BUILDING A BETTER BRITAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 443, 19 December 1947, Page 6

BUILDING A BETTER BRITAIN

The Aims of Her Town Planners, Explained by One of Them

F you are a citizen of Wellington or Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin, you do not have to be told about some of the inconveniences of city life. You may be proud of your town and jealous for its history and character, but the tiring daily journey into the centre of the city by road or rail shows too clearly the muddled, inefficient way in which too many of us live amidst a jumble of shops, houses, factories and public buildings. London, and indeed England generally, has lately tackled this problem boldly, from the social, economic, and industrial planning angles. In spite of post-war difficulties, England has already made considerable headway, and if New Zealand takes heed of what a British Town and Country Planning expert has to say, it, too, may be able to profit from the mistakes of the past which are common to both countries. The Listener interviewed the other day Clough Williams-Ellis, an architect and town-planner, past president of the Design and Industry Association, chairman of the Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales, an active member of a great many other bodies concerned with town and countryside amenities, and the author of many books on such subjects. "First of all," asked The Listener, "what is your mission here?" Here For Fun "I'm bound to admit," he said, "that I am here very largely for fun. After all, the best fun in the world is to see new things and meet new people, I’m an inquisitive sort of person and I like to know the how and the why of things." "Any other reason for visiting New Zealand?" "Oh yes .... . @ most itportant reason. We have a daughter and a son-in-law at the Animal Research Station at Ruakura, near Hamilton, and they have just presented New Zealand with twins-a boy and girl. "Our son-in-law is a New Zealander «Lindsay Wallace-who, early in the

war, gave up his Pi! | on biology and joined the New Zealand Navy under the ‘B’ scheme. The authorities, however, soon sent him back to his proper job as a biologist. He and our daughter found themselves as colleagues, working at the same lab-bench at Cambridgethat’s how they met-and now, here they are, and here are we to visit them and our New Zealand grandchildren." "Had you known any other New Zealanders before coming here on this, your first trip?" "Yes; Anthony Wilding, your great tennis-player. We were friends at Trinity, Cambridge, over forty years ago. But most of my contacts in New Zealand have something to do with town and country planning, and I am meeting as many of your architects as I can. Today I was taken by the Mayor of Wellington to see what the city is doing about planning-an impressive begin-ning-and I hope to tour most of New Zealand before I return home to tell the English town-planners what I have seen and what you are up to." What a Site! "Do you realise that we have our own special problems and that we have only one and a-half millions of people in a country the size of Britain, that has nearly fifty millions?" "Indeed I do; and some of us think it might be easier for England if she had fewer people to look after. I was tackled by a Press reporter just as I was sailing here from Sydney. He wanted my final impressions. I said, ‘By God, what.a site, by man, what a mess!’ I wonder what he made of that!" "Would you say the same of Wellington?" : "No; Wellington hasn’t gone too far yet. I see there a place not yet ruined, and God send that it-won’t be. It has still its chance of splendour, if it will take it." "You’ve seen something of the city?" "Only in two days so far. I am frightened to learn that your hills are

not as completely sacrosanct as I believe, and as surely they should be, I gather that there is perpetual pressure to encroach on the heights for building. In London-on paper-we have established our green belt and we hope it will be kept in fact and in perpetuity. But we have watchfully to resist constantly attempted nibblings here and there for housing sites."

"We still have some good bush over the harbour in Wellington." "Yes, and in that you are better off than a good many places which seem to have squandered their birthright for a mess of cottages." "You know about the Hutt Valley population?" "I am told that there are about 15,000 commuters to and from the city daily:Commuter, one who spends his life In riding to and from his wife; Who shaves himself and takes the train And travels back to shave again. — "In England, you know, we have a lot of bypass roads. But we were getting to the stage of actually having to bypass our bypasses:- . , They threw out a grand new bypass When the first was a chockfull street; The glorious day isn’t far away When London and Liverpool meet. And nothing remains of England Where the country used to be; But a road run straight through a building estate And a single specimen tree. "Town planning should be based on a civic diagnosis-as- your Wellington planners are well aware. We have everything to do with a town graphically depicted on maps, showing density of population, where the people work, where accidents happen, income levels, vital and other relevant statistics. No responsible town-planner will prescribe (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) treatment for a town in need of a new deal until he knows all about his patient, any more thania doctor would." Limiting the Spread "Have you anything more to say about Wellington?" "Well; having thankeq God for your hills, you should surely set a limit to your spread.‘ In fact, you should-and probably have-a statutory limit to the growth of your city, otherwise you will strangle yourselves as London did. London is now being gradually disentangled -a slow and terribly costly process." "Can you tell us anything about Stevenage, near London, which was chosen to be a planned town?" "As the first chairman of this first New Town Development Corporation, I can say that the idea is to decentralize industry and get the population away from London-in this instance to a 60,000 population town, estimated to take 15 years to build at a cost of around £30,000,000. The Act, however, gave people on the proposed site the right to object if they wished, and naturally some of them did. However, the housing of 50,000 people could not be held up for perhaps some 50 who did not care for the idea, and the scheme is of course now going forward, a great co-operative effort, though delayed by our general present difficulties in England." Z "Stevenage, Crawley Three Bridges, Harlow, and Hemel Hempstead are London’s first four new towns to -which people in the overcrowded capital are looking for new opportunities, for happier, healthier living than they ever enjoyed before." | » "How is planning going in general?" "Priority has now been given to the housing of agricultural workers so that we can get food to keep us alive. Then miners have to produce coal for exports to bring in the further food we needagain just to live at all-and they must be properly housed too. And until all these basic difficulties about keeping alive right themselves, we cannot turn our eyes very much to more gracious ways of living." "Does the scheme apply to the whole of England?" Consolation-Not Compensation "Almost every town and city has a programme worked out, but such must be kept elastic. The new Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, makes it possible for the general country-wide scheme to be implemented. The Government has set aside £300,000,000 sterling to buy out building development rights, as compensation for taking over this necessary control itself. But personally I don’t much like the word ‘compensation’ in this connection. I prefer ‘consolation’ as being truer. But any real planning would have been impossible without some such enactment." "How did you get a Government bold enough to do this sort of thing?" "For a generation we have had people working. away at these things and hotgospelling. Architects and planners and others have spent a lot of time speaking, writing, and playing the busybody gadfly; getting hold of public bodies and Government departments, pleading and pressing for an adequate set-up-for better, more farsighted management of our national estate in the interests of us all. It all really began with Robert Owen and came down through Ruskin and

William Morris to Patrick Geddes, Ebenezer Howard and such, and to Sir Patrick Abercrombie, who founded. the Council for the Preservation of Rural England. and prepared the great plans for London and many other cities. Suddenly the walls of Jericho seemed to fall and we. found ourselves not merely allowed, but actively encouraged to do most of the things we had pleaded for for so long." "So the Government is now pledged to planning?" "Yes, and our planning Minister is a tireless and determined man, as is Aneurin Bevan, our Minister of Health, who is responsible for all actual state housing. He started life as a miner." Conflict of Claims "We can’t help wondering what will happen in England with all the conflicting claims for housing, agriculture, industry, defence, and so on. How* do you reconcile the different interests?" All interests concerned must work together. We are 47,000,000 people and it is realised everywhere, I think, that it is now a choice between hopeless chaos and a properly thought-out and co-ordinated plan, for we have already painfully learned that to go-as-you-please is not to arrive at. what is pleasant. We now aim to keep both town and country really distinct, each with its own special characteristics. Our proposed new national parks-a dozen of them-have ‘been selected for their high scenic value. But agriculture will be kept very fully alive within their wide boundaries be‘cause otherwise the country would become overgrown and indeed lose half its ‘beauty which in Britain is so largely man-made." "How do you deal with individuals in the matter of taste in housing and other buildings?" "Well, there are the Regional and -County planning officers. Every single building-even if it be no more than an addition to a garage-is discussed at a monthly meeting of the planning committee which, on its planning officers’ advice, decides to accept, to reject or to defer. The grounds for rejection or deferment may be that the proposed building will look wrong in materials, colour or design." "Do you go so far as to tell a man that he can’t do this or that because it’s in bad taste?" "In a way--indirectly-yes. He is ‘guided,’ and of course helped by being given other and better ideas to consider. It needs some.tact, but these better ideas are becoming more and more readily accepted-partly because of the Government’s own good example in housing-as with you. You can do a good deal in educating the elders through the young. My last book is called The Adventures of BuildingBeing Something About Architecture and Building, for intelligent young citizens and their backward elders. I faced this question of taste right away. As a rule you find that the people who care most about anything also know most about it. That certainly goes for architecture." His Own Fault "Speaking about New Zealand, it might be said that, in the last generation, architecture as an art has come into its own, Yet we still hear the cry, ‘I want a practical man.’ Houses are generally built without amy reference to an architect at all. What have you to say to that?" "That is partly the architect’s own fault. First of all, of course, he must

be practical. But then he often does not. take the prominent place he surely’ should as a leading citizen on whom so much depends. An artist must have an audience and unless the people know enough to demand good architects, why, they will never get it?" "You have made practical experiments yourself in planning?" "Oh, yes; I not only preach townplenning, but I have built my own little model township in North- Wales, Portmerion — a small seagirt resort that seems to be known to quite a few New Zealanders. It has been my special sparetime toy." : "Our Hutt Valley is the only fertile land within 50 miles. or so of Wellington. Now it has been built over. How

far would you go with the individual in a case like that--in control, we mean?" "T can remember in England thousands of precious acres of market gardens and orchards that are now all houses and roads. But the aim of modern planning is to ensure the best possible use of‘ the land, not of course for the sake of the land itself, but of those who live on and by it-which is all of us. Now, in Britain, except under very special and exceptional circumstances, really good food-growing land can never be taken for building." "Here, of course, housing is more important at the moment than market gardens." "Maybe, but would it not be wiserin the long run-rather.to spend more money on building on the perhaps more difficult but less fertile sites? You, in Wellington, and other New Zealand cities and towns, will need to set a definite and final limit to your growth. In Australia I found that people had never heard of what we in England mean by ‘allotments.’ That word to them means house-building sites. To us they are largeish, urban areas set aside for vegetable growing. Almost. every town has them and though each house may have its own individual garden, those householders who are keen cultivators can get extra land close by on the allotments if they want to within a few

minutes of their homes. The only drawback is that they are apt to put up rather dismal-looking little shacks for tool-sheds.. Sweden is much tidier. Cultivators there have charming neat little white-painted wooden pavilions with lockers for tools and even furniture for tea-parties." Scandinavian Tidiness "How is it that Scandinavian countries are so much tidier than ours are?" "Well, Stockholm is fortunate in having a brilliant landscape architect and the result is that the public gardens and parks are unbelievably beautiful. You can walk all over the place on paths through parks and belts of green. Even the tramway junctions are bubbling over with flowers. There are no fences and,

moreover, no litter; no trees are broken end no flowers stolen. ‘How come?’ I asked him when I was there last summer. And he replied, ‘Well, of course we teach the children in our schools to respect natural beauty and also common property.’ Whatever the teaching, the result in actual practice is certainly wonderful-and most refreshing." "What do you do about hoardings in Britain?" = : "We have long had a society (the Society for the Control of Publicity and Advertising-SCAPA) contending with that matter, but until recently hoardings were only more or less inadequately controlled through agitation promoted by it and by people like myself. Now, I am happy to say, that though advertising can still be done within’ reason on actual business premises, commercial advertising in the countryside is no longer to be allowed." Later in the day a member of The Listener staff guided Mr. and Mrs. Wil-liams-Ellis to a photographer’s studio, On the way Mrs. Williams-Ellis handed her husband a small gift. He stopped:in the street, took off the string and wrapping from an engagement notebook, and said, "Ah, here we are-just the very thing. ‘Be Tidy.’" And he dropped the paper into a street dustbin which bore that exhortation in large yellow letters.