The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

All the houses now existing in Ajax are standardized types. The original 600 Wartime Housing units are semi-permanent in construction. These are now undergoing a program of permanent improvements. Foundation walls, and in some cases complete basements, will replace the original cedar posts. Houses in the new projects are the present standard C.M.H.C. types, of permanent construction and with complete basements. PARKS AND OPEN SPACES Parks and other green areas are designed to provide a practically continuous system of open spaces throughout the community. No house in the new Ajax will be more than two hundred yards from park or greenbelt. Each neighbourhood will have its own interior park, including the site for its future public school. This recreational area will be easily accessible and quite generous in extent. At suitable locations the interior park will connect with the exterior "green belts" which extend like fingers between the neighbourhoods to separate and define them. The interior parks and playgrounds are intended eventually to be landscaped and maintained as fully developed recreational areas. The exterior greenbelts can be left in their natural condition. We have provided generously for open spaces in the plan for Ajax. Land is free, except for the cost of development. In the (ab)sence of speculation it becomes possible to plan with(ou)t attempting to wring out the last cent of revenue. The barren aspect of the site is a depressing characteristic of Ajax today. In its landscaping program for the Ajax housing projects. C.M.H.C. is undertaking to do more than follow its customary practice. The streets and parks of Neighbourhood Number One are already being provided with trees of modest dimensions, placed to supplement and enhance the architectural layout. In addition, the circumference of the neighbourhood will eventually be defined by double rows of trees along the traffic arteries. Ten thousand seedlings will be planted next spring, as the first step in a program of forestation. The entire lakefront will be kept open for public use. With the growth of Ajax, the development of this shoreline will no doubt be a major undertaking. Much of the shoreline consists of high bluffs, not the safest place for children to wander. The beach is narrow, pebbly, and in places inaccessible. But at one or two spots it will be possible to increase the beach in depth by carving out the eroded edge with a bulldozer. CONCLUSION The town planner is probably the most consistently frustrated professional man. This is so because he is generally dealing with existing cities, bedevilled with traffic congestion, obsolete housing, and all the familiar manifestations of modern civilization. By comparison, Ajax presented a clean, uncomplicated technical problem. We had no local politics with which to contend, and no municipal Council to convince or pacify. At the very beginning, the Ajax Advisory Committee accepted our planning objectives, and since then the Committee has proven most sympathetic and understanding. To date we have managed with a planning organization small by comparison with the scale of the project. The bulk of the work has been accomplished during the summer months, with a staff of draftsmen drawn from the student body of the School of Architecture, University of Toronto. We accepted the terms of the problem as laid down, and did not carry out any elaborate social or economic research. The planning staff, while dealing primarily with long-term objectives, also collaborates with the Manager in connection with his promotional duties. The selection of sites for various industries frequently requires minor adjustments to the plan. The route of a new sewer, or the detailed layout of roads involves discussions with the Project Engineer and his staff. In all phases of this work we have enjoyed the complete co-operation of both the Manager and the Project Engineer. Residential development has gone ahead with satisfying dispatch. We have had the rare opportunity of learning from experience on the ground. In some other respects, actual construction has not progressed as rapidly as we had hoped. The machinery of Government moves, as always, with deliberate unhurried steps. Each phase of development has received careful consideration, with long-term objectives always in view. As we write, the threat of imminent war is very real. No one can foresee the eventualities of the next few months, let alone ten or fifteen years. A state of national preparedness, of "war-in-peace", could change the face of Ajax overnight. Given conditions of relative peace and prosperity, we are quite certain that Ajax will develop rapidly as an industrial centre. The General Plan is a framework, sufficiently elastic as yet, to take care of unpredictable requirements. The actual building of the town according to plan will call for constant supervision to ensure that each individual component fits into its proper place. Much derailed work remains to be done, and can only be done as Ajax grows and specific problems arise. This will be the real test of the validity of our basic assumptions.