Our Town Planning Opportunity

Progress, Volume X, Issue 6, 1 February 1915, Page 197

Our Town Planning Opportunity

By CHAS. E. WHEELER

What Should be Done in New Zealand

Town planning must be kept in the public mind even during these stirring times of national stress, otherwise public opinion can not be educated to that happy pitch which will not tolerate the monotonous

expensive, repellant system of covering our suburbs favoured by the speculative builder and land syndicate. This is the time to take stock of the position and prepare for the renewed activity of suburban settlement following the war. Mistakes of the past are obvious all around us, and these are expensive to rectify, but New Zealand is only carrying onetwentieth of its future population, and this genera-

The present time affords a particularly suitable opportunity of dealing with Town Planning legislation for the Dominion. Without the backing of statutes, local authorities can do little to ensure that future suburban extension will be on sane, sound lines. Politicians will welcome this non-party subject.

tion by wise forethought in town planning legislation and the encouragement of the beautiful in home building has its opportunity of earning from posterity the blessings we bestow to-day upon such

far-sighted pioneers as those of Canterbury, who so effectively provided for the education of generations then unborn.

The visit of the Town Planning experts, Messrs. W. R. Davidge (of the London County Council) and Mr. Charles C. Reade, a former New Zealand journalist now prominently associated with Town Planning, stimulated public thought and focussed up the forces in the Dominion favourable to the great movement. They have described in flattering terms New

Zealanders' enthusiasm for Town Planning, and in a letter to "the Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine," Mr. Davidge provides English supporters of town planning reform with a glimpse of colonial conditions well worth our attention as the opinion of a cultivated and frank outsider: Writing about the interest taken in the Town Planning lectures Mr. Davidge says:

“We have had packed halls everywhere, not only in the large towns, but particularly in the smaller places, which are just beginning to feel the possibilities of township. For instance in New Plymouth —a seaside place with a population of about 12,000 there was an audience of over 1,200 people, all as keen as anything to hear what is being done in the old country to improve things. The views of Hampstead and Letchworth always take the public fancy. At Wanganui, situated by the side of a river, there are entirely different problems, and each place has to be treated in a special way. ”

Problems of the Cities.

Our visitor provides us with a brief picture of two New Zealand cities as he sees them with the eye of a town planner: “Wellington,” he says, “is a most interesting city, situated in a basin of hills; there are some tremendous gradients on the roads, and the problem of hillside development is not an easy one. Years ago they started with the idea of

laying out a rectangular framework of streets over the whole hillside, but the stern realities of the steep hillsides have brought about a picturesque winding road, and although it has by law to be sixty-five feet between the fences, the road itself is in most cases reduced by stress of circumstances to twenty feet

“Christchurch, again, is situated in a plain as flat as a billiard table, but already the tOAvn is beginning to ascend the lower slopes of the Port Hills, which separate the tOAvn from the port of Lyttelton.

The development of some of these towns is really remarkable, and they are free from many of the irksome restrictions which limit our own towns. Lyttelton, for instance, has recently purchased some hundreds of acres of land across the harbour, which the town proposes to develop partly as a park and the remainder as a suburb on garden city lines. The majority of the Councils have a perfectly free hand to purchase land or expend money in any reasonable way, the only check being the necessity of obtaining the approval of the ratepayers to any loan expenditure. Finally, Mr. Davidge states that there is a very strong desire that the effect of the lectures should

not be lost, and local associations are uniting to consider the whole question of town planning. In the larger centres Town Planning Associations are being formed to carry out the work, and some of the smaller places, such as Wanganui, propose getting in touch with the home association with a view to obtaining a special set of slides with the aid of which they can carry on the work in their vicinity. The Opportunity of To-day. How is New Zealand carrying on the good work so well outlined for us by our capable visitors ? We have to make allowances for the distractions due to the war, but we must not lose what is really an exceptional opportunity of laying a good legislative groundwork for town planning. Politics of a party

character are so hopelessly confused at the moment that both sides should welcome such a thoroughly non-party subject as Town Planning for parliamentary attention. “Progress” readers have noted by what has appeared in our columns that town planning idealists are active in several New Zealand centres, and that useful work is being done. The field is vast, not only in regard to the virgin ground of future suburban extension, but that of correcting mistakes of the past.

Some of Our Mistakes. Auckland Kipling’s “Last, loneliest loneliest, exquisite apart”—has grown like a mushroom, and has grown rank. Here the town planning idealist

finds much to regret, and fortunately a good deal to admire. The thoughtful and far-seeing generosity of Mr. Arthur M. Myers in presenting to the city a valuable area now covered with slum property will enable a beauty-spot to grow out of an old sore. Our illustration of Marion street, which branches directly off Auckland’s principal business thoroughfare, Queen street, shows the class of untidy haphazard erection in the area soon to become a delightful park. This is an old part of the city, and allowance has to be made for that, but the settlement of the Jervois Estate in Ponsonby within recent years, on the dull drab rectangular lines of the drill-yard , is a thing to mourn over. Let the reader examine the illustration, note the rows of close-packed dwellings of uninspiring type, giving joy only to the

lucky speculators who sold this vast draught-hoard at high prices per foot. A few trees in the street take off the severity of angularity here and there, but of shady avenues there is no suggestion except, by way of strange irony, in one of the street names. Yet the Jervois Estate has a fine inland aspect, and was quite capable of artistic lay-out by trained men; and had there been town planning legislation on English lines, the settlement would have been more economical. Streets have had to be macadamized a full chain width, though they are not arterial roads. _ Thousands of pounds have been spent on expensive road-making which could have been saved if the syndicate could have legally provided a central

macadamized track for wheeled vehicles, and filled the remaining sixty feet of road-space with grass, and tree-shaded paths. Wellington’s hills have provided a problem for the house-builder, who has often short-sightedly solved it by squeezing dwellings into odd corners facing the narrowest of streets. Mr. Charles C. Reade, whose photos of typical Wellington houses of this type we reproduce, roused public opinion upon the matter by a couple of admirable illustrated lectures. The City Council felt the responsibility of the position, and its engineer prepared a scheme for the improvement of Haining street, the most congested quarter, but the public anxiety having been eased by this concession, the

matter has been allowed to subside in favour of other things which have been more actively “pushed.” One turns with pleasure from Haining street to a backyard view of a Letchworth garden suburb house (see page 200) though it must be admitted that the type of house illustrated is beyond the scope of the Haining street dweller. The Labour Department is providing cheap homes for the people who can afford to buy on the easy-payment system, but no public body in New Zealand has yet brought into being a system under which the worker may rent a decent house in a tidy locality at reasonable cost. What is provided, too, is not architecturally beautiful, though the State ought to realize its responsi-

bility as a leader in these things, and pioneer the way to better-looking dwellings than the verandahed bacon-boxes considered “just the thing” for the manual worker. If it is said that space and cost are elements of difficulty, let us turn to English experience. In a country possessing one-twentieth of its potential population, the land difficulty ought not to exist, but as it does, the New Zealand planner has to meet the problem. Our illustration of Axman’s Hill, Hampstead, shows a typical street in this garden suburb on the outskirts of North-West London. Over 7,500 people reside here where in 1906 the land was unbuilt on. The suburb was laid out by Raymond Unwin F.R.1.8.A., (architect of Letchworth Garden City). The principal part of the

houses were built by the co-partnership tenants and let at rents ranging from 7/9 per week upwards. Another example of cheap housing without its inevitable New Zealand accompaniment of dull tawdiness is to be found in the thoroughly familiar Bournville settlement just outside Birmingham. Factory workers in this great midland city are housed under most squalid conditions, yet within a few miles of them are more fortunate employees paying less rent for delightful conditions. The illustration

of a typical Bournville cottage shows what can be done under enlightened control for 4s. 6d. per week. There are two bedrooms, a large living-room, kitchen, scullery, bathroom and the usual out-houses The rent of every house includes allowances for depreciation and repairs, and the cheapest cottages return 4 per cent, upon capital. The Government of New Zealand had an excellent opportunity of putting town planning ideals into practice when it laid out the new township of Pipiroa, on Hauraki Plains seven miles from the mining town of Thames, but the chance was missed. Natural features which might enhance the beauty of the future houses of the people were entirely disregarded in its draught-board arrangement. '.- The

Piako River could have been turned to good account but the frontage to it is limited to the strict needs of prospective business. What calls for hearty commendation, however, is the liberal way in which reserves have been made for the future community. The centre of the town is taken up with a recreation reserve of eight acres, and a roomy school site, while excellent corner positions in the town sub-division have been set apart for future municipal and other public purposes.