TOWN PLANNING

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8679, 12 March 1914, Page 3

TOWN PLANNING

EARL GREY’S ADVOCACY

“MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL QUESTION.” “You are a young country with a great future and you have not a moment to lose,” said Earl Grey yesterday in discussing the question of town planning. “You have the experience of the United States and the United Kingdom,” he continued, “and also of Australia to show you what dangers you should avoid. You have also the demonstration of what the new garden city movement has been able to accomplish in England. If with this warning on the one hand of the awful evils that result to a national life through (Congested life in city slums, and the ‘demonstration of the way in which they can be avoided, you will only have yourselves to blame if you allow the islum curse to show its loathsome and poisonous head in your country. “ACTING WISELY.” “The British Association for Science ‘holds its annual meeting in Australia next August. Mr Davidge, of the London County Council, has, I understand, agreed to address the association on ‘Town-planning' at ’ Sydney and Melbourne; and I believe a series of free, lantern lectures on tbwn-plan--ning and garden city methods and the co-partnership system in housing is being arranged for in Wellington and other New Zealand towns. Your people will have an opportunity of educating themselves upon this all-important subject, providing the press gives them, as I feel sure it will, a good opportunity of doing so. “If it were possible for the town of Wellington, or th? New Zealand Government, to send their own expert investigators .to examine and report upon the methods which are now being adopted in Canada . and. the United Kingdom for providing new houses under as nearly os possible ideal conditions, I think you would be acting wisely. MOST IMPORTANT OF; ALL.

“I regard the whole subject of townplanning as probably the most important of all the pressing social questions we. have to consider. "We ' can satisfy your investigators that in those communities where the cottages do , not number more that twelve to the ■ acre the physique of the children is very much better than it is in communities where working-class dwellings number some thirty, forty, and, in cases, fifty to the acre., o “The ordinary death rate l per thousand is only six for the garden city of ‘Letchvrorth, which is a busy, manufacturing town, with many “industries, and a population of over 8.000, drawn from the crowded industrial centres. The infant mortality there is less than half of ■ that in many other parts of England. The ordinary deathrate is only one-third ivhat it is in Liverpool, or 6.1 per thousand, as against 18.1 per thousand. If has been demonstrated over and over again that there is a definite ratio between the physique, namely, the height . and, weight of children who are in one-room, tworoom, three-room and four-room tenements. Those towns whose population is'best housed have the lowest deathrate and the greatest physical A DIFFICULT PROPOSITION. _ Speaking of Wellington City, Earl Grey said we; appeared'to have a very difficult proposition in this city. VI understand,’’ he said, . “that the effect of, taxing unimproved values, nnacooinpanied by any restriction as to tbe number of houses you may, have per acre, is causing your open spaces to be built upon, with the result that you may, before you know where jon are, fine! that you have, even in this young • country, little patches oe cor-o-estion, and :the conditions'-reproduced acre which have led in the bluer countries to ill-health, drunkenness, immorality, insanity, pauperism, and crime, “Town-planning is a. science, and yon cannot educate your, people too. carefully with regard to it, as upon the way in which you plan out your towns depends the future prosperity of your State.” . ■