PLANNED HOUSING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 731, 17 July 1953, Page 15

PLANNED HOUSING

To the Editor Sir.-yYour editorial in The Listener of July 3 sets forth a common misconception. In discussing housing you write: "It would be equally realistic to suggest that houses should be built on smaller sections. . . Suburbs in London are densely peopled because the houses, usually two or three storeys high, stand in terraces for the full length of a street. In the outer and newer suburbs, however, the cottages ore detached, each with its own little plot of ground; and this reflects a nealthy reaction from the strains of iife in a modern city." It is a common mistake to correlate housing in continuous terraces with high densities, small sections and a lack of gardens and open space. It is more or less an historical accident that at the time overcrowding was most rife nouses were always built in terraces, and in escaping from the overcrowded city centres the dwellers in the suburbs took refuge in the new-fangled semi-detached houses (N.B., very rarely ‘"detached"); at that point in time and fashion no other alternative was contemplated. But there is no intrinsic reason why terrace houses, with broad frontages and wide spaces between building lines---neither of which was characteristic of 19th Century building-should give less living space; indeed, acre for ocre they will allow more room for gardens, by eliminating the almost valueless passage between houses. Health is by no means the prerogative of the detached house; for example, the Dutch, by taking the weight on their party walls, have for many centuries flooded their houses with light and air from huge windows, and many successful terraces have been built by modern architects to suit modern conditions, The terrace house does, it is true, involve extra forethought in the disposal of garages and dustbins, but the arrangement of separate access for these services is in line with modern townplanning thought, even with detached houses, as in examples like Radburn, N.J. The other bogy, of soundproofing presents no problems; thick party walls are usually cheaper than thin outside cnes. In England I have lived on the other side of an 18-inch brick wall from wailing twins and heard nothing; in New Zealand I have been separated from my neighbours by one half-brick and one wooden wall four feet apart and still heard every word of their quiet conversation, These observations also apply to the number of storeys; it is only if housing

densities per acre are increased that extra storeys become a menace. The twostorey house on a quarter-acre section has a much larger and pleasanter garden than the bungalow. Many a onestorey house in areas such as St. Kilda (Dunedin) has only a tiny and miserable yard where a_ two-storey house could have at least a small garden. In this discussion I have restricted myselt to single-family houses; flats are another question altogether. The point is an important one, because there are times when the terrace house, with itsyair of urbanity, is invaluable in giving architectural beauty and dignity to certain areas. This dignity is not, I repeat, at all incompatible with the best living standards. The terrace is not ‘part of New Zealand building traditions, and it is impossible to think its use will ever be very com. mon, but if and when our "cities" cease to be overgrown villages, we might find some place for the aesthetic qualities of the terrace at its best; it would be regrettable to sacrifice these qualities for banality, out of a mistaken idea of the standards of hygiene and privacy attached to them. There may be other objections to terraces, but they are not the ones implied in the editorial. In that limited area in which terrace housing could be so desirable one could not, of course, indulge one’s private architectural fantasies. Terrace housing is invariably accused of monotony, but this is not an inherent deficiency; once again it can be laid to the charge of 19th Century jerry-building. It is, in fact, an artistic platitude that a repetition of superficially diverse elements is more monotonous than the rhythmic arrangement of well-ordered units, and there is far less monotony in a_ well-designed quartier of terrace-building, like the New Town of Edinburgh, then. in the average suburb. Modern terrace houses, built for a totally different way of life, would not be copies of the gracious 18th Century houses of Edinburgh and Bath, but they could be heir to their traditions. The last point I should like to make is irrelevant to the main issue, but it bears on the last phrase I have quoted from your article. There is, of course, no question of the benefit of low densities of population, but a word of warn- ing might perhaps be sounded. Unless industrial and commercial activity is also dispersed, the outward growth of a city may eventually ‘result in a state of

affairs like that in the outer suburbs of London today, where the journey to and from work may last over an hour each way, in crowded buses and tubes, and the Strain on health caused _ thereby far outweighs any of the advantages of the new housing development. Like the constructional problems of the terrace house, this is a difficulty which can ‘be avoided by planning and forethought. Although it. is a frequent drawback of low density housing, it is not a necessary concomitant.

EILEEN L.

ELLIOTT

(Dunedin).