TOWN PLANNING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 84, 10 April 1945, Page 6

TOWN PLANNING

METROPOLITAN AREA NEW COMMITTEE MEETS The first meeting of the Metropolitan Planning Committee, set up last June to take over the work of the metropolitan town planning organisation, was held in the Town Hall this morning, Avhen Mr. A. S. Bailey, who was apponted chairman, submitted a report setting out the progress I made to date and the position regarding work done , in connection with the town planning scheme. Mr. Bailey said that at the request of the Town Planning Board, Wellington, a ways and means committee, consisting of Mr. I. J. Goldstine, chairman of tne Suburban Local Bodies' Association, Professor C. R. Knight and himself, had been set up at a conference of local body delegates in March, 1941, to prepare a scheme for the metropolitan area. That conference adopted a report of the ways and means committee, setting out an estimate of the cost of the proposed work and its apportionment to the various local authorities throughout the area. The work in the first instance was confined to zoning. Of the 16 bodies concerned 12 agreed to participate in the scheme and to pay their respective shares of the apportioned cost. The work involved in the preliminary surveys and formulating a co-ordinat-ing zoning plan was proceeded with in the hope that full participation by all the local authorities would be forthcoming in due course. After giving further historical facts in respect to the original organisation, Mr. Bailey said a conference of local bodies, held on June 28, of last year, decided to set up a metropolitan planning committee, consisting of five City Council representatives and five representatives of suburban local bodies, together with a technical advisory committee, composed of five City Council nominees and five nominees of suburban local bodies, with the addition of the Government's town planning expert, Mr. J. W. Mawson. The estimate for completing the first issue of the zoning scheme was £2000, and £1629 had been spent to date. The secretary, Mr. F. J. Gwilliam (assistant town clerk) said a series of meetings of the technical advisory committee had been held and he submitted for consideration extracts from a report made by Mr. Bailey when he was chairman of the original ways and means committee. This stated that the committee, in view of the need for greater information in relation to communications, industrial requirements and open spaces, was not prepared to agree to approve the zoning plan and recommended that the committee should seek the views of ad hoc bodies, Government Departments and organisations interested in the planning of the Auckland metropolitan area beforeaccepting any plan or clauses as being suitable for recommendation back to the ways and means committee as satisfactory.

This report was referred to the technical advisory: committee for full investigation.