Location of Industry

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24270, 30 May 1944, Page 4

Location of Industry

The question which has divided Mr H. G. Livingstone, chairman of the Christchurch Drainage Board, and the Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association is one of a kind which can be rationally dealt -with only -within the framework of a regional planning scheme and a policy for the location of industry. When the board was asked to provide drainage for a proposed new factory in the Yaldhurst road, Mr Livingstone said that he would be “personally “ sorry to see a factory going up in “this area . . . when land is avail- “ able between Sockburn and “ Hornby with much more favour- “ able facilities.” Replying, later, to one of the manufacturers, who had said it was his “ job to carry drain- “ age facilities where and when they “ are required,” Mr Livingstone was ready to concentrate factories in an even narrower area, upon “ the “ lower reaches of the Heathcote “river, where industries create less “nuisance.” Without entering into any discussion of the suitability of the Yaldhurst road site for this factory or any factory, it may be observed that Mr Livingstone and the manufacturers are both right and

both wrong. It is right to oppose the indiscriminate location of industry, wherever an industrialist may be able to buy a site; it is right to insist that a city’s industry of all kinds must not be boxed in a single area. The evil in the first case is that of disorderly development, which destroys too much in order to create. The evil in the second case is" that of an equally damaging alternative: either the wretched congestion of workers’ housing, if they are to be near their work, or the wretched congestion of transport, in and out, if they are to live away from it. Another member of the Drainage Board, Mr Barnett, came very near to putting the matter correctly, whfn he said that “ factories should be built where “the workers can find homes”; and it was this opinion, specifically, that the Manufacturers’ Association supported. The only necessary qualifications are, of course, that an area “ where the workers can find “ homes ” is not necessarily a proper area for some kinds of industry or for any kind of industry; and that the business of locating industry, and the housing development necessary for it, cannot be left to ad hoc decision either by industry itself, or by housing authorities as such, or by the local bodies that carry public services to both. This is the business of over-all regional planning authorities, linking national and local policies.