Coast study aims to ‘educate planners’

Press, 7 March 1978, Page 11

Coast study aims to ‘educate planners’

Westport reporter An American consulting anthropologist, Dr Ruth Houghton, is in Westport on a Government-spon-sored study of people and planning. The project is the first of its kind done in New Zealand, aimed at “educating the planners.”

The idea is to give the planners an insight into the people they are planning for. The West Coast has been selected, because it has a regional planning priority.

Dr Houghton has done similar work in the United States but even there she is breaking new ground. After spending a year in Dunedin last year, where her husband was an exchange geographer attached to the University of Otago, Dr Houghton has returned without her

family to prepare the paper. The stimulus for her work came from Otago University, .vhich is providing a grant

Before leaving New Zealand towards the end of land toward* the end ot to the executive officer of the Wes: Coast Regional Development Council (Mr R. Harrison). He in turn referred her to Mr D. Stapleton, head of regional planning for the South Island.

Mr Stapleton then referred her to Wellington, where officials were enthusiastic enough about her work and gave her a brief. Since then she has moved about freely on the West Coast, listening to what the residents have to sav. She plans to have two public meetings, one at Westport and the other at Hokitika, to discuss her findings and get feed-back from them. Since she has been on the West Coast she has interviewed dozens of persons, from local-body officers to businessmen and individuals.

She favours the personal contact and interview for the basis of her study, rather :han the questionnaire, Anich has too many short-comings “After all, the personal contact and interview is a method of anthropology." she said Already Dr Houghton ha- ia:ked to Reeftcn people. including the Rotary Club. She said that while the planners and officials in Wellington see the West Coast as one big region, she thinks others ise. “You could split the area into three or four district areas tor planning," she said Murchison should he considered part of the West Coast because the people there identify with Coasters. West Coast boundaries were difficult and overlapped. For instance, there was overlapping from Nelson and Christchurch in education, two land districts and forest conservancies serving the region, she said.