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REACHING OUT

WHERE WELLINGTON'S FUTURE

GROWTH LIES

POLICY OF LOOKING AHEAD

(By Civiccs.)

We can hardly blame the founders of Wellington for the width, or perhaps one should say the narrowness, of Willis Street, Manners Street, and Cuba Street, for when Wellington was originally planned in the year 1539 by the New Zealand Land Company wide thoroughfares were not fashionable, even in London—the nation' 6 Homo townarid the people had not been educated up to the fullest realisation of the virtues of.sunshine and big air spaces in the cities as too first adjunct to health, as we are to-day. London is still interlaced with narrow, shockingly narrow, streets, which were all very well when used for dealer's barrows uud my lady's chair, but which are a hindrance to traffic as it exists, to-day, just as are the narrow confines of ''little" Collins, Bourke. Swanston Streets, and Flinders Laue in Molbourne, many tortuous ways in Sydney, and our own inadequate street system. It is all very well to say now that our fathers' fathers might have looked : ahead a bit for our convenience, pleasure, and profit, but 75 years is a long range for eyes that were used to regard London as the beau ideal of all cities in the universe—too long a range for even the far-sighted members of the New Zealand' Land Company, who did believe that the day would come when New Zealand would be ■ a bright and prosperous country. But how could those good old wise-heads foresee the coming of the steamships, the revolutionising refrigerating process that has made New Zealand the finest food-producer for her size in the world? Such miraculous prescience was not theirs, so they built them streets well calculated to do all the service that would bo required ill their days and probably their children's, and accounted themselves well-doers m having made such provision. Posterity has to pay the price for progress. That is .why we of to;day_ in Wellington are paying for the widening of Willis Street, the prospective widening of a 'portion of Manners Street (wliich should be the whole), and are contemplating widening Mercer Street. On inquiry people will realise that we of to-day have nothing to brag about in respect to our municipal eyesight. It is only a few years ago that the City was offered the whole of tho Miramar flat for a song, but the powers that were were not in good_ voice, and instead of the City acquiring a magnificent area of land that is still a separate borough, out of which many fortunes have been made, the greatest bargain ever offered a city was lost for ever. It was as inevitable then as it is now that one day the Miramar Estate would bccome part of the city. Had it been acquired this process would probably have taken, place there and then, and the chance would have been , afforded of laying out, a model city within a city. The whole area : would have been steadily developed as. one cohesive scheme dependent only on- the. best ideas'- available at the time.. The Miramar case is only quoted as evidence to show that the foresight that we are for ever prating about is perhaps more lacking today than it was with the pioneers of '40. The span-method of tramway wire suspension was known of and iiv use in many parts of the world when our tramway system was laid down, yet in all save the ,narrowest streets a iine of cast-iron poles was erected to bear the wires and interfere with the traffic. La3t year it was decided to remove the poles wherever feasible and resort to the span method of wire suspension. One may assume at this stage that the poles were specified as something good for trade. Many thousands of pounds would have been saved the city by not being so considerate to the makors of tramway material in the Old Country. Even now we attach our wires to poles along the sides of closely-built-upon thoroughfares, which is quite superfluous. In Sydney the span wires are bolted tin to private buildings under an arrangement with the owners. It does no harm to the building, and saves a vast expenditure in poles.

: It is gratifying to see that in many respects the city authorities are looking aHead; and on the eve of' a general election of so many local authorities— tho Mayor, City Council, Harbour Boar (I,' and Hospital and Charitable Aid Board—it will not be considered injudicious to point out to candidates the advisability of looking farther ahead than their noses. There is evidence of a larger outlook in the dcoision of the council to go steadily forward with the big scheme to tap the waters of the Orongorongo River for the replenishing of the Wainui basins, and our City Engineer '(who lias a habit of peeping over .the horizon' of the years) has exhibited wisdom in submitting his proposal to provide . for the accommodation and repairing .of the tramcars for a couple of decades to come by securing four acres for sheds at Kilbirnie whilst the price of tho land is reasonable. Ho rightly judges that Wellington has few outlets for expansion when it takes its next jump forward. Some people are of opinion that it was just laying back for "a spring when the war broke out, and even now thero is a lively demand for house room that cannot be supplied. One avenue' of expansion must be Lyall Bay' and Miramar, and in pitching his site for his big tramways "repairs shop on the flat at South Kilbirnie Mr. Morton calculates that he will not be so far from the residential centre of the city twenty years hence. On the other side Karori opens up a field for speculation. This field was opened up some years ago, and many are still scraping off the. mud of the bog they got into, but the' jump must come again one day, and Western 'Kelburn and Karori wjth improved means of access will participate m the growth to be. Modern engineering can do much to overcome natural obstacles, and there may even be the_ embryonic form of a scheme that will give smarter access to Karori under consideration at the present time. Though nothing further can bo stated at the present time about the proposal, it can at least be said' that in taking a glance into the future Karori and its possibilities as ah area for a big residential district is not being overlooked.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19150406.2.66

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2428, 6 April 1915, Page 6

Word count
Tapeke kupu
1,090

REACHING OUT Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2428, 6 April 1915, Page 6

REACHING OUT Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2428, 6 April 1915, Page 6

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