PARLIAMENT DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26816, 22 August 1952, Page 8

PARLIAMENT DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES

SPREAD TO FARM LANDS MR J. RAE DISCUSSES PROBLEMS (New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 21. The growth of the main centres would make it necessary in the foreseeable future to decide whether increased population was to be accommodated in taller buildings nearer the centre of the cities or whether that population was to go out to the expanding suburbs, said Mr J. Rae (Government, Roskill), when he spoke in the Budget debate in the House of Repersentatives to-night Auckland, he said, was growing to the size of London in area, though it had only a twentieth of her population. Much of the development had been on a ribbon basis, with a consequent high cost of water and other services. Local bodies were wondering whether they could handle that expensive development. If development went “up in the air” many more thousands of population could be handled in a reduced area and on the existing services. Could New Zealand afford to bite still further into farm land by pushing out suburbs? he asked. Some of the best land was going out of production because it was being taken in urban development.

Another factor was the time and cost involved for workers getting to their jobs from distant suburbs. On the 1945 census it had been established that in Auckland the male worker on an average took 21.9 minutes to reach his place of work, the female worker 205 minutes. In Wellington the time was 19.2 minutes for the male worker, and 165 minutes for the female. The figures were lower for Christchurch and Dunedin. Twenty-four per cent, of the male workers took more than half an hour to get to work in Auckland. In Wellington the percentage was 18, and in both Dunedin and Christchurch it was eight.

Mr J. Rae said that unless New Zealand built up her population the necessary development everyone wished to see would not be brought about in this generation. To accept the challenge to supply food for the world would mean building up overseas exchange funds, and not only maintaining present living standards but going beyond them to a point undreamed of.