TOWN PLANNING.

Wairarapa Age, 15 February 1927, Page 5

TOWN PLANNING.

(To the Editor). Sir, —As a member of a profession that is intimately concerned with the planning and layout of towns, and as one who has devoted considerable time and thought to the subject of town planning, may I congratulate you on yc.ur leader in your last Saturday’s issue on the above subject. I venture to assert that had the Director of Town Planning made such a reply to the Municipal Conference the remit you so rightly condemn would never have been passed. There is no doubt that, if the Government agrees to permit the 4 partial’ planning of towns as proposed by the Great Fire been adhered to, Lonpose and object of the Act will be defeated. To avoid the blunders of the happy-go-lucky methods of the past, and future costly resumptions of land for purposes of streets and open spaces —of which, Masterton, still an infant as towns go, has already had experience—a development plan covering the 4 whole’ of the particular urban area to be dealt with and the immediate surrounding rural area intimately concerned should he prepared, and all future roading, subdivision, and building should conform to this plan. Town planning methods as wo know them to-day are not new, as popularly supposed, bift have been developing since the Renaissance. For example, had Sir Christopher Wren’s plan for the reconstruction of London after the Great Fire had been adhered to, London to-day would have been one, of the best planned cities in the world, and her streets would have been ideal thoroughfares and lines of communication jfor her present stupendous motor traffic. /

Coming nearer home, had a well considered plan for Masterton been prepared sixty years or so ago, we should not, for instance, have had one of our arterial streets under 50ft. wide; tho Borough Council would not be exercised as how effectively to control traffic at the busy main cross streets; a Civic Centre would exist in which the Municipal Buildings—the centre around which town life revolves l —would be placed as an architectural adornment, instead of being out of the way in a back street; and wo should not have a shopping and business centre (sic) a mile long by a chain wide. In mentioning the above I have only touched the drawbacks and disadvantages from which we, as a community, suffer as a result of our haphazard and uncontrolled expansion. It is safe to say that had Masterton, from its beginnings, been developed on sound town planning lines, the ratepayers would have been saved tens of thousands of pounds, and tho town today would have been a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

The object of the Town Planning Act is to avoid perpetuating the mistakes of the past, and, as you suggest, in ■order to overcome public mental inertia and ignorance on the subject, the Government would bo well advised to broadcast information by all available means to show that the operation of the Act will make for the general well being of those who dwell in towns. — I am, etc., A. W. REYNOLDS.