TOWN PLANNING

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 306, 10 December 1931, Page 5

TOWN PLANNING

APPLICATION IN NAPIER STREET IMPROVEMENT. DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED. Town-planning legislation as applied in Napier was the subject of an address given members of the Wellington branch of the Town Planning Institute last evening by Mr. J. S. Barton, S.M., chairman of the Hawke’s Bay Rehabilitation Commission. Mr. Barton spoke of the passage of the regulations enacted in July and October, and explained the application of what he termed modified town-planning regulations as provided for in the Act passed in October. After outlining at length the legal and practical difficulties encountered by the commission, Mr. Barton said he had two points to submit as practical lessons to town-planners. The first was that there were distinct advantages attached to the plan of putting through a scheme in relation to part only of the land of a borough. OBJECT-LESSONS BEST. “Town-planning legislation, like all other legislation, cannot be administered with success if it is enacted in advance of public opinion or sentiments, and the public need a great deal of education on this subject,” he said. “My submission is that the best education would be a few objectlessons ; and it should not be difficult to carry out a few limited schemes, with the approval of the people, to provide such object-lessons. The reason underlying the statutory provision that a scheme must cover all the land in the borough, obviously, is that a scheme should be comprehensive and coherent and consistent in its parts. If the experts who have the thing in hand plan consistently and coherently and comprehensively, there should be no objection to the practical expression of their views any plans coming forward piecemeal; and 1 think it will be found that there will be an added advantage in that, seeing we are breaking new ground, lessons may be learned in some of the early partial schemes which will prevent the repetition of multiplication of errors in subseqm t parts of the scheme.” SCHEMES IN VIEW. “Although our Napier business area town-planning scheme, 1931, comprises only street improvements, the framers have had in view, throughout, the application of further schemes covering such matters as zoning, open spaces, children's playing areas, and harmony in building schemes, and we have put forward nothing that may embarrass or clash with such future schemes. Our special regulations of October 12 provide that a scheme may be prepared for a portion only of the area under the jurisdiction of the borough; that the land in a scheme need not necessarily be in one continuous area; and that "there may be a series of schemes each having a distinctive name, and it is our intention to work on that basis.’’ Mr Barton said his second point was that the enactment of a part only of the board’s comprehensive set of regulations would serve a further useful purpose as an object-lesson. His experience in moving “the powers that be’’ and all necessary consenting and interested parties when he had sought to procure the enactment of October 12 had convinced him that Gabriel and a team of archangels would not have procured the enactment of the whole of a first confidential draft of regulations brought before the commission some time previously. “If that is so in relation to responsible officials and others fairly well informed on town-planning matters,” Mr Barton said, “it is obvious that it would be hopeless, without much time spent in education and propaganda, to procure public (including Parliamentary) support for such an enactment. COMPENSATION AND BETTERMENT. “The principal difficulties will be found to revolve round compensation and betterment. The advantage procured by the passage of our limited set of regulations is that wo shall now, for the first time, work out the problems of betterment and compensation in relation to an existing town-plan-ning scheme under existing legislation. The experiec e so gained will, I have no doubt, be of immense benefit in seeking to legislate for the Dominion as a whole on these points.” Dealing briefly with the question of compensation, Mr Barton said that an excellent spirit had been shown by interested property-owners. The great majority had accepted the view that the widening of the streets was necessary and an improvement to the town, and they had agreed to give the necessary 10ft strip of laud and offset their claim for compensation against the betterment which they acquired. This, naturally, did not apply to corner sections, because the lateral strip of 10 feet taken along one side meant a loss of 10 feet of frontage in the intcrecting street. It was estimated that the total cost to the borough of compensation in connection with the works outlined would be between £22,000 and £23,000. “When it is considered that we have widened 96 chains of street in all, and created 12| chains of new street, acquiring private land in the business portion of the town for the purpose, it will, I think be conceded that the matter has been concluded on a very economical basis,” Mr Barton said. BETTERMENT A DIFFICULT PROBLEM. Betterment was a difficult problem, Mr Barton said, and he thought, he was right in saying that no satisfactory basis for assessing and levying betterment arising from street improvements had yet been discovered and applied. In one case, he said, the following formula had been agreed upon: —Take the total amount of compensation for land assumed, plus the total cost of street making, including reticulation; halve this on the principle that in this case half the benefit of the work would be shared by the town generally; the other half is to be borne by the properties immediately facing on to the widened portion of the street; this amount was split into 20 instalments representing the initial sum with interest at 5 per cent., and these annual instalments were then spread over the affected land proportionately to the frontages; the

annual amount payable by eaeh section will be collected as a special rate over the period of 20 years. Mr Barton said he would suggest that, the foregoing basis of betterment would afford some guide to the tribunal that must eventually deal with a certain number of betterment cases.