SURVEYS AND PLANNING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26903, 15 October 1948, Page 4

SURVEYS AND PLANNING

The additional responsibilities imposed on surveyors by the requirements of modern methods of town planning were rightly emphasised by Mr F. C. Baslre in his address to the annual conference of the New Zealand Institute of Surveyors. Surveying in New Zealand has advanced a long way since the first men of this profession were sent from Great Britain to superimpose ready-made street plans on a foreign and intractable topography, and surveyors of the present day are required, as Mr Basire remarked, to think not only in three dimensions but to be aware of the high standards demanded in the planning of a modern community site. In other words, the surveyor is now expected to envisage the outcome of his precise calculations, and to think in terms of town planning as well as in the mechanics of his profession. The value of these enjoinders to the persons charged with the preliminary practical work on proposed building areas cannot be questioned but, as the members of Mr Basire’s audience would agree, the function of the surveyor has its limitations, and the surveyor can employ advanced principles of town planning only when there is a proper understanding by all parties to a project of what town planning really means. The surveyor is but one member of the team which plans the opening up of new residential or commercial areas, and he is usually subordinate to the authority which authorises the undertaking. Yet throughout New Zealand local authorities have been remarkably reluctant to assume the responsibilities devolving upon them under the Town Planning Act of 1926 and its amendments. The dangers inherent on a policy of unplanned and unregulated urban expansion have more than once been stressed by competent authorities, and every day the problem is neglected must add to the bill that communities throughout the Dominion will one day have to meet. There are, admittedly, difficulties to be overcome before town and regional planning schemes can be introduced everywhere they are needed, and not the least of these difficulties is the lack of skilled technical assistance. Surveyors, by continually seeking to attain higher standards in their own profession, can assist local bodies towards overcoming the . present handicaps, but the problem of planned and orderly development will not be solved until local authorities evince a more earnest desire for prompt and specialised assistance in all town planning projects.