TOWN PLANNING

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 218, 11 June 1930, Page 10

TOWN PLANNING

MR. MAWSON AN IDEALIST A WARNING ISSUED If local bodies are to retain their Independence and identity, and, incidentally, the goodwill of the business community, they must give strict attention to any suggested additions or alterations to the Town Planning Act, is the opinion of Mr. P. C. Watt, as expressed at a meeting of the council of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce last evening. Mr. Watt represented the chamber at the recent inquiry by the regional boundaries committee of the Town Planning Board. Mr. J. W. Mawson, the Town Planner, had delivered a most interesting and in many ways instructive address, Mr. Watt reported. “He is ’an idealist, and I should imagine that private owners would receive very little consideration from him if their property interfered in any way with his ideas.” The Town Planner, said Mr. Watt, was very vague in replying to questions asked of him. However, he seemed definite upon one point, and that was in reference to speculative land. One could not help feeling there was something in the background that had not yet come forward in connection with the whole scheme. Local conditions and circumstances would always, of course, control the development of any town-planning scheme. A good example was Wellington, where an enormous amount of reclamation work had been done and must still be done in order to keep pace with the growth of the city. Mr. Watt added that he considered the present Act gave the Town Planning Board an enormous amount of power and that amending legislation should receive the strictest attention of local bodies. •