UNPLANNED HOUSING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 769, 15 April 1954, Page 9

UNPLANNED HOUSING

(From an untitled study in functionalism, issued by the Central Offce of Political Instruction, 2054 A.D.) NEw ZEALAND housing displayed a * " curious cycle in the two centuries between 1850 and 2050. As we pass through the lean-to villages and shanty towns of the 21st Century we cannot but wonder at it. In the North Island the townships of Walsh and Nash are striking examples of the reversion to raupo and punga roofs, and in the South the busy new community centres of McLagen and Holland illustrate the adobe construction. It will be remembered that the less well-to-do pioneers started in 1850 with these methods. But during the Victorian period and early 20th Century they developed a mania for building both houses and offices which would outlast their builders. For materials, brick, concrete and the now extinct forests of kauri and rimu were used, It is a comical reflection that our ancestors of the early 20th Century led

lives so completely unorientated. No regulations seem to have been passed for their guidance. No planning committees sat on their problems: Nowhere is this more evident than in their favourite house design. There were large attics and wide- halls. Spacious verandahs and _ balconies, sometimes both, indicated their careless attitude to civic duties. The head of the house (for there was then but one) evidently spent his leisure on one of those space-wast-ing structures; instead of at his compulsory union meeting or indoors at 7-8 television indoctrination. . Indeed, it seems that there was then nothing to compel him to see or hear any politician if he should be so perverse as not to desire it. The legislation of 1930-1960 was the beginning of the end of this wasteful output. It decreed that the tenant should have something more than the fee simple of any property. Since it was clearly contrary to public policy that anyone should make an income from rents the various administrations of those days set an example by building many thousands of houses to let, and resolutely losing money on all of them. The wheel then turned full cycle. Nobody has since built anything with the object of renting it to another. (in 1935 over 60 per cent of the total of occupied houses were provided by investors for the use of others. In 2035 it fell to 4 per cent.) The sensible modern viewpoint has prevailed of building nothing which will last more than 20 years. Indeed, for nearly a century successive research committees have been at work determining the very cheapest form of construction. Their deliberations have produced the modern house -slab sided, toi toi lined and punga or grass-roofed. It is not believed that anything less costly or more functional will be achieved. It is the culmination of a century of legislation and planning.

John

Buckley