NARROW STREETS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144070, 15 April 1913, Page 2

NARROW STREETS.

It is a common belief that wido streets aro ono of tho foundations of good town-planning, but according to an interesting article on tho townplamring movement from tho London correspondent of tho Age, wide streets are not in such favour as they used to be. In tho town-planning schemes of twenty years ago there was a, natural reaction against the narrow, crooked, and dark streets of Old World cities. Model towns wcro made with wido streets of regular formation.. Now it is held to be best to confino width to arterial streets, which will take most of the traffic. Wide streets in residential quarters are found to be a mistake, because they take up land which could be put to better use, are vory expensive to maintain, and may produco a great deal of dust. In old planned towns in Germany the fino wide streets are flanked by huge tenement houses. So much land was devoted to the roads that there was little left for houses. It was impossible to erect cottages with gardens, for the rent of such would not havo paid interest on tho money expended on tho roads. At the garden cities of Letchworth and Hampstead, there are short, narrow, winding streets in the residential areas, but on each side houses and cottages with gardens, the buildings being well set back from tho road. In many cases the streets are purposely made to end in a cnl de sac so far as vehicular traffic is coneemdd, but with paths for pedestrians leading 'to other streets. The result is that only the traffic intended for tho houses in the vicinity uses theso streets, and residents are spared the noise and dust of busy thoroughfares. The correspondent doubts -whether the Federal Government is wise in making the main thoroughfares of the new capital 200 feet wide, and predicts that _if _ the principle of wide streets in indiscriminately applied, rents will be forced up. In New Zealand a minimum width, of sixty-six feet has been adopted, but' while this is barely wide -enough for busy main thoroughfares it is unnecessarily wide for short residential streets, as, for instance, such streets as Shortland, Bell and Wakefield streets, in the Avenue Eoad reserve, which the Borough Council was not permitted to make less than ' sixty-six feet wide, though they are only short cul de sacs, with ■no outlet except at tho Avenue Road end, and ono of them is only about four' chains long. In this case a width of forty feet, or at most fifty, would havo been ample.