THE TOWN PLANNING BILL.

Evening Star, Issue 19329, 16 August 1926, Page 6

THE TOWN PLANNING BILL.

Tee unconscionable time it has been waited for has not produced any effusive welcome for tho Hon. Mr Bollard’s Town Planning Bill. Rather the feeling appears to have been, on the part of those whoso views have been publicly expressed, that this particular gift horse must be looked very carefully in the mouth. The Auckland City Council has decided to ask tbo Government to hold over the measure till next session, to enable local authorities to consider it thoroughly. Various members of the House, including Mr Sicloy, of Dunedin, Mr Sullivan, who is a member of the Christchurch City Council, and Mr Forbes, the leader of the National Party, have urged the same suggestion from their places in Parliament. There is nothing inconsistent or unreasonable in that attitude, even when it comes from quarters which might bo expected to bo most friendly to the principle of tho Bill. One may approve of the principle of town planning, even clamor for legislation to make it generally applicable, and be free still to hold the opinion that a particular measure, of thirty-five clauses, designed to give effect to it should not be passed without a great deal of consideration. Consideration by tho bodies that would be required to act uuder it, and which are most conversant with tho problems involved, might have tho effect of improving it in no small degree. The Municipal Conference has passed motions very .frequently in favor of a Town Planning Bill, but the Municipal Conference passes motions with great rapidity that are couched in general terms. It lias never yet, so far as we can remember, gone into details of the machinery that would bo best adapted for the working of such a measure; that is a matter which requires still to bo thought out by more persons than busy members of Parliament, hurrying to roach the end of a session of multifarious demands. The Prime Minister, when he brought down the Bill, explained that ho was circulating it at an early stage so that bodies interested could consider the proposals, but apparently it was not in his mind that they should have longor than tho remainder of the session to consider it. If a longer time is required by them there can be no harm in affording it, after the many years that New Zealand has waited for tho Bill.

If delays of the contra! authority—not Mr Coates’s Government, but its predecessor—had been less protracted; the country might have had some definite opinions as to the best form to be taken by a Town Planning Bill through the inlluence of bodies specially established to consider the subject. Town planning associations were fairly numerous in New Zealand six or seven years ago. But apparently, owinjr to the lack of encouragement given to their cause, they have ceased to exist. And so no word has been heard from them in the latest discussions. The Dunedin Amenities Society included “and town planning” in its title for a series of years. Then it dropped it, as having too little significance, and only at the last annual meeting was it resumed, more in token, apparently, of an aspiration than as a description of practical functions which it performed. But where the voice of those associations has been Silent, the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors has condemned the Government’s Bill in no ambiguous terms. Its first complaint was that it ignores suggestions which it had made itself, as one of the first bodies interested in this great question, as long as ten years ago, and is “ in contravention of all it had striven for.” Members of the institute, at its annual conference, also denounced the Bill as “wrong in principle,” “childish in conception,” and “ impossible of execution.” The more specific of their complaints have been not ineffectively answered by Mr Bollard. The Bill may be difficult to operate. It is not easy to apply a betterment clause, and determine the amount by which an* increased value of property jn individual cases has been duo to any communal scheme. It is hard to see how tbs central hoard will not be overloaded with work when it is called to, consider schemes, and hear.

objections to them, forwarded to it by every borough In New Zealand with a population of over 1,000, as well as rural areas. There is ari element of compulsion, sought to be reposed in the central body, which ‘may be objected to, though we fail to see how it is. to be avoided if the measure is to have more than a fraction of its proper usefulness. At the same time, those compulsory powers may more nominal than actual, since it is not shown how anything is to be done if a local authority states that it has failed to agree on a town planning scheme. It is, however, most important that our cities should be directed in their expansion, and not left to grow, like Topsy, with the worst consequences for their development. And that requirement can be only afforded by some general organisation. It is a true word which is stated in the explanatory memorandum to the Bill, that “ it is impossible, for example, to plan the main thoroughfares of a city or borough without regard to conditions that obtain beyond the city or borough.” The betterment principle has been established, ns an element of town planning schemes, in Great Britain and Canada, and it is claimed that experience has shown that such schemes, properly carried out, are not expensive, either to the municipality or to the individual, but an advantage to both.