AMENITIES NEEDED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20000, 27 July 1939, Page 16

AMENITIES NEEDED

RURAL POPULATION CHECK TO TOWN DRIFT CHALLENGE To COUNTIES PROVISION OF FACILITIES (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. A vision of the future, when rural communities would possess ail the amenities of the cities, was conjured up by Mr. C. J. Talbot. Fa:rlie, when delivering his presidential address at the opening of the biennial conference of the New Zealand Counties' Association, yesterday. The challenge, he said, was to the rural administrators to put their house in order, so that tney could foster and develop their areas and so strengthen their own fieid of administration that they would become for all time a necessary and integral part of the Government of the nation.

“We meet to-day as county cour.cd administrators in the closing year of the first- 100 years of administrative life in New Zealand." said Mr. Talbot. “Our pioneers have left us a tradition and heritage. What shall we leave?” Was the trend to the cities going ultimately to end our rural problem, asked Mr. Talbot. With the younger generation leaving the land and the older generation dying off, would there be no rural population, and would rural administration thereb r cease? Great Hopes for Future “No.” he said. “I have great hopes for the future of our rural areas. Lack of recreational facilities, lack of suhable companionsh.p. lack of further and continual siuay in the form of adult community centres, libraries, drama and other amenities ,in the country areas will all tend to make the towns and cities more attractive than the country. This point I would like very specially to stress, oecause I believe that in future our county councils can do much to slop this very undesirable drift, to the urban centres.” In his opening address, the Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. W. E. Parry, said there was a growing recognition to-day that some control over our physical surrounding.' as they affected our places of work, residence and play, was highly desirable. Even in New Zealand, with its relatively short history, there was not wanting evidence of conditions which could only be dscribed as highly unsatisfactory, and those unsatisfactory canPf;ons had emerged solely because they had not exercised the foresight which as a nation they must do Control Imperative “The fact that some control over the building and general physical development in towns is not only desirable but imperative, has been recognised for many decades,” said Mr. Parry. “There has not been the same necessity in the rural areas to exercise similar control, because, in general, die density of population has been very much smaller. With the growth of rapid transit, however, many of ouT country areas are, in effect, suburban h) the urban areas. This development must and should continue and, with *he growth of rapid transit, the problem will doubtless becom' -1 more acute. T t mud be obvious that if this residential development is to take place ; n the counties, then the counties, as + he territorial governing authorities, must have some power io control that development in the interests of the community as a whole.”