Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1939. A NATIONAL OUTLOOK NEEDED.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 July 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 1939. A NATIONAL OUTLOOK NEEDED.

— _— JT would contribute to the welfare of New Zealand, the president of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce (Air P. °- Smellie) declared not long ago, if the Government exhibited greater foresight when issuing permits for new industries. It was (piite conceivable, Mr Smellie added, that if a steady preference continually went Io the north, by far the greater part of the population of the Dominion would be centred in and around Wellington and Auckland. By way of remedial action, the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce is setting up a development committee to place before the Government and possible manulactnrers the advantages of establishing manufacturing businesses in Dunedin. No objection is likely to be taken to enterprise on behalf of the southern city, but the total question raised—that ol exercising foresight in determining the location of new industries—graven needs attention from a very much broader standpoint, The main consideration in shaping and guiding the industrial development of the Dominion ought to be, but at piescnt decidedly is not, the'welfare of the people of the Dominion. The only sound foundation for industrial development, as for development in many other branches 01. community Hie and activity, is comprehensive regional planning. In New Zealand regional planning has been almost completely neglected. A beginning made ten or a dozen years ago on regional planning throughout the Dominion faded out quickly. The enterprise was killed largely by the indifference or opposition of peoplemany of them local’ body representatives —who could not see that there was anything in it. Those few whoj like the president of the Municipal Association of New Zealand, Mr 1. Jordan, have time and again earnestly advocated the revival ol regional planning, have been denied an effective hearing. 'With a few honourable exceptions, there is a general failure on the part of both national and local body administrators in this country to realise the benefits that, regional planning is capable of conferring. Carried into effect and acted upon, regional planning would mean that industries, together with transport and all other public services of every kind, national and local, would be developed with the greatest possible advantage Io the country and its people—full and intelligent regard being'paid alike to factors of economy and of human welfare. In the conditions of haphazard and patchwork development to which we are accustomed, it is not easy to envisage the conditions that would be brought about by action based on orderly planning, but at least the effects of neglecting to plan, and of allowing affairs to take an unguided courseware written large. Thinly populated as this country is, conditions of congestion and confusion have already arisen in metropolitan and other areas —conditions to be noted almost, at then’ worst, so far as this country is concerned, in Wellington and its environs —which open, to’say the least, no happy prospect for the future.

“Men come together in cities,” it was said by Aristotle, “in order to live: they remain together in order to live the good life.” It is one of the major tragedies of modern civilisation, however, that, the greatest nations, including our own, have developed cities to the point at which they are less centres of good life than of frustration and of death. Aristotle assuredly would not have spoken of the good life being lived in the unwholesome antheaps that so many cities have become in thickly populated countries, and that cities are more than tending to become even in this partly developed Dominion.

In any application of intelligence to the problems by which New Zealand is confronted, there must, be a revolt against the increasing tendency to muster and crowd a large part ol the population into relatively tiny and fragmentary parts of the total territory at disposal. An idea appears to be vaguely held that people must crowd themselves here and there into selected areas in the interests of industrial and economic efficiency. That idea is entirely erroneous. The whole explanation of much of the crowding and congestion already to be seen in Wellington and elsewhere is that we are pursuing blindly and unintelligent!}’ the same drift as has led in the Mother Country and in many others to an overgrowth of cities and to a multitude of resultant ills.

We are well placed in New Zealand, at the beginning of' an era of industrial development, to shape and carry out plans of industrial decentralisation, which would enable the greater part of our population to enjoy the benefits of urban organisation and association and at the same time those of healthy life in a reasonably open countryside. The complete practicability and desirability from every standpoint of development on these lines will become manifest as soon as the facts are examined on their merits, under a scheme of regional planning. The good results of intelligent planning would make themselves progressively apparent equally in Ihe cities, where there is so much confused congestion to be remedied, and in areas like the Wairarapa, in which there is splendid scope for industrial and other development in which the errors of metropolitan development, at the stage it has reached in this country, should of all things be avoided. PICKING THE WRONG PLACE. JX its quest, for market garden lands to take the place of those which are to be Inuit over in the Hutt Valley, the Government lias run its head into a hornet’s nest in the Knku area, in the Manawatu, where angry dairy farmers and others, pakeha and .Maori, are protesting in the strongest terms against proposals to take over their holdings. To the unanimous protest of these farmers and their wives, the Prime Minister made a reply not obviously very strong or convincing in stating that, the proposal was to place 500 people where about a fifth of that number lived at present, and that “the Government did not intend,to do anyone an injustice in the process.” Probably a great many people in addition to the small farmers concerned will feel that the process would work out in serious injustice. The Government no doubt is in a position to bear down the opposition of the Kuku settlers, though special legislation might be needed for the purpose,, but whether it would be. either just or wise to do so is another mat ter.

It may lie well worth while, in the circumstances, for the Prime Minister to take the way out suggested to him by the member for Wairarapa, Mr lien Roberts, who has asked him to consider taking land in the Wairarapa electorate, especially around Grevtown, where the land is much more suitable.

-Much land in the Lower Valley, some of it still in need of irrigation, which could be provided economically, undoubtedly is well titled for market garden development for the supply of the metropolitan area. It is true that development on these lines would emphasise the need for an improvement in railway communications bet ween the Wairarapa and Wellington, but since the Government is pledged to construct the Riniutaka deviation tunnel no difficulty in adopting Mr Roberts's suggestion need arise on that account.