EARLY TOWN-PLANNING

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 227, 19 June 1919, Page 4

EARLY TOWN-PLANNING

SOME. lIOEEID EXAMPLES.

Wadestown possesses streets that obviousiy were laid o'ut by the turveyors without any regard at all ,to the conSguratiou ot' the country. The School Committee has had to. complain that sojue of the children, on their way to sciiooi, are lequired to climb down the face of an almost perpendicular cliff, and many of lliu residents have grievances almost as substantial. Tho blame for the bad ■ lay-out of Wadestown has been placed by a local tradition on the shoulders of-some rule-or-tmimb town-planner, who drew the roads on a map in a London ollico without troubling to discover tho whereabouts of tho hills and valleys. Members ot the Historical Section of tho Philosophical Society state that (hero is no foundation for this story. The land on which Wadestown is laid out was bno of the original country sections of the Wellington settlement. It was seleoted by a fanner named Wade, and he subdivided it without troubling about theories of town-planning. ' _ . A member of the section mentioned, in this connection, that his father bought a AVellington section as shown on. a plan in Edinburgh in the early days of the settlement. Tho plan showed tho section as being lint'ground, but when tho owner arrived he found himself the possessor of a very steep hill-slope 'on tho heights of Brooklyn. A town that actually was laid out on a map in London by men who knew nothing —and apparently cared ncliiing— about the configuration of tho country was New Plymouth, The plan was simply drawn on the Hat, and then applied to the 6ite selected for the town.