THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1947. PLANNING WANTED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26532, 6 August 1947, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1947. PLANNING WANTED

It is to be hoped that prompt and positive action towards the determining of a town-planning policy

for the Dunedin metropolitan area will be the outcome of the overtures made by the Otago Regional Planning Council to the City Council Works Committee. Dunedin, like almost every other city and town in New Zealand, is at present paying heavily for lack of planning in the past, and the sooner a co-ordinated and integrated policy to govern future development in both urban and rural areas is devised, the sooner will it be possible to, restore some order to the haphazard, slum-produc-ing manner of growth of communities throughout the Dominion. Statutory responsibilities to prepare townplanning schemes were imposed on urban bodies by the Town-Planning Act of 1926, and the subsequent amendments to the Act provided for an extension of regional planning to extra-urban areas and to those areas in which a community of . social and economic interest governed the activities of a number of territorial local authorities. Dunedin and'the surrounding boroughs and counties comprise an excellent example of the “community of social and economic interest ” envisaged by the regulation, and there should be no need to stress the importance of having prepared at the earliest possible date a plan in which the development and improvement schemes of the respective bodies might be co-ordinated for the general advancement and good of > the whole area. The failure of local bodies to carry out-their obligations to prepare town-planning schemes was the subject of comment at some ' length in the report of the Select Committee on Local Government. The committee reported that only 11 local authorities, most of them in ■■ the smaller group, had completed town-planning schemes, and only six ; had been approved by the TownPlanning Board. Until quite recently, the report continued, local bodies had been prone to regard town-planning as an “unnecessary ■ frill,” and though there was now a wider awareness of the value of planned development those bodies attempting to prepare plans were ■ handicapped by lack of skilled technical assistance. In 1945 there were in New Zealand only 11 men who had actually any academic training in town-planning, and seven ■ of them were in the Public Service. This lack of qualified advisers must undoubtedly delay the completion of plans in many towns and cities in the Dominion, and those organisa- ' tions interested in the orderly , development of the Dunedin metro--1 politan area and its environs will - doubtless have to consider the pos- ;• sibility of engaging the services of a permanent town-planning officer - from outside New Zealand, if necessary. Not only would the employment of such an officer preclude .possible Government interference, •1 but it would enable detail to be added to the, broad scheme of development in a manner that would •’ encourage the growth of a brighter, healthier, and more attractive city.