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if that space is encroached upon, in any way and the houses are brought in close proximity to one another without compensating arrangements for adequate ventila- tion and exposure of the rooms to sunlight, it is only a matter of time for the locality to become unhealthy.
3. The necessary amount of separation of houses where property is valuable and where a large population is to be housed is usually secured by regularly laid out streets which bear a proportion in their width to the height of the houses facing them and by a definite proportion of back-yard and back-lane in the rear which also` bear in their width a relationship to the height of the house as well as to its roofed
over area.
The importance of the width of the street is readily appreciated because it faci- litates traffic and for that reason there is of recent years no difficulty as a rule in obtaining ample separation of houses facing a street, but the importance of the space behind houses and the necessity for a similar amount of space as exists in the street before another house is permitted to be built in the rear, is not so manifest and consequently there is always a tendency on the part of property owners to curtail this space; the greater their success in curtailment the more unhealthy does the locality become. Wide streets in front of houses, without wide spaces behind to separate them from the houses in the rear, do not provide sufficient air space to secure a healthy locality.
Crowding together of Houses under old Regulations.
4. The crowding together of houses on too small a space is well exemplified in Plate I, which represents an area, bounded by Hollywood Road, Queen's Road Central, Wellington Street and Aberdeen Street. The area of the block is 171,224 square feet, equal to 3.93 acres. It contains 142 houses comprising 470 floors, The area of streets upon which buildings front within this block is 19,890 square feet equal to 0.45 acres. The area of the back-yards and other open spaces around the buildings is 5,516 square feet, equal to 0.13 acre. Thus no less than 85 per cent. of the total area is roofed over, and if the open space of the streets and lanes be excluded, that around buildings only amounts to 3.2 per cent. It is obvious that the crowding together of houses in this block, could hardly be greater, and resump- tion for the purpose of opening out wider streets and improving the sanitary condition of the houses is urgently needed.
Plate II gives a sectional view of another block, which is bounded by Holly- wood Road, Cochrane Street, Lyndhurst Terrace and Pottinger Street. From the streets, which are moderately wide, the block has an excellent external appearance and is likely to give an erroneous impression of the interior which on inspection is found to be packed with houses, separated by narrow lanes. This Plate further illustrates the arrangement of basements which is so common throughout the City.
Plate III is another illustration of buildings being erected too close to one another. On a piece of land of 86 feet in depth two rows of houses have been built separated by a lane of 8 feet. The front houses face Queen's Road, and are four storeys in height. The houses in the rear, are also four storeys high, the two lower of which abut on the side of the hill and are below the level of the street known as Circular Pathway, while the two higher face, and are entered from, Circular Pathway. It is evident that each house obstructs the light and ventilation of the other and that the two lower stories of the houses at the back of the Queen's Road houses are practically basements.
It is seen from the plan that the space behind the Queen's Road houses is only 8 feet in the form of a lane. This 8 feet space gives, when a line is drawn from the building line of the houses in the rear at the level of the lane, to the back eaves of the Queen's Road houses, an angle of 82°, or the height of the houses is nearly 7 times that of the open space in the rear instead of being either equal to, or 1 times, or certainly not more than twice.