REGIONAL TOWN PLANNING

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 897, 14 February 1930, Page 8

REGIONAL TOWN PLANNING

COUNTRY was ranged against town with unfortunate results in last evening’s discussion of the proposal to unite rural and urban local bodies from Rodney County, in the north, to Franklin County, iri the south, in a regional town-planning scheme. The principal purpose of the scheme was to provide all of the local bodies concerned with the consultative benefits conferred by association with the expert services of the Director of Town Planning and his assistants. Unfortunately, the country delegates chose to regard the proposal as something that might infringe on their freedom of action and commit them to heavier expenditure than they felt they could afford. Though this is a misconception that a little study of the ideals of the movement might remove, it has had the effect of checking progress. Nearly all the country delegates opposed the proposal with their votes, and in consequence the vision of steady co-operation in the wide and important area affected must lapse, and the old, haphazard order of things prevail. Instead of imposing on any particular local body a burden of increased expenditure, a sound town-planning scheme may actually promote economy. Some of the country delegates to last evening’s conference were perhaps misled by confusion in their own minds abouj; the true meaning of the term. There is an impression that the sole object of a town-planning scheme is to adorn, and that after creating artistic street-corner effects, or arranging a harmonious grouping of city frontages, or doing some other work of an aesthetic character, its influence ceases. Actually, the ideals of town planning serve utility as well as beauty. The science of town planning should interest the hardheaded business man and farmer as much as it interests the artist and the architect. How many thousands of pounds would present and future generations have been saved had early Auckland been embraced by a regional town-planning scheme directed by a farseeing expert? The figure would be stupendous. Local bodies of today have a duty to the future, as well as to the present, and a penny wise and pound foolish policy of resisting progressive ideals may simply retard development. Mr. C. F. Gardner, Mayor of New Lynn, proposed at the conference that any local body should have the right to withhold itself from inclusion in the proposed regional scheme. Thus a district like New Lynn might, through the perversity of its administrators, impede some proposition planned to benefit not only its own people, but also thousands in neighbouring territories. The truth is that the country delegates seem to have been frightened by a fallacy. The country will have to be taught what most enlightened urban communities have already learned, that town planning on sound lines is not a luxury, but a necessity; not an idle affection, but a duty and an obligation, to be accepted both by growing cities and by business centres, where the store, post office, petrol station and dairy factory ply their trade at rural crossroads.