MOTHER EARTH'S AUTHORITY

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 86, 8 October 1935, Page 8

MOTHER EARTH'S AUTHORITY

Comment made by a Salvation Army visitor, Colonel G. Davis, on the prevalence of the bicycle in Christchurch is a reminder of how much communities are the creatures of their environment.; Someone has said:. "Give me the geography of a country and I will give you its history s'; and equally it might be claimed that the topography of a city is at least some clue to the way in which its people will move about. A flat lay-out surely offers a premium to a man-power machine of moderate cost and low maintenance—a machine offering no carburettor troubles apart from the carburettor troubles of the rider himself. Introduce grades, and at an early stage of the uphill process the cyclists begin to be weeded ouf, and the machine loses its universal, appeals Similar features of topography multiply the costs of those other systems' of transport (power transport), which' the pedestrian calls to his aid. > Wellington's steep country dictated .a task to the Manawatu railway engineers in the eighties;.and fifty years later the same terrain is /being considered with a view.to a high level road. A flat city with flat surroundings would have no Kaiwarra arid Ngahauranga Gorges, no* costly hill-climbing, roads and rails, no 'tunnels, and no heavily-forested steep land worthless for farming. Of the latter, Wellington has over 70,000 acres in the Water Board's reserve, and cine day the immense public value of this area, immunised; by Nature from settlement, will be fully appreciated.