THE TOWN PLANNING ACT.

Evening Star, Issue 21054, 17 March 1932, Page 10

THE TOWN PLANNING ACT.

“ Is the Town Planning Act any use to anyone? It is beautiful in theory, and beautiful theories of town planning continue .to bo expressed at intervals. But has it effected anything, or is there any prospect of its having, any tangible use in future? ” So we wrote last week, apropos of a dance hall erected in a residential neighbourhood which objectors to the prospect were informed could not he blocked beforehand, and waited for an answer. The answer has come from the Director of Town Planning, Mr Mawson, and we welcome it on two grounds. Its length and earnestness, as well as promptness, are evidence of the zeal of the Director (although that was never in doubt), and it does provide some reasons for hope that the Act will have uses in future. It may, for all wc know, have had very tangible usefulness already in other parts of the dominion. The Director’s reply, however, will not give much satisfaction to those whoso complaints were made in the Assessment Court recently, nor does it point to any but vaguely distant benefits that are likely to he felt by others in Dunedin.

The clause which was not invoked to prevent a local grievance because objectors were advised that it would ho useless to invoke it is operative, Air Mawson claims. That is to say, as the Act reads—either the 1926 or the 1929 Act—it should he operative, and in a number of cases it has been applied. Whether it would be applicable here appears more doubtful in the light of the Director’s detailed reasoning. “It is sufficient,” he explains, “ that a local authority should express its intention to zone a particular part of its district for a specified use under its townplanning scheme, and thereafter to refuse applications for buildings or other works that would nob be in conformity with that use.” We are not aware that even that preliminary intention has yet been expressed by tho Dunedin City Council. Our impression is that its work in pursuance of the terms of successive Town Planning Acts after ,six years that they have cxisted'has not yet got so far. The long argument in which Mr Mawson indulges as to the advantages of the Act as shown by zoning benefits has therefore no relevance yet to Dunedin, where we have no zoning. That, he may say, is our own fault, and it may be so. The other main cities are further ahead. Mr Mawson admits that town-planning schemes “ can only be based on scientifically ascertained data with respect to the actual and potential development of the natural resources and tho density and distribution of population within tho economic area.” It is tho collection of those data that takes time and money; tho Dunedin City Council has had prior claims on its money and its staff have been otherwise employed. A vigorous public sentiment supporting Mr Mawson’s ideals —ideals which we should be the last to disparagemight have led to more progress, but that sentiment does not exist. It is still to bo formed by education here, and, wo suspect also, in most parts of tho dominion. Tho Director pleads that tho extension of the statutory period for preparing schemes till 1937 “has very little significance,” and there is something in his argument for voluntary as distinct from compulsory town planning. But eleven years for preparing the schemes which make the first requirement of the law is surely a farcical term. No more progress appears to have been made locally in regard to regional schemes. Deferring to one wrangle by which an impasse lias been caused at this end of the dominion Mr Mawson writes;—" If the actual or proposed transportation facilities between Queenstown and Dunedin are such that goods and passengers can be transported between those two points at a lower cost than they can between Queenstown and Invercargill, or if Dunedin is able to offer Queenstown economic advantages in respect to finance and commerce which outweigh advantages in transportation costs to Invercargill, fhen Queenstown rightly belongs in the Otago region.” When different local authorities, with different interests to pull them, have to agree on that balance, difficulties of regional planning, translated beyond a Statute Book, are made manifest. They

have been overcome in England and America. We can only hope that they will bo overcome here, when public opinion has been more lully impressed with the disadvantages of “just growing,” like Topsy,