Cities “For People As Well As Cars”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 1

Cities “For People As Well As Cars”

“Cities are places for people to live in, not just places to which you drive a motor-car, get out, and shop,” said Professor A. Ling, a world-known expert on town planning, when he arrived in Christchurch last evening.

Professor Ling, as city architect and planning officer, designed the new city of Coventry, which was devastated in the Second World War, and is now professor of architecture and planning at the University of Nottingham.

He has come to New Zealand as the main guest speaker to the city development and environment conference being held by the New Zealand branch of the Incorporated Association of Architects and Surveyors, and has also been asked by the Government to report on tourist centres.

Professor Ling’s planning of Coventry has been held up as an example of what can be done with towns, although the Buchanan report says that Coventry cannot be expected to cope with the private motor-car traffic of the future.

Professor Ling agreed when this was put to him yesterday. “In 10 years Coventry is expected to have a population of 400,000, and there will be one car to every three persons. Of course the city won’t be able to accommodate all the private cars wanting to come to the city, even though they all want to come in on Thursdays and Fridays.” In the light of experience, he still would not change his plan, he said. It had been hard enough to convince the; city fathers at the time. j 50 Years Ahead A planner had to try to lookforward 50 years or more, he said. A town-planning committee of a local authority found it easy to look to next year. After that, it appeared to be difficult for members to grasp what was needed. Planning, Professor Ling said, was a co-operative task. It was not just a matter of architects saying what buildings should be erected, engineers saying how roads should be built, and town planners saying how the regulations should be administered. That led to his comment that he had heard that town planning was being administered to a set of rules, and that, he said, could produce nothing imaginative or worth while. Architects and town planners were inseparable if towns were to be remodelled to cope with present-day requirements. The motor-car was of great benefit to mankind. Professor Ling said, but it did not need to become more than a benefit and overwhelm a way of living in which people had a chance to stop, converse, and shop in an environment that preserved some serenity and safeguarded life. “Cities will be destroyed if you let motorists have complete freedom,” he said. “You have to have restrictions on the motor-car if you are going, to keep a city worth while.” That was where public

transport could play an important role, he continued. Now it was quite respectable in London to travel by bus

with an umbrella, bowler hat, and satchel, whereas in the provincial cities the proper dress for a public bus still seemed to be a cloth cap.

“There must be a new image of public transport?’ Professor Ling said. “Within the cities it is only sensible to leave your car and travel by bus. I imagine it is the same in New Zealand, though I’ve not seen it yet." He would not be drawn to comment on New Zealand problems beyond saying that from what he had been told the pioneers had had considerable foresight and laid out fairly wide streets — “fairly wide buggies,” he commented when told by a welcoming architect that the streets had been made for the horse-and-buggy days. From his visit he hoped to exchange ideas, Professor Ling said. Problems in New Zealand were obviously similar to those in England, and one could learn from mistakes as well as from success.