PRACTICAL TOWN PLANNING

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 2, Issue 8, 1 February 1924, Page 39

PRACTICAL TOWN PLANNING

by CHAS. E. WHEELER

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JF you can buttonhole a well-informed city administrator some day, and find out how much any of the principal cities in the Dominion has had to spend merely to remedy planning mistakes of the past, not to provide for future needs, he will mention a surprising' sum. This should convince you that town planning is not merely an imported fad, but is a sound, eommonsense movement designed to save money for ourselves and for posterity, and above all, to make our towns and cities places of which we will be proud without uneasy qualms of conscience over areas we would like the visitor to overlook. In this survey of town planning, the great majority of the examples to be ((noted will be of New Zealand ones, because we have made a start here, and we recognise our mistakes. It is quite possible, out of the voluminous literature existing on the subject of town planning, to run a long serial describing what has been done to improve cities —a process usually accomplished by despots, not always benevolent; for they have made beauty spots in large centres of population finite without regard for the poor people whose squalid ■ houses have been replaced by broad streets, monuments, and pretentious public buildings. Despots who did good We need not play the despot to improve New Zealand towns, although there is much work to be done, and a certain amount of “tearing up” involved. Let us hope that it may usually proceed on the mild and generous lines of Myers Park, in Auckland, where a gully surrounded with ugly back-yards, itself a receptacle for untidy rubbish, was converted into a beautiful children’s playground. What we have suffered from in the past has been lack of imagination. Wc are all to blame. Who could foretell, for instance, the marvellous expansion of Auckland’s suburbs? How many of us in middle age are free from the reproach that sometimes rises into our mind: “If I had been shrewd enough ten years ago to realise that Bonedust Farm at £3O an acre would now be worth £2OO a section!” Well, somebody was shrewd enough, and got the farmer’s acres not far from town, employed a surveyor to work out the area, put down a ruler over the plan, and after grudgingly reserving enough for streets, produced a gridiron pic-

ture which showed a profit of thousands sterling. Town planning does not aim at interfering with speculations of this kind, but it certainly would control them by insisting on more ' enlightened methods of subdivision. Even the speculator, enlightened; could produce a more attractive subdivisional plan in co-operation with a skilled planner, —best of all, as a proof that town planning is not a fad—extract just the same profit in the long run. But the difficulty to-day is that municipal powers are too restricted. There is a good deal of power in the hands of civic administrators to secure minimum areas for light and air, but practically no power to safeguard the broader lines of public utility or the finer things of civic life. The subdivisions go on well ahead of the growth of a city’s boundaries, with the result that long before the “amalgamation” process, a city is committed to a plan of subdivision which does not work in with its general lines of arterial road development, and probably gives no extra lungs so badly needed as the city grows. The “ Paying ” Point of View To come back to the purely material aspect of the science, for I am anxious to show that town planning is essentially a sound thing from the practical viewpoint. A prominent estate agent in Sydney a few years ago attended a town-planning conference as one of its most enthusiastic members. Estate agents, it may be remarked, are regarded coldly by the town-planning enthusiasts, but in this the latter are short-sighted. They should cultivate the estate agent, and show him where his best interests lie. This particular agent declared that he had subdivided land under the “rectangular” system of getting the most out of the area, and that he had also acted for a client who was enlightened enough to secure a town-planning expert 'to lay out roads, not in right angles, but in easy curves, to provide open spaces for children’s playgrounds, and for other public purposes, and to introduce some distinctive features into the general lay-out of the estate. And the result was a financial, as well as an artistic success. The owner was able to attract a better class of purchaser because he could guarantee in advance that the district would develop on attractive lines, that parks and public places

were already defined the future thoroughfares, adequate tram routes, and shopping area delineated, and the natural beauties preserved. What fine “talking-points” for a property agent! Had we a Town Planning Act,, which would enable areas to be definitely set apart for residential purposes, it would be possible for the land-owner to give the guarantee that no smoky or noisy factories would ever depreciate the residential value of the area. But to-day nobody is safe from this disadvantage unless he can prove that the intruding building constitutes a public nuisance and a danger to health. In the neighbourhood of Wellington, a wise land-owner is planning an estate for subdivision on good townplanning lines. I am not providing him with an advertisement in sayingthis, but I know. that he will profit from his wisdom in reserving 25 per cent, of the total area for playgrounds, recreation parks, and tennis and bowling greens. If he had not done so, the chances are that some of the sections might have been longer, though no more useful for residential purposes, and he would have run the risk of speculative builders creating rows of “box” houses,- whereas the attractions of the subdivision will tempt home-lovers to confidently go ahead with plans for pretty bungalows, which will have an appropriate setting. We spend much loving thought on the interiors of our homes. Why should we not concern ourselves as citizens with the surroundings of those homes ?

Civic Imagination In the lay-out of our towns we need the imagination of those admirable American citizens of a prairie town who, years ago, erected the State Parliament House on a hillside about a mile away from the settlement. The man in the street had many a good joke about isolating the politicians, but in due course the town grew that way, grew into finer, more healthful surroundings, and was dominated by its most, prominent building, which served as a good example to the private designers of buildings who came that Avay in due course. Very few of our municipal plannings in the past have taken much heed of the requirements of ten years ahead. Hence our street-widening problems, our lack of open spaces, and the cramped state of the playgrounds of city schools. We seem to start with a, store at the wharf. The wharf started because a creek ran down that way and provided deep water. Someone builds another store, a few people put up houses as close to this centre as possible— that’s how Auckland is centred in a gully, which has been a very expensive proposition to get out of! There was more enlightenment, perhaps, about the beginnings of Christchurch. With a perfectly flat area, the draught-board scheme of things was easy to carry out, and the central area, a square, could be made big enough to provide for the future cathedral, and even the traffic of 1924. But Christchurch, inaugurated under such happy auspices, has its planning troubles, too. The outlets from Cathedral Square are not at all what a modern busy city needs. One extremely important outlet from the Square, carrying tram traffic to several suburbs, and to the railway, is a dangerous bottle-neck, throttling the traffic and increasing the danger to life and limb. The Bank of New Zealand stands on this corner, and the price of widening that bottle-neck, which would have been nothing when the plans of Christchurch were drafted, is'simply beyond the financial capacity of the citizens just at present. Planning Errors are Expensive Wellington is a city of narrow streets, and the traffic problems are already becoming serious. An attempt to divert traffic from certain busy streets, confining vehicles to those which are being used for business in

those streets, will inevitably fail, because these streets constitute the main arterial roads through the city to certain suburbs. There are no alternatives, though there is talk of spending many thousands on property purchases in the hope of planning a great diagonal street to intersect the crowded part of the city, and relieve its narrow business streets of a formidable bulk of through traffic. Already the city has spent over £IOO,OOO to widen Willis Street, its main shopping centre, but this progress involved the setting back of the frontage line on one side, and was only completed after a dozen years of piecemeal work, many conflicts over property prices, and a constant condition of disturbance as the widening slowly progressed. One wise thing about the planning of the capital city is the provision of a very wide traffic thoroughfare, on level ground taken from reclamations. This scheme is affording a tremendous amount of relief to business streets, especially since the disappearance of a railway which ran down its centre. Perhaps we should not have been given this boon but for that initial stupidity of putting a railway down a city street; but the railway is gone, and motors speed over its track to-day—ominous picture to a railway manager who sees this process on a bigger scale in country areas! Where Wellington scores over Auckland is in the splendid prevision which gives to its citizens access to the whole water-front. We may motor on harbour-frontage roads for over thirty miles around Wellington’s sea front. All Miramar peninsula, Island Bay, Petone, Lowry Bay, Day’s Bay, and Eastbourne are open to the sea-front, and the view cannot be obstructed. Contrast this with Auckland or Dunedin, though they get over it somewhat in the Southern city by climbing hills. Town Planningbut not enough of it! We have had town-planning ideals in practice in the Dominion from the very inauguration of settlement, as witness the splendid town belts of Wellington and Christchurch lungs of the population which, although not fully developed to-day, are serving as purifying areas, and providing the sites for many buildings of public utility. But unfortunately we have not had enough town planning, for the reason that the municipalities have not been able to exercise jurisdiction over outer areas, though these are sure to come within the city limits in due course. And we need education in the finer points of the science. Most of our municipal engineers are wide-awake, and keenly concerned about the general appearance of our cities, but they cannot convince their own people that plans must be made so far ahead. In this sphere, the guidance of an independent, or national authority, is needed. Successive governments have been urged by town planners to engage a good town-planning expert to render assistance to our municipalities, and to arm his department with enough power to insist on sound principles being followed in laying out new areas, both within and without the existing city boundaries. Town planning has appeared on political platforms of both the leading parties, and it has now and again been linked up with housingan important question which the town planners have always placed firstbut the man in the street has not recognised the real, material value of sensible planning. “Sufficient for the auction sale” is the planning ideal, and there is no power to prevent it. So mistakes are made, persisted in because existing statutory provisions are quite inadequate, and public money is being lavished on widening streets, rounding off corners, and providing open spaces which should have been reserved from the beginnings of settlement. If our home-lovers would transfer some of their enthusiasm for beauty to their home-surroundings, we might get the politicians to realise that reform is worth while. Then we will get it.