blight, American and German cities are now increasingly affording
examples of comprehensive design of extension and of internal
improvement. As a specific example of such an attempt towards the
improvement of a British city, one not indeed comprehending all aspects
of its life, but detailed and reasoned so far as it goes, and expressing
that continuity of past and present into future which has been above
argued for, I am permitted by the courtesy of the Carnegie Dunfermline
Trust to lay on the Society's library table an early copy of a recent
study of practicable possibilities in a city typically suitable for
consideration from the present standpoint, since presenting within a
moderate and readily intelligible [Page: 118] scale a very marked
combination of historic interests, and of contemporary and growing
activity, both industrial and cultural, with hopeful civic outlook.

That co-adjustment of social survey and social service which has been
above argued for as the essential idea of civics as applied sociology is
thus no abstract principle, but a concrete and practicable method. Yet