ASPECTS OF TOWN PLANNING.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 83, 9 April 1929, Page 6

ASPECTS OF TOWN PLANNING.

Many of those who are interested in town planning must hav6 been disheartened before this at the slow progress of the movement in New Zealand. Public apathy is partly responsible for this; most people are not interested in town planning for the reason that they see no money in it. The provision is for the future, and the consideration is partly aesthetic. But, as the new Director of Town Planning pointed out in his excellent address last night, town planning is naturally a slow process. It is some comfort to know that on'y twenty schemes have been completed In England. is, however, no excuse for delay. The longer necessary schemes are put off, the greater will be the inevitable trouble and expense. This is plain in such a case as new traffic outlets for Auckland. Mr. Mawson referred to wide and narrow streets in terms that will please those who have long held that New Zealand has made a costly fetish of the chain road. He described as incredible the economic waste in this country caused by making roads too wide and constructing them too heavily, and declared that the cost that would be incurred in widening narrow streets to carry traffic would be much smaller than the waste of money on streets made wider than was necessary. Attention has often been drawn to this insistence on chain roads in all circumstances, an insistence that has added greatly to the cost of suburban property and local body maintenance, but nothing has been done. Perhaps Mr. Mawson will be able lo persuade the Government and local bodies that true town planning is by nature elastic.