Town Planning

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22413, 28 May 1938, Page 14

Town Planning

Addressing the Town Planning Board, the Minister for Internal Affairs, whose remarks were reported recently, confessed or complained that town planning was “ not properly understood.” He said, with perfect truth, that it had been misrepresented by misguided enthusiasts and by vested interests; blit so little has for years been heard from either section that Mr Parry was right to look for another cause to explain the long sleep of town planning agencies and the rusting of a law in bad repair. He found this cause in apathy. The public does not understand town planning because it is without the interest that wants to know and wants to go on from knowing to doing. This is about half the truth, and a sad half. The other half, and perhaps the sadder half, is that the Government is just as careless, just as sluggish. Mr Parry did not say so. On the contrary, he insisted that the Government was “ sincere in its belief in the “ social and economic advantages of town “ planning ” : it was the public that was to blame. This sort of sincerity is best proved, if not solely proved, in action. Mr Parry protested it in the very moment of his declaring that amendment of the Town Planning Act would “ have to stand over till after the General Elec- “ tion.” And if it would be unfair not to mention that Mr Parry claimed a special excuse for this postponement—the immediate demands of the social security legislation—it is also not unfair to mention that the Government has now had nearly three years, during which its sole sign of interest in town planning has been the appointment of a town planning officer to the Department of Internal Affairs. The Government is no worse than previous governments in this respect. Twelve years have passed since the act was written into the Statute Book; and the pressure on local authorities to comply with the act has been so butterfly-light that only a handful of schemes have been prepared and not one is in force. But if the Government is not disgraced by a comparative test, it is shamed by every other. An obvious one appears in the Christchurch scheme. The delay in the adoption of this scheme is entirely attributable to the action and attitude of the Town Planning Board, which seems to have played an obstructive part only. The board has, throughout its life, been a singularly lethargic body. For the lethargy of the last two years and a half the present Government cannot disclaim the responsibility, or pass it off, with a wag of Mr Parry’s finger, upon the apathetic public.