AN IMMIGRANT'S VIEW.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 61, 13 March 1929, Page 6

AN IMMIGRANT'S VIEW.

(To the Editor.) Dismay rather than astonishment at the area covered by the city of Auckland was the feeling produced in me when I arrived here from England some years ago. Since then Avondale and Tamaki have been included in the city's boundaries, and di9inay has given place to something like contempt. The fundamental cause of Auckland's flatulent distension is undoubtedly "the section habit." brought about largely by the abandonment of leasehold tenures in favour of freehold. Even settlement lands laudably designed to give "the poor workman" a cultivator's interest in domesticity, have been permitted to contribute to the inflation of land values. The consequence is that rural lands which should now be contributing in however small a dcjrree to the wealth of the country, have degenerated into semi-urban areas populated 011 the timepayment system. In view of the amount of unoccupied land immediately contiguous to the closely-settled area of the city it says very little that is complimentary to the city councils of the past and present that they have sent their jurisdiction sprawling greedily all over the map. There is an unfortunate tendency in this country to make everything look big—on paper. Untrained energy not bridled by trained discretion is a hindrance, not a help, to true progress. Stability, a word little used in New Zealand, is of more importance than size if permanence is the eventual aim. And in the ethical plane, touched even by such a mundane matter as a city's boundaries, pride becomes mere boastfulness when it has not grown naturally from modesty. COUNTRY FIRST.