What we perceive in City Planning today seems to take ages to happen. And it is even further from our reality to consider history in other terms. But it might be interesting to relate another time to our own struggles.

Before 1750, in the New World, only France remained to challenge British dominion. And France's presence was formidable, with explorations and settlements from Quebec to New Orleans, claiming lands both east and west of the Mississippi, from the Alleghenies to the Rockies. The claims were challenged, and for seven years the French and British-Indian War raged (1756-1763). At its conclusion, Britain won all of Canada, and all of the interior lands east of the Mississippi River.

Interestingly, this victory, which brought Britain to the very height of imperialism, turned out to be one of the major reasons that she lost the American colonies. So long as the colonies shared common cause with the homeland there was no pressing incentive to pursue arguments, though many of such were certainly pending. Now they were about to be released.

The War had put a major financial burden on Britain, and the government in London reasoned that since the American colonies were clear beneficiaries of the successful conclusion of the War, they should share in the burden which would ensue from manning the garrisons and providing security in the new territories. The governing bodies in the colonies were not unconcerned with security; but they felt it was equally important that they should not be taxed any more without due representation in Parliament to assure that their input would be heard. A special thorn in the colonial side was the idea of taxing strictly for the purpose of raising money, to offset costs of governing the empire. And they argued that many taxes did just that.

So, the tensions that already existed began building toward a clash that was perhaps already unavoidable. Through a variety of acts and actions, the Parliament frustrated the urge of growth and expansion that was fermenting in the colonies. Part of the problem was a failure in the homeland to understand the colonial mindset of the time; but another part, well perceived by the princes of commerce, was that the colonies, with their near feverish entrepreneurial ruminations, were posing a commercial threat to the flow of goods and products coming to America from (or by way of) England, and the money from duties coming to the coffers at home.

There came that time then, when the colonists, believing that it was not "if", but "when" the showdown would come, began laying up stores of weapons and ammunition. The stage waited only for the trigger act, which would symbolize the opening of active hostility. That was the 19th of April, 1775.