To New Zealand’s

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28529, 7 March 1958, Page 16

To New Zealand’s

over longer routes to pick up only a few more passengers. The local services—shops, schools, halls and churches —may Christchurch Regional Planning Scheme, 1958, supporting a planned programme of urban expansion, says: “Subdivision of land can themselves be at uncomfortable distances from the houses. These are some of the common problems and complaints against the present system. They are difficulties which are felt by all who have settled on the perimeter of our cities. Collectively, there are other aspects of town planning which concern the community’s health, management, appearance and, probably most important of all, the inroads of housing on productive land. Even the output of agriculturally productive land on the fringes of an expanding city tends to be reduced. The first legal steps of subdivision can be taken, and although the land may not in the first instance appear to change, the fact that in certain circumstances it can be sold immediately

also affect the productivity of neighbouring land if it is thought that land has a potential developr ment value which will not be increased by further improvements from an agricultural point of view. Consequently it is quite often the case that agriculturally productive land on the fringes of urban development is leftidle, awaiting development to catch up with it.”

There is a further question arising from the conventional subdivision and bungalow in the garden suburb. That is: whether in fact the householder -gets the advantages of space, privacy and independence and on his own little domain that he has a right to expect and which his pioneer forebears supposed he would get. Because of the cost of this habit of building, the detached cottage must in most cases be very small and maintenance can be a great burden. In spite of the individual and separate units there is a general and sometimes depressing sameness about our street. ’

For although Christchurch’s home gardeners are justifiably proud of their work, small sections do not lend themselves to the larger effects of landscaping that could break the monotony of our regular terrain with trees and architecture on a grander scale. And while we are not an unsociable race we are forced to overlook each other’s lives across a little strip of no-man’s-land between our houses.

These are some of the thoughts which pose the question whether we are getting the most for our work and money, dr even whether some are getting what they want at all.

We have, on the other hand, just what the individualist founders of our community would have wished. An Auckland architect recently said: “In terms of houses, the pattern of our development has been suburban from the start. Deliberately so. We have scarcely known the ‘town’ house and we are proud of the fact. “The terrace house is of course anathema. The block of flats is suffered as a sort of regrettable expedient and people who willingly choose to live in them are suspected of habits of a lower moral standard. The only proper way to house oneself with decency is in a two or three-bedroom house on its own section. And the essential concomitant is that one should own the house and for preference the land as well.” We have accepted the situation, and we have adopted it so generally that we hardly suppose that there could be any alternative. The colonial core of our

city has long been submerged by industry and commerce and the swelling population is spilling over the suburban perimeter, rapidly but not necessarily happily, at 32 percheS at a time. By this development we have avoided the congestion and overcrowding of the old cities, though without eliminating the other social evils that attach themselves to city life.

And we have done this at the cost of urban unity and economy. It has meant that citizens in one city are dispersed under the control of many local governments, and that our resources have been widely deployed when they could be more usefully concentrated. One example of the effects of this disintegration is the years of disinterest over a Christchurch Town Hall.

The reaction to disintegration can be seen in the expansion of Drainage Board authority, the pressure for county amalgamation, and the co-ordination of fire services over the whole district.

Proposals for higher-den-sity housing, for which there is current support in New Zealand are described on this page. So far. they are only suggestions. Their advocates can find much in their favour and all three

could be adopted with proper planning. The choice is ultimately in the hands of citizens whose demands will determine planning and legislation for town growth. The present laws prescribe area and frontage' requirements for subdivision which in many places preclude this kind of high-density development. The Christchurch Regional Planning Scheme which is at present under Ministerial consideration assumes hardly any increase in population density in the immediate future. The present figure is 8.11 persons to the acre in the major built-up area; in 1976 it is expected to be 8.49 in the same area within the proposed urban fence. To some extent, therefore, the need for the extension of the urban as it is reviewed from time to time to allow for ordered urban growth will depend on how people receive proposals ior closer settlement put to them by planners, architects, and the Government. On the direction of Mr Fox, the Minister of Housing, the architects of the Housing Division, Ministry of Works, have investigated the problem of increasing the population density of State housing schemes to reduce urban