Suburbs will share in development

Press, 6 July 1977, Page 21

Suburbs will share in development

As the industrial and employment belt in central Christchurch is drawn tighter, the city’s natural growth weight will find someplace else to go — either outside the city altogether, or into the suburbs.

Suburban problems will increase if badly-designed businesses, industries, and widened streets to serve them cause decay. But a city plan with the right controls, and with those controls applied by the council, can prevent the downward slide.

In some ways, the next five years might be the most crucial for the city plan in guiding growth to the remaining vacant areas. Proper channeling could give neighbourhoods at the edge of stagnation the boost they need to keep them from falling over.

Suburban residents are traditionally wary of land uses which can destroy their image, bringing ,in noise, traffic, and dirt. Overseas cities have shown, however, that industry and housing can live well together. Some factories even put nearby housing to shame with their outward appearance, including landscaping and tree planting. Mr Williams says that there should be no hesitation in putting a firm limit on the size of the city’s central industrial district, and of encouraging future industries to grow in the outer suburbs, where traffic does not have to come into the city to get to them. Landscaping should be considered for all industries, no matter where they are located, and it should be in front of the buildings. Garden factory projects will have more landscaping than usual, in an attempt to emphasise the "park” side of industrial parks. In a suburban city near Seattle, Mr Williams saw an industrial park actually built qn a swamp. The wetlands actually on the site were protected by innovative building techniques, and some buildings were raised on stilts. In Christchurch, the new Bexley Employment Zone will allow the city to start from scratch on its own industrial project. What happens could take the sting out of similar proposals in other parts of the city. Bexley residents are natural cynical about what might develop there. They have lived near the city tip for years — a stigma that will eventually be converted into a golf course. A carefully-planned and greened employment zone, with light industries and offices could change the traditional image. 7 Small suburban shopping districts are a different matter. Because most of them have bee.i there many years, the problems they create today are more difficult to solve. Without wholesale redevelopment, there is no starting from scratch. They straddle main roads, a pattern that was all right for old trading and traffic patterns, but is

now getting outdated. The problem is acute in maintravelled streets, where heavy traffic and pedestrians clash every day. Where shops are spread out along the street, there is always a high degree of uncertainty for nearby homes. They never know how much pressure will be brought to expand the suburban commercial zones and slop over on to their own way of life. Some small shop zones will never be popular again, mainly because they are poorly-located. Many isolated “corner shops” have been deserted, converted, or torn down.

City surveys done in 1975, as part of the leadup to a scheme review, showed that intermediate shopping districts were drawing their customers from wider areas than in 1967.

During the 19705, small shopping blocks — up to 10 shops — have been slipping badly. Floor-space increases have been substantial in larger centres, but “virtually non-exist-ent’* in the small ones, according to a planning report.

Studies of how shoppers reached their local shopping centres were done in 1967, then compared with surveys in 1975. In some places, there was no change in almost 10 years. But in Merivale, the percentage of people who walked to shops had risen from 39 per cent to 70 per cent. The percentage using cars had dropped from 40 per cent to 19 per cent. In Edgeware, there was a decline in the number of cyclists.

Because of the Northland complex, and its space for car parking, the percentage of cars had increased in Papanui, while pedestrians had decreased. The reviewed scheme would avoid any discouragement of comer shops and minor shopping centres, but a review report concedes that “it is doubtful whether scheme policies can change or reverse social pattern changes” — notably the one-stop shopping habit.

Encouragement of more compact. redeveloped centres will be part of the reviewed scheme, with people and cars kept apart as much as possible. There will probably be provisions for designated “community facilities” inside the centres, or next to them. There may be general concept plans for some centres, to guide their development, and new projects may have to comply with that plan.

Special community facilities located in the shopping focal points would include kindergartens, creches, assembly halls, medical centres, and taverns. Some centres already have a good mixture of most of those uses; others are sadly deficient. Where people live is more important to them than where they shop and work. Many Christchurch residents live in monotonous surroundings that could do with injections of street trees, playgounds, and pocket green spaces.

Much of that need falls outside the district scheme for existing neighbourhoods, but more can be done to ensure that new subdivisions have design and landscaping which will prevent them from becoming instant eyesores. One question is whether conventional housing can be encouraged to remain in some neighbourhoods, such as south St Albans, which are fast being filled with flats.

That could be achieved by allowing sub-division into small site for singlefamily homes only in some places. Smaller single-unit lots with reasonable frontages may also be permitted closer to the city centre, where high-density residential developments are permitted.

Many cities here and overseas peg their design hopes on comprehensive

developments for housing subdivisions. There have been six such projects in Christchurch, three of them council urban renewal construction, but the ordinance has not been well used yet.

■ There may be a mon sophisticated ordinance approach to apartment design. Some city designs have simply been bad. They have no character, allow little privacy, and turn neighbourhoods into visual deserts.

Planners warn that design and quality cannot be pushed too far without pricing out the groups who need that type of housing, but they admit that it can be done better in many cases.

Designs up to 1966 tended to be monotonous, then ordinance changes produced some variety. There is still “considerable room for improvement" in design techniques, according to a council report.

The combination of too many flats and too little open space often leads to destruction of the feeling that you belong to a real neighbourhood. More interesting flats are usually the ones that are higher priced, a natural tendency if planning controls do not sufficiently channel development. Planners today are learning that even cheap can be beautiful —if it is done right. An apartment survey last year showed that rental units tended to comply only with minimum standards, while ownership flats — tfhich must have a sales pitch — build to higher standards.

Although the survey showed that 70 to 80 per cent of city flat dwellers were “generally happy” with their living conditions. many planning problems were admitted. About 52 per cent of renters were in flats because they had no other choice — or chould not afford another choice.

One member of a University of Canterbury Sociology Department research team that helped with the survey says that the council's apartments policy had not worked well in servicing the needs of young renters. When the scheme policy document is produced in September, policies for residential areas will probably be emphasised.