Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1939. PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1939. PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT.

“THE biggest, and most difficult problem before municipalities 1 today/’ the president of the Town Planning Institute of New Zealand (Mr M. G. C. MeGaul) observed in an address at the annual meeting of that organisation this week, “is the replanning of existing towns to cope with conditionsnot visualised previously.” The greatest difficulty of all in ay >c to secure the consideration and treatment of this problem on its merits, with .freedom from the intervention of sectional and vested interests and other influences of a belittling kind.

In his address, .Mr McCanl had something to say about, the importance and value of zoning, as a means of ensuring methodical, stable and economical development. His observations on this subject were timely and to the point. A great many New Zealand towns —probably most, of them—are paying a’heavy price today for their neglect of zoning, which is simply an orderly utilisation, development and use of municipal or other areas.

It needs to be recognised also, however, that every consideration that justifies and demands the application of zoning (o existing towns and cities provides even weightier arguments in favour of comprehensive regional planning. As Mr MeC<inl pointed out, the improvement of existing towns and cities resolves itself inevitably into a somewhat gradual process. In regional planning, however, we are offered a means of avoiding the errors of haphazard and ill-guided development of which so many examples are now apparent in urban and other areas. If we must be content to remedy gradually the mistakes due. to lack of foresight in the past, there is the more reason why we should make every endeavour to avoid a repetition of similar mistakes, and should aim at planning, not our towns and cities only, but our country, with an. eye to the future.

An enterprising adoption and application of regional planning should the more readily commend itself at this time to the practical attention of New Zealanders since the Dominion plainly has reached a stage at which it must build up its productive activities boldly or incur somewhat serious economic and other penalties for failing to do so. 'Phis country would have poor prospects of being able to deal effectively with its debt and other burdens if it were not in a position considerably to extend the range and scale of its productive industries. Our primary industries are and will continue to be immensely important, but. they need to be supplemented by the widest practicable and desirable expansion of manufacturing industries.

We are told at times that on account of our limited population, we cannot develop manufacturing industries. If Britain, in her day, had been willing and able to listen to similar fainthearted counsel, she might now be carrying about a tenth ol her present, population. It is established plainly enough that in the life of any nation the growth of manufacturing industries and the growth of population go hand in hand. The fad that many nations have advanced along that path of development certainly does not mean that New Zealand should accept a dwarfed and stunted development as her appointed national lot.

Tt is probably not an exaggeration to say that for New Zealand an enterprising extension of the scale and range ol its industries is the alternative to conditions approximating to national bankruptcy. At the same time, if industrial expansion is to proceed with good promise and with the greatest possible prospect, of advantage it must be based upon comprehensive regional planning —that is to say, upon a genuinely economical utilisation of basic national resources.

Something should be heard on this subject from bodies like the Town Planning Institute in rather bolder terms than those used by Mi’ McCaul in his presidential address. It is a vital condition of continuing national welfare that industries, as they develop and extend, should be located in those areas in which, from the broadest point ol view, they may be carried on most, efficiently and with maximum advantage to those engaged in them and to the community.

Amongst other things there is great need of a methodical study in this country, in light of what is being done in countries' of advanced industrial development, of the question of the decentralisation of industry. It. counts, or should count for a good deal in this matter that New Zealand has at command a. flexible power supply, distributed already from end to end of its area and capable of being expanded as occasion may demand. On the other hand, good reasons appear for setting limits to much of our industrial development where it has already taken shape, particularly in areas of congestion like Wellington City and the Hutt Valley.

The best national service the Town Planning Institute can render at the present stage and as lime goes on is to marshal opinion in support of the policy of dealing on their merits with all aspects of town and regional planning, and not least with the question of industrial decentralisation. In the recent location of some new industrial establishments there has been a complete neglect of wise planning, and therefore of national interest, that would be ludicrous if it were not tragic. There is splendid scope for enterprise by the Town Planning Institute in helping to lay the foundations of a more enlightened and more provident policy.