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CITY with a vision beyond the presentday ballyhoo for industries, but alive to their value, and striving to make itself the kind of a place in which wage-earners are contented and happy, is a broad description of what any visitor will see in Columbus, Ohio.

The Columbus Chamber of Commerce has for years, in its program of work, stressed the need to create conditions favorable to industry before industry will interest itself in the community. Proper recreational facilities for both young and old, beautification of the city through the expansion of parks and playgrounds and improvement for public use of the river, which has heretofore been useless and in many places unsightly, have been a few of the outstanding activities of the Columbus Chamber.

Starting years ago, following a reorganiza

tion campaign conducted by the American City Bureau, a definite program for the city was made by the members of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce. One plank of this program has not only made great monetary profits to many individuals but has meant the retention of the present center of the business district, at a time when the trend of business development indicated an alarming shifting of business from this center. This activity, starting with a study and recommendation to the city fathers, was that a Civic Center be developed along the Scioto River where it passes through the city in close proximity to the center of the business district.

The beginning of this enterprise was made with the construction of the Central High School on the west bank of the Scioto River. This building, an ideal educational structure,

has been surrounded with beautiful landscaping reaching down the high bank of the river and stretching into a recreational and athletic plant beyond. It faces the Scioto River on the inside of a bend in the river as it curves into the center of the city. New public buildings, including a City Hall, a City Prison, Police and Fire Headquarters Buildings, and a Masonic Auditorium, either are in process of construction or will be started in the near future on the east bank of the river, within two squares of the center of the city.

On the border of this Civic Center development, which will be improved with a broad expanse of landscaped gardens and beautiful lawns, stands one of America's most beautiful buildings, the American Insurance Union Citadel, a 45-story skyscraper, erected by an insurance company founded in the city of Columbus. This building is one of the world's tallest and most ornate, towering 555.5 feet high, and surmounted with giant searchlights which guide the way of night flyers over the city.

River-Front Drives and Parks

The plan of the Columbus Chamber of Commerce contemplates an ultimate development,

through a series of dams, of the river along the Civic Center, for recreational purposes, adding another link in the chain of the community's provision of playgrounds for working men and women. Hardly another American inland city can show its visitors a river-front drive of more than twenty miles over a wide, smooth highway with acre after acre of cityowned park land on either side of the river.

The water-supply of Columbus is obtained. from two reservoirs in the Scioto River. One of the dams, the O'Shaughnessy Dam, completed in the autumn of 1924 at a cost of $1,165,000, will impound 5,000,000,000 gallons of water in a single reservoir seven miles in length. This assures Columbus an inexhaustible water-supply sufficient to care for double the present population of 310,000.

It is along the course of the backwater of these dams that a magnificent drive has been constructed, and for a stretch of eleven miles the city of Columbus has established and equipped a public park where the citizens of Columbus may go for many recreational purposes. On evenings and holidays thousands of citizens, including both the middle class and the poorer people of the city, may be seen gathered

about the many picnic tables enjoying the out-of-doors and the river facilities which are provided so close to the city. The first of the two dams is only six miles from the heart of the city.

The present chief executive of Columbus, Mayor James J. Thomas, originally conceived the idea of a riverside park, the city having previously purchased the land bordering both sides of the impounded waters, in obtaining its right-of-way. The Chamber has worked with the Mayor in developing to a higher degree the usefulness of this property.

An amphitheater and several shelter houses, a score or more stone tables, numerous wooden tables and many wooden benches, half a dozen or more stone comfort stations and numerous furnaces have been spotted along this park. More will follow along the O'Shaughnessy Dam, the newer of the two. Boating and fishing, the former privilege having been granted recently, furnish splendid recreational facilities

T

HIS is to be a story of "A Dream Come True."

Municipal authorities now realize that they are comparatively helpless to establish any real remedy, because the difficulty lies beyond their control-it lies beyond the city limits, it is county-wide, it is territorial, indeed, it is regional.

Ever since the beginning of the country-wide popularity of the automobile, people have been predicting that there would need to be more and more thoroughfares, and each year, as the number of machines has greatly increased, what was once a mere prediction has grown to be a request, then an urge, and now a demand that relief be afforded from the almost unendurable congestion that exists in and about all the populous centers of the country.

But neither request, urge, storm, nor demand has as yet resulted in adequate action, except in a very few districts. Instead, congestion has grown more intense, accidents have increased year by year, and the constant "stop - and start, move-a-little and then-stop-again," has come to be the too general rule throughThe out the land. people rage, autoists

storm, horns toot, the

Like many other sections, Cleveland and its environs have come to know that no relief can be found by any single municipality alone attempting the task. Cleveland is the principal city of its county. But Cuvahoga County embraces three other cities, fifty villages, and ten unincorporated townships, thus comprising sixty-four separate civic units. Located along the shore of Lake Erie, it is in the path of that intensive traffic which, in an almost unceasing stream, travels from the east to the west and, in an equally unbroken column, is constantly hurrying from the west toward the east; for these roads which parallel the lake are the main highways between New York and Chicago. In addition to this, Cuyahoga County has a quarter-million of its own motor vehicles, most of which are active each day, forming great streams that pour into the center of Cleveland from every outlying suburb and road.

public protests, but nothing much of fundamental value is done to help the situation.

To be sure, local authorities install signal svstems, post police officers at some of the important intersections, try out one plan and then another, only to find that the problem is greater than can be dealt with by any one municipality or locality; for machines are fed into each main thoroughfare from so many other roads and streets that the main highways cannot possibly take care of the burden that is thrown upon them. And so, after a period of temporary relief, there begins the sluggish, temperproducing processional of "start-stop, startagain, stop-again."

Each of the fifty villages and four cities, as an independent municipality, has powers over the creation, building, extension and widening of thoroughfares. Each may insist upon and adopt its own plan and its own notions. In this, however, Cuyahoga differs little from most other American counties, except that it is one of the most populous in the nation. Though the city of Cleveland, under its able City Man

ager, and many of the suburbs likewise, have done much, there has remained the constant complaint, the continuous grumble, and the ever increasing demand for freedom from congestion.

"The Cuyahoga Planning Congress" Organized

With through travel growing year by year and with local traffic constantly mounting, men have come to dream of some way out, of some plan for relief.

And now that dream seems on the eve of fulfillment.

For, voluntarily, the municipal engineers, the members of planning commissions, and the mayors of most of these fifty villages and four cities have banded themselves under the name of "The Cuyahoga Planning Congress" and have set about to create one great and ambitious plan for the entire territory embraced within the county.

Standing upon the Court House steps, one

is almost at the shore of Lake Erie, and from this point Cuyahoga County spreads out in a fan-shape, with roads radiating east, south, and west. So the presiding officer divided the county into three sectors and chose a chief engineer from each, to preside over the meetings of the engineers of that sector. An Executive Committee was similarly built by selecting one mayor from each division. The Municipal Research Bureau of Greater Cleveland furnished one of its number who has most ably carried on the secretarial duties as well as lending his talents as an engineer.

For the better part of the year, the engineers of most of Cuyahoga's municipalities have ungrudgingly given of their time and of their talents, dedicating themselves without compensation, working in harmony and with marked unanimity toward the construction of the large and comprehensive plan which is printed on this page and which reaches into the adjoining counties as well.