TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays WEDNESDAY, 13th OCTOBER, 1948 TO-DAY AND THE FUTURE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6977, 13 October 1948, Page 6

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays WEDNESDAY, 13th OCTOBER, 1948 TO-DAY AND THE FUTURE

IT was pleasing to note the manner in which the Borough Council and the State housing authorities met in conference last week when property subdivision preparatory to new and expanding residential areas was being arranged. From the basic considerations of a town-planning survey the Council and the State departmental officers were enabled to consider these initial works in their relation faith an ultimate development programme. In that way there could be ready agreement in principle, though when reduced to detail there could have been wide divergence of interest and opinion. The pleasing feature was the willingness of the Council and the departmental advisers to hold intact the principle and to seek mutual acceptance of detail in the plan. The width and direction of new streets, the designation of traffic routes, the reticulation of the whole area had to be considered as though it were a full composite planning with a view to the avoidance of those costly and difficult that arise under any piecemeal sub-divi-sion, The difficulty of the immediate situation involving what are largely in the nature of initial works leading into a wide area is that there has to be some assumption of what adjoining land-owners will want to do; but in this the trusteeship of the Council was revealed as the adoption not merely of a plan but of a policy which can be held as safeguarding all aspects of public interest, not merely in the use and availability of residential rites but in the systematic layout of an area under all considerations of civic development, but also of the consequential use of public capital investment in servicing the locality. This was perhaps the first occasion requiring studied reference to be made to the town-planner’s plan, and the wisdom of a wide-range planning was well proved. But the really valuable test was the willingness of the Council and the land-owner—in this instance, the State—to meet in a constructive way to promote and soundly base development. It could be suggested that there is occasion for private land-owners to similarly co-operate and be assisted by the Council in doing what is so essentially important to-day as the best possible safeguard for the future.