CLEARING SLUMS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18256, 27 November 1933, Page 9

CLEARING SLUMS

TOWN PLANNING ABROAD MR. MAW SON RETURNS Willi the primary object of studying the latest developments abroad in regard to town planning, and also local body administration, Mr. J. W. Mawson, ox-Dircctor of Town Planning in New Zealand, left Wellington about seven months ago for Australia, South Africa, and England.' He returned from London on the Eangitano, after what he described as a most interesting tour.

While away, lie said, lie had particularly wanted to make investigations into tho position of local government, and, if possible, to obtain a general indication of the present-day trend. 1 his, lie told a Wellington reporter, he found to be toward increased amalgamation. Local body reform •must necessarily precede further attempts at town planning in New Zealand, he considered.

In Australia he had found progress in that direction very slow. On the other hand, the South African provinces were extremely active in their cities. In England, too, house and town planning were still two of the biggest questions engaging the attention of tho port and local i«ifnorities at the present time. Impressive examples of this were the slum-clear-ing schemes that were now being embarked on to a colossal extent in all the great English cities.

STANDING REPROACH REMOVED. He saw tho full details of only two of the clearing and rebuilding schemes, both of thorn in Lancashire boroughs, but they had struck him as being particularly sound from all points ol view, Mr. Mawson continued. The families whose old and cheap-rented buildings would be pulled down would not find themselves forced to increased expense by living in tho modern ‘ ‘multiple family dwellings” that would replace them. The standard of rent set by tho Government was 7s (id, the net rent a worker in those districts had to pay. The difference between that, and tiie true economic rent had r.o be subsidised and met out of the public funds. Now, however, that subsidy had been stopped, as to-dav building costs were so low in England that adequate homes could be erected requiring an economic rent of only about 3d more than the standard,rent. “I think that when the schemes arc finally finished in, say, five years’ time, they will have completely altered the face of the large industrial centres iu England,” Air. Mawson said.