PRINCIPLES BEHIND PLANNING A CITY

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28529, 7 March 1958, Page 17

PRINCIPLES BEHIND PLANNING A CITY

When a house is multiplied many thousands of times and a city is created the implications of town planning or the lack of it, are not only tremendous and vital to the collective efficiency of the community but they touch closely on the comfort, income and happiness of every member of it.

A century ago in Europe this was dramatically obvious in the ugliness, overcrowding, air pollution, ill-health and social ills of the decaying medieval, or industrial cities. In New Zealand today there are different problems—problems which in some ways arose from the refusal of the pioneer planners to recreate the conditions from which they had come 12,000 miles to escape. Their ideal of the garden suburb has helped to promote the problems of urban sprawl which are common to all our cities and towns.

The town planners, in whose hands future development lies, have accepted the challenge to turn the present situation to the best advantage and to order the future so as to protect the interests of the city dweller and at the same time conserve valuable rural land.

The Christchurch Regional Planning Authority has been assigned the task of producing a plan for 150 square miles of urban and rural land on which lives and works a population of about 194,000. Interests United

By uniting the interests of six councils, eight other local authorities, and five Government departments and enlisting the help of technical experts, the authority is producing a plan that will coordinate the development of the region. This regional plan will be a framework into which the district schemes of the memoer councils will fit. Until this scheme becomes operative the authority can only make recommendations to the councils who may enforce them. First Section

The first section of the Christchurch Regional Planning Scheme, which was issued at the end of last year by the authority and is now awaiting the approval of the Minister of Works (Mr Watt), defines a 63,000-acre rural zone within the region.

This zone is separated from the main built-up area (32,400 acres) and the six minor built-up areas of the outlying settlements—Spencerville, Brooklands'", Belfast, Templeton, Prebbleton, and Halswell—by a line known as the urban fence around each one of than. *

Within the rural zone no development that might promote

close settlement of an urban character will be permitted.

At present, the main built-un area of the city is about 23,000 acres. With the estimate that m 1976 the population in that area will be 268.000 and the density will increase slightly to 8.49 persons to the acre the main builtup area will be 31,677 acres. The urban fence, which will be reviewed and may be changed before 1967, encloses a little more than that area—32,448 acres.

Discrepancy The authority expects that most of the difference will consist of land, on the Port Hills, anfi that the land on the flat may be short. In view of the smallness of the shortage and the fact that the scheme must be reviewed in 10 years the discrepancy is not considered of any consequence. The fence encloses 914 acres in the minor built-up areas, where it is estimated that 747 acres will be needed in 1976. The defining lines have been drawn around the city and the six other settlements with the following four aims in view:— (1) To ensure orderly development in the future within the seven built-up areas of the region so as to help consolidate these areas and to mitigate the problems that arise as a result of very low density and scattered development. throughout the rural lands in the region. (2) To make as full use as possible of all such public services as already exist, or are substantially committed to, within any or-all of the seven built-up areas of the region. (3) To conserve resources in the provision of facilities such as . sewerage, water, electricity, gas, transport, postal, telephone, reading and schools, which are to serve the pret sent and the expected increases in the urban population. (4) To guide future urban development into localities most

suited for the purpose, having regard both to the requirements of urban uses and also rural uses lying within the rural areas of the region. In addition to the accommodation of the estimated increase in population within the urban fence for the next 18 years and to fulfill these four objects of the scheme, the authority employed several principles which determined the course of the proposed defining line. The first of these was to exclude where practicable from the future built-up areas, and therefore include in the rural zone: Land where drainage conditions are difficult or bad. Land where sewerage will not be available for some time or where it will be difficult or. expensive to provide, and where the disposal of sullage is difficult or bad. Land that is too far removed or is too thinly settled for the economic provision and maintenance of public services. A second principle was to include where practical in the urban zone: Land covered by deposited plans and scheme plans of subdivision already approved, and in which the development of roads and buildings is already taking place, provided that the land concerned is adjacent to the existing built-up . areas. Land to which the State is already committed for housing purposes, provided that the land concerned is adjacent to the existing built-up areas. Land in different parts of the future built-up area so as to allow a choice for development as between one part of the area and another. A third principle was to include in the rural zone as far as possible—and as far as the available information would allow—land which is of particular value for farming or to the supply of the Christchurch markets.