City Over the Water

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 85, 1 July 1927, Page 8

City Over the Water

Amalgamation in the Air

WHEN the Birkenhead Borough Council, on Wednesday. decided that amalgamation with Northcote Borough is long overdue, it made a definite step towards unification o civic control among the North Shore suburbs. Hitherto a cardinal obstacle has been the reluctance ot each borough to sacrifice its individuality.

VORTHCOTE started the latest movement by circularising its neighbours, Brikenhead, Takapuna and Devonport, to ascertain their views. Takapuna and Devonport have not yet had the opportunity to reply, but Birkenhead has conceded its support. At the same time Birkenhead feels that it is only the amalgamation of Birkenhead and Northcote that should be pursued at present, the time for an alliance with Takapuna and Devonport having not yet arrived. COMMUNITY INTERESTS It «is doubtful If all the four boroughs yet possess a common com-

munity spirit. Devonport and Takapuna, and Northcote and Birkenhead, may possess parallel interests, but between the two sets of suburban twins there is no social or economic link, except that people from Milford, the farthest outpost of Takapuna, frequently make the Northcote ferry their medium of transport to the city. Ultimately all the North Shore will be as one—a populous city guided by

one corporation, and when that happens, when the present population of 23,000 is doubled. D’Urville's chart of 1527 may find fulfilment as a prophecy. The French navigator grouped all the North Shore under the name “Taka Pouni,” and possibly it is by the euphonious Maori title that the tufure city, of the Northern Waitemata will be known. After D’Urville came the Admiralty, with a chart dated IS4O, and the names “Third Point" and “Fourth Point” given to the bold promontories on which Northcote and Birkenhead were founded. NORTHCOTE’S PRIDE It is the former's pride that the first Anglican Church of the North Shore was located there, and that the first ferry, established in open row-boats in 1853, ran to Stokes’s Point. After that various ferry services came and went, ant( Northcote (originally Woodside) endured a whaleboat service until 1563. By that time the shore suburbs had assumed definite popularity. Devonport was made a borough in May, 1886, and Birkenhead in May. 18SS. Northcote did not attain that dignity until 1908, and Takapuna (1913) is the youngest of the four. At first Auckland’s playgrounds— Sulphur Beach, Northcote, was the Milford ot the ’eighties—the Shore suburbs are now a city by themselves, with a population as large as Wanganui’s, and civic services on a corresponding scale. , DEVONPORT THE BIG BROTHER Devonport, in point of valuation and population, is the largest of the quartette, exact figures, quoting population and unimproved value (in brackets) being as follow: Devonport, 9,857 £1,172,607); Takapuna. 6,075 (£1,014,343); Birkenhead, 3.026 (£343,644); Northcote, 2,374 ( £266,542). In area compact Devonport is the smallest (1,100 acres), and Birkenhead (3,070 acres), the most extensive. Before amalgamations could be effected there would need to be adjustments of finance and rating, but none of the obstacles is insuperable. A curious feature of the existing divisions is that between Birkenhead and Northcote, and between Northcote and Takapuna, narrow strips of the Waitemata County run down to the foreshore.