City Has Time To Plan

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31407, 28 June 1967, Page 18

City Has Time To Plan

Dr Barry Garner, a young British specialist in urban geography, believes Christchurch is at an ideal size and stage for effective planning and he likes what he has seen of present schemes.

Dr. Garner, a lecturer at the University of Bristol, worked on surveys of centralcity problems in Chicago for four years. The University of Canterbury geography department hopes to draw on his British and American experience in the metropolitan survey which it has proposed to Christchurch local bodies. He will be here until September. After post-graduate study in Chicago, Dr. Garner was attached to the City of Chicago Planning Commission in its survey under a United States Government grant in the community renewal programme.

Chicago’s problem was simply a large-scale, version of the problem of any city when it “began to grow at the edges” and the central city began to decline in retail sales, land values, and general attractiveness, Dr. Garner said.

The problem was accentuated in America by rapid suburban development and rapid decay at the centre where Negroes tended to move in when low-rent areas appeared. This could happen anywhere, Dr. Garner said. If shops could not get tenants they could be converted into churches, cinemas, tenements, and other uses for which they were not intended. Revenue declined further, the blight set in, and there seemed little hope of reviving the city centre because there seemed no prospect of draw-

ing life and business back to it. The suburban centres, by contrast, were new, gay with gardens and walks, shops were handy to home, parking was available, and a cinema, bowling alley, and meeting places made them an appealing place to spend a whole day—what the planners called “maximising the return for an outing.” The situation hit the city authorities in the pocket, Dr. Garner said, because they were expected to provide the amenities for commerce, traffic, and so on from dwindling taxation or rating returns based on dwindling capital values.

The problem was how to change this state of things or induce suburban bodies to share the costs of maintaining the centre. These outlying bodies had built up their tax base through the drift to the suburbs.

“The solution,” Dr. Garner said, “depends on how you look at the role of the city centre. Some say it is an unwanted legacy of the past that is no longer viable. They say cities should develop on polynucleated patterns—lovely American jargon meaning multi-centre shopping and business areas. “This could work in America but in Britain, Europe, and New Zealand, where the city centre is rich in tradition, people want to save it.” Dr. Garner said that there was room for both kinds of development. The city centre could be cleared of some rundown buildings, given more gardens, malls, and parking places and renovated so that people flowed back for more than business.

The centre of any sizeable city could sustain a town hall and arts centre, the big firstrun cinemas, theatres, the big offices, and big department stores. Together these could rejuvenate the central city. Historical and tradi-

tional features should be highlighted.

The suburban centre could provide domestic needs near home.

Christchurch, Dr. Garner said, had a centre from the main business area to the Botanic Gardens. This would be enhanced by the town hall and associated schemes. Suburban centres would still be useful. Because the rot had not set in, development could be controlled.

At first glance, Dr. Gamer said, the . master transportation plan looked “very good indeed for a city of this size.” Bristol, twice the size, had nothing comparable.