DEVELOPMENT IN HUTT VALLEY

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 137, 6 March 1941, Page 5

DEVELOPMENT IN HUTT VALLEY

Plan. For Future Growth LEAD FOR OTHER PARTS OF DOMINION “The economic development in the Hutt Valley withdn recent years has been' in miniature a picture of the potential development of • New Zealand in the next 100 years,” said the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Parry, in an address to the annual conference of the Municipal Association in Auckland. He said that within recent times the proximity of Lower Hutt to Wellington and the rapid expansion of commercial and industrial pursuits brought about a progress which, to say the least, was phenomenal. That gave Lower Hutt the qualifications to become a city—the ninth district in New Zealand to achieve that status.

“I look forward to the day,” said the Minister, “when the city will hot be the present limits of Lower Hutt, but will be a large area embracing the Hutt Valley. This state of affairs will no doubt come about in its own way and in its own time, and will also without question create its own problems for the administrators of that period.” Reference was made by the Minister to the Hutt Valley development scheme. He said there was a consensus of opinion that a more orderly development was necessary to avoid troubles for future generations. It was necessary to think ahead —not merely in terms of tomorrow, next year, or ten years hence, but to think quietly of the next fifty or one hundred years. It was necessary to provide a specific plan, not only for some individual local body or part of the area, but a master plan for the development of the valley as a whole, within the ambit of which the individual local bodies could prepare their own statutory town-planning schemes. “What has been done iu the gutt Valley will sooner or later have to bo done for other parts of New Zealand,” said Mr. Parry. “We have before us today evidence that the lesson from this experimental scheme has been learned in at least two of ohr larger metropolitan areas. In both Auckland and Christchurch, the local authorities are talking in terms of a single scheme for their metropolitan areas. They have recognized that such a scheme can be prepared only if the various local authorities can agree to cooperate. Iu other words, the basis of this scheme is forward thinking.”