Hoardings

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25896, 31 August 1949, Page 4

Hoardings

It may be true, as the chairman of the by-laws committee said at the meeting of the Christchurch City Council on Monday, that hoardings are “ linked with the commercial “ life of the community ”. That does not make them less objectionable to the general body of citizens who have to live with them. Noise, smoke, foul smells, and noisome trade wastes and effluents were once “ liflked ” as firmly with the commercial and industrial life of urban communities; but the links are being broken, one by one, by the force of public opinion and by the growing civic consciousness of commerce and industry. The weakest argument that can be used in favour of hoardings—and it was used again on Monday* night—is that they are better than what they hide. The answer to this is simple. If commerce and industry are allowed to hide dirty and dilapidated buildings, untidy yards, littered, vacant sections, or any other com-

mercial or industrial eyesore behind garish advertising panels, and to earn money for doubly affronting lhe community, they will be powerfully persuaded to do nothing whatever to improve their property or to add to the dignity and graciousness of the city. This is* the argument that has always been used to defend the line of hoardings on railway property fronting Moorhouse avenue. That it still appeals to some councillors was .shown by the tolerance, even approval, with which they spoke of this disgrace inflicted upon Christchurch citizens by the Government. The Railways Department will not be stirred to do better until it has first been compelled to give up its hideous screen; and that will be when public opinion and civic example compel it to do so. The City Council rejected the opinion of the councillor whose views on this matter should carry most weight. Cr. G. D. Griffiths condemned hoardings in general and these hoardings in particular. As an architect, he may be able to see more clearly than most the change that might be made in the appearance of the city by prohibiting hoardings. But he spoke also as chairman of the town-planning committee, the one standing committee of the council that is concerned largely with civic aesthetics. There is another committee, although not a standing committee, even better qualified to express an opinion on the matter and entitled to express an opinion; and it appears not to have been consulted either upon the council’s general policy on hoardings or upon the particular application dealt with on Monday. This is the advisory committee on civic beautification, which was set up in 1946 on the council’s own initiative. It is to be hoped that it will consulted before Cr. C. D. W. L. Sheppard’s motion to rescind Monday’s resolution is discussed. It was a thoroughly bad decision; and it should be rescinded.