COUNTER TO URBAN DRIFT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 23, 27 July 1939, Page 8

COUNTER TO URBAN DRIFT

It is generally recognised by the sociologist that the drift of rural population to the town —the so-called urban drift—is not in the best interests of any nation, and in many countries efforts have been made to check the process. In New Zealand the drift which has been noticed for a good many years past seems lately to have accelerated. The farmer and the rural resident generally, by their habit of depreciating the conditions in the country by contrast with those of the town, must take their share of responsibility for the movement, or, at any rate, for not doing enough to promote counter-attractions in rural centres as a means of keeping the younger generation in touch with the land. A better way is that suggested by Mr. C. J. Talbot, president of the New Zealand Counties' Association, in his address to the biennial conference of the association in Wellington yesterday. Mr. Talbot held that the present position was a challenge to rural administrators to put their houses in order so that they could develop and foster their areas. Lack of recreational facilities, lack of suitable companionship, lack of further and continual study in the form of adult community centres, libraries, drama, and other amenities in country areas, he

said, would all tend to make the toAvns and cities more attractive than the country. Modern transport was completing the process, so that the rural community, especially the younger people, had turned their faces to the town. "Let us make this transport our friend," said Mr. Talbot. "Let it make the rural region compact and accessible from all points and weld it into a social unity."

Though in many respects the rural region has gained attractions and amenities in the last decade or so, such as motor transport, the radio, and electricity in the home, there seems to have been a more than counterbalancing loss in the decline of social unity. A generation or more ago in the days of horse transport the country districts were left far moie to their own resources for amusement and recreation, and they itnade the most of them, and estab-lished-a '"social unity," a rural solidarity which has largely been broken up by the easy means of modern transport lo more populous centres. Mr. Talbot would revive or re-create the smaller rural centre with the county council as the motive force— "a greatly strengthened unit of the local government of the nation," as he put it. Such a body he sees as "planning 'Greenfield' townships, where the rural population would be housed in modern homes, under the county housing schemes, with pure water supplies, underground sewerage, electricity, community halls, free libraries," and other amenities. "Let there be a cultural centre ,for the rural area" is the way he puts1 it. The picture, of course, represents an ideal, but where a community is alive to its opportunities, much can be done to achieve it, as was done in the rural township of Oxford, in the Canterbury Province, in the post-War years. Rural organisations of all kinds, such as the Women's Division of the Farmers' Union and the Young Farmers' Clubs, could be enlisted in a co-operative movement with this object. The Country Library system could be included in a plan which would greatly enhance the attractions of rural life in New Zealand.