TOWN PLANNING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 85, 11 April 1945, Page 7

TOWN PLANNING

PRINCIPLES IGNORED "FOUNDATION FOR SLUMS" P.A. WELLINGTON, Tuesday. "Through failure to apply the principles of town planning in the development and use of land in our towns and cities, conditions in the main centres are definitely worse than they were when I arrived in New Zealand 16 years ago," said Mr. J. W. Mawson, town planning officer of the Organisation for National Development, in evidence before the Parliamentary Committee on local government to-day. "Day by day we are laying the foundation for further blighted districts and slums and creating powerful vested interests in land by permitting absurdly high building and population densities—vested interests which can be broken down only at excessive cost to the community," said Mr. Mawson. "Fantastic as it may appear, we are permitting higher building densities in Auckland and Wellington in relation to the traffic capacity of the street systems than obtain in Manhattan Island, New York, the most densely built-up urban area in the world." Referring to the lack of competent technical personnel to assist local authorities with the preparation and administration of planning schemes, Mr. Mawson said there were only 11 men in New Zealand who had actually had any academic training in town planning and seven of them were in the Public Service. It had been suggested that a school of town planning be established, but if that was not practicable the next best thing would be to open the Public Service to a number of selected cadets, who could be trained and who could be made available to assist local authorities with the preparation of their schemes as part of their training. He understood the Rehabilitation Department was making a limited number of bursaries available to returned servicemen who wished to take up town planning as a profession and were prepared to go to England to receive their academic training.