Report Urges Better Quality In Housing

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31974, 29 April 1969, Page 30

Report Urges Better Quality In Housing

• New Zealand Press Association > WELLINGTON. April 2b. Decentralisation is not advocated by the committee on the physical environment in its interim report to the National Development Conference. But it says urban sprawl needs to be halted.

“A policy of decentralisation from | the main centres may not be appropriate at present, and there may be some social and economic advantages in concentration of growth,” says the report.

During the next 10 years or more most population growth would be concentrated in urban areas.

“The committee sees the need to institute firm policies to prevent scattered urban development. urban sprawl, and the avoidable loss of farm land of high productive value. “Our cities are becoming larger, and will inevitably continue to do so. Even though this is still a young country, the need for urban renewal is already with us."

The report says an attempt should be made to plan for and implement a new quality and character in suburban housing development. The holiday and week-end cottage was ingrained in New Zealand's way of life—"and it is regrettable that there has been so little planning and such a low standard of achievement in both village design and house construction.

Model Villages "There is a need for the development of model villages, skilfully laid out in harmony with the natural scene, and of high standard of design and construction."

The report places considerable emphasis on planning. "Good environment in this age is good social and monetary economics, but can only he achieved by continuous social care and tending." This would cost money, but the alternatives were to paynow in annual investment in| planning and the maintenance of standards, or later, in "immense and crippling" expenditure on programmes of re-, storation. slum clearance and pollutional control. "Our national levels of attainment in the field of aesthetics and visual design have been of a low order. In both towns and countryside the physical results of man's activities have generally been crude and uninspired. Profit Motive "Not only must we apply ourselves to sound principles of physical planning and conservation. but we must also' make the attainment of aesthetic quality one of our major aspirations." the report says. The profit motive sometimes led to great beauty, but! on other occasions to extreme! ugliness. The cost of eliminating ugliness was high. "It is most desirable in our next phase of development that greater emphasis be placed on doing things well, rather than merely getting them done somehow or other. "To achieve this quality may not always mean that more money will have to be found. Rather, it could mean that we must develop new attitudes and values."

The kind of environment; the community might aspire to was an environment where ugliness was no longer accepted as the inevitable byproduct of economic progress, planning was accepted in order to renew beauty where it was destroyed, the best of natural resources was con- 1 served, and urban and rural, slums, and pollution of air and water was avoided.

The committee recommends that a land-use advisory council should be formed to develop criteria and a national policy on land use. It would 1 initially concern itself only with Crown land.

It also recommends that a full-scale assessment of New Zealand's recreational and scenic resources and needs be made and. where possible, data likely to be of value in land use and planning studies should be compiled.

it says that soil conservation efforts should be continued.

Discussing the need to ensure adequate land for recreational needs, the report says: "It is considered there is a case for national concern at the uncontrolled private development of coastal and lake shoreline resources.

"The Government should take urgent action to develop planning and policy solutions to control this.

"Where existing title extends to high-water line of sea and lake shores, purchase of land for foreshore reserve should be considered, and

compulsory purchase be resorted to where necessary.” New Zealand was fortunate in the provision of reserves and national parks, but there was a need to survey the adequacy of these for the future.

“The committee has found : reason for concern at the loss of public access to some] shoreline areas and at the lack of access to some moun-[ tain lands and other areas reserved for recreational purposes."

The main need appeared to be the setting aside of further day recreational areas strategically placed within driving distance of urban areas.

Acquisition of coastal land was a priority—"in some countries much of the sea shore has been alienated from public use Already, too much of the New Zealand coast has gone the same way."

The committee believes that the best tourist attraction New Zealand can offer is its natural beauty, approached through a pleasant and interesting man-made scene

This involved the careful placement of industry and services, the unobtrusive location of pylons, poles and wire, and the development of existing roads to develop scenic features.

The report gives considerable attention to the problem of pollution.

On many farms there was an “extraordinary" contrast between modern, well-kept farm homes and disused houses and other buildings. The latter were considered as among the worst forms of rural litter

Modern technology appeared to have most of the answers to the problem of disposal of waste products, but practice tended to fall too far behind