TOWN PLANNING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 674, 28 May 1929, Page 8

TOWN PLANNING

TOO MANY “IFS” FOR REGIONAL SCHEME

Writing to The Sun on the subject of the recent conference on Town Planning, Mr. T. Walsh, of Dev on port, says: Will the conference of local bod representatives with the Director ©"f Town Planning—held last Wednesdav at the Town Hall —have any effect i*i securing concerted action toward the framing of a regional town planninscheme? Judging from my own observations. and from the comment made by many of the delegates when thev left tho Town Hall, the meeting was little better than a waste of time. Of course the idea of laying out our city so that, in future. all will go smoothly and without mistakes, i» fine —and no doubt could be translated into action if anyone could foresee tile the future. Most public body men are short-sighted and do not attempt to disguise the fact. In attending the conference last week many expected to iind that the director had some well thought out plan to place before them; that the Director would supply tho vision that they themselves lacked. The ideal of a regional scheme for Auckland and environs was endorsed two years ago. Trere is everything to be said in favour of the ideal. The same can be said of the ideal of a world without hungry people, and of many other ideals. Maybe the Director, because of his newness to the country, was not aware of the trend of opinion in the city and suburbs, but if a director cannot direct, what is he for? The resolutions carried, at the instance of the Director, covered merely the pious endorsement of the idea of a regional plan and the setting up of what he termed a “Sort of Parliament” composed of local body delegates to mess about with the idea. A much more useful procedure would have been to indicate what are.i he considered the regional plan should cover —from Papakura to Waiwera (which was the area that had been invited to send delegates). or sonvsmaller area. Within that area just what was required in the master plan? And how long the preparation of that plan would take and the probable cost ? It is quite obvious that the proposed “Sort of Parliament,” composed of local body delegates, cannot finance any expenditure; certainly not one that may involve thousands of pounds. How engineers are to be paid for working on the plan is a mystery. Surely the Director must have had some idea of how long it would take to prepare the necessary plan in a given area, or h*» should have taken the trouble to find out before calling the local body men together. It looks as if the devising of a regional plan is dependent on the ability of some one or other to guess the future. If we are to cling to the almost obsolete electric trams, some people could foretell the trend of city development; others might hazard a guess. But if motor-bus traction supersedes trams, how will the city be affected? Air transport may come as rapidly as motor-bus transport, and who is prepared to say where the air transport centre of the city will be? To me that should be one of the points to be determined before attempting any visualisation of the layout of th* future city. We have only to look at the way English towns that clung to the canals were left behind by towns that did not try to hold up progress in transport, to see that even the best schemes of civic development: may be copsized by the inarch of progress. If we can be shown the future motor transport and air transport centres we might be able to guess where the residential and business centres may be located and to do some regional planning. but there are so many “ifs” in the wav that I syggest that the whole of this town-planning business be decentralised. Local town-planning boards, functioning in limited areas and trying only to see just what is ahead of them, could have their policies co-ordinated bv a central group of experts. In trying to avoid mistakes of tlie past we may easily rush into mistakes about the future that may prove more costly than remedying the errors of the past.