TOWN PLANNING.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 May 1919, Page 5

TOWN PLANNING.

THE HOUSING -PROBLEM.

A PROPOSED BILL. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Wellington, May 23. The committee of the Town Planning Conference set up to consider the Town Planning Bill made, amongst others, the following suggestions, which were adopted by the conference:—That the principles of town planning be applied to New Zealand and that town planning schemes be prepared without delay; that a Town Planning and Hourrag;Act is necessary; that a department be established and an expert town planner be appointed to have supervision of town planning schemes. The housing problem formed the subject of a paper prepared by Mr. F. W. Rowley, superintendent of workers' dwellings. The paper dealt more particularly with the erection of houses for workers. It was stated that, now the workers' dwelling system had passed the experimental stage, it must be developed on a much larger sriß Knmp tio-->"--f of rural dwellings had done exceedingly well out of their land. To make a scheme of erecting workers' dwellings really successful it must be made possible to erect them in wholesale fashion, thereby reducing the initial cost materially.

In this connection the paper mentioned the great advantage from all points of view of building a new village or suburb close to the railway line, but outside any existing borough, and on what was at the time of erecting the village merely farming land. In a settlement of that sort all the town planners' ideals could be incorporated. During the discussion on the paper Mr. J. Campbell, Government architect, said the day of the entirely wooden house was passing. To reduce the cost of building the size of sections could be reduced with advantage, while the building by-laws should be remodelled to enable new materials to do used. Mr. Howard (Ohristchurch) said a housing scheme was an immediate necessity. There was need for 10,000 new houses. The Government should allocate £3,000,000 free of interest to start the movement.