URBAN SPRAWL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 11

URBAN SPRAWL

Sir,-Newspapers have a difficult role to play when they attempt to summarise interviews, but I imagine that on the whole your journal does this more successfully than most. In your issue of March 29, however, you attribute to me some remarks about urban sprawl that are not only a very serious distortion of what I said, but are, in my view, senseless into the bargain. As mine were the only sceptical opinions you report it is important that the impression they convey be corrected. In this interview I was asked to comment upon the sociological effects of urban sprawl, an ugly, inaccurate and unduly emotive term that is being used here to describe a movement towards the suburbs that has been accelerated in all predominantly urban, industrialised countries during the past 25 years. This phenomenon is the product of two population movements; one the continuous, unrelenting drift of people toward cities (so much the concern of previous generations in this country, but now apparently not newsworthy); the other, proceeding contrariwise, a movement from the centre of cities outward to the suburbs, and in other countries and I suspect in New Zealand, too, much further than that. A sociological assessment of these changes is surely concerned with their effects upon patterns of life, values and personal aspirations. From this viewpoint I do not consider that socalled "urban sprawl" is necessarily a bad thing. Suburban development has, in my judgment, given opportunities for many people to have modes of living, pleasures and values that they might not have otherwise enjoyed. At the same time the suburbs have created new social problems. Some of these might, I think, have been diminished by wiser planning, but some, such as the significance of the separation of places of work and home life, have only come to our notice recently as we have begun to perceive the social implications of life in the suburbs. This is certainly the case in education where, almost unwittingly, we are now evolving some interesting solutions. I expect it is also true in some other sections of our social and cultural life. On balance, and from a strictly sociological perspective, I think the good things of suburban life at the present time outweigh the bad. . This is not to deny that the economic issues are serious. I agree they deserve very earnest consideration, although I would welcome a more critical approach to them than usually prevails. It will be a pity, however, if we allow the emotionalism about urban sprawl that sometimes arises from this viewpoint to divert our attention from the real problem: how to create in cities and suburbs alike the conditions that give all citizens opportunities for rich, meaningful and satisfying lives. So far I do not*see that the present plans for blocks of flats in the centres of cities that have been announced here promise more in this respect than single-unit suburban housing. It has been my impression that elsewhere students of this

question are much more likely to be concerned with this larger issue than the segment of it that is becoming the subject of so much vituperation in this

country.

JOHN

WATSON

(Wellington).

(We gladly allow Mr Watson to explain his views more fully-or more exactly; but after examining our freporter’s notes, and checking them against what was printed, we cannot agree that there was "very serious distortion."’ Opinions attributed in our articles to Mr Watson are amplified in his letter, or expressed differently. But they are the same opinions.-Ed. )