DUNEDIN AMENITIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23810, 17 May 1939, Page 8

DUNEDIN AMENITIES

Accounts of the activities of the Dunedin Amenities Society must be always interesting to those residents who take a pride in their city and desire to see it well kept and cared for. As a result of a recent tour of inspection of various city reserves the society, it is to be noted, is drawing the attention of the City Council to quite a number of matters, all comparatively small perhaps in themselves, but in the aggregate amounting to a good deal in the direction of checking the growth of noxious weeds, removing ugliness and untidiness, and planting flowers and trees. The Council will no loubt appreciate the society's recommendations, and the citizens must recognise the usefulness of a body which keeps watch and ward, as it were, over the city with a view to the promotion of its cleanliness and beautification. The Amenities Society is, of course, a voluntary organisation, and strictly limited as to its resources. There is some room for the thought that it is a pity that it cannot do even more than it does by taking an active lead in the envisionment of city improvements on a scale going very much beyond the removal of gorse and broom, the provision of playground seats, and the formation of flower plots. Dunedin is a city of hills, and a hill-top is an excellent place from which not only to admire its fine natural environment, but also to ponder those artificiallycreated aspects of its development which seem less than charming. The question of whether the site which Dunedin occupies is made the most of may well be raised as one worthy of consideration in a centennial year. Nobody can doubt that Dunedin's claims to be recognised as a beautiful city could be greatly strengthened. In one particular aspect, failure to achieve satisfactory results is apparent. A city situated as this is, upon a harbour, should be making the most of that advantage. Other cities set an example in that respect which Dunedin, unfortunately, makes no attempt to follow. Here there is no blending whatever of city and harbour at close quarters: an upper harbour basin largely cut off from communication and conspicuous for its depressing aspect is apparently accepted as a necessary state of affairs. Let Dunedin's harbour situation be viewed, as apparently it never has been, as a great asset, not only for utility but for the amenities it could provide, and a picture must suggest itself of the city improved and beautiful far beyond anything that the small, familiar, but of course necessary processes of adornment could achieve. The case for upper harbour improvement, not from a navigational but from a city viewpoint, is not so hopeless as perhaps some of our older residents have come to think. The Dunedin Amenities Society might give useful consideration to even so large and seemingly baffling a question.