URBAN SPRAWL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 925, 3 May 1957, Page 11

URBAN SPRAWL

Sir,-Four pages of The Listener devoted to urban sprawl but not a word about regional pianning, satellite towns or decentralisation! There is urban Sprawl in New Zealand, but nothing that would justify the exaggerated statements that have been made by people who obviously have a vested interest in high building and population densities, or who pose as disciples of Malthus. We also have agricultural sprawl and local body sprawl, which have much the same effect on the regional or national economy, but we could not expect our architects to be interested in that. A low density does not necessarily mean urban sprawl, as your article suggests. It can, readily be demonstrated that an aggregate urban population of two million people, together with all necessary commercial, industrial, recreational, transport and cultural facilities, can be housed at an overall density of 10 persons per acre, on less than onethird of one per cent of the land area of New Zealand, or less than one per cent of our farming lands. That does not seem to me to be too big a price to pay for an important part of the economic machinery of primary produc- tion. It has not yet been demonstrated that high building and population densities are more economic than low densities occupying a larger area of land, taking every factor into consideration. The estimated annual traffic losses in the Auckland Metropolitan District alone, which are due to over-centralisa-tion, for instance, represent 5 per cent of the value of our butter exports, or the butter production from 150,000 acres of first-class farm land. By all means let us have a full scale inquiry into our New Zealand way of life and the urban environment that has arisen out of it in the past 120 years. Is it good or is it bad? What are its social, economic and strategic advantages or disadvantages? It would take a lot to persuade me that we could produce a better type of citizen in an environment that looks like a modern commercial Itry farm. But nothing less than a Royal Commission could do justice to the national issues involved. Incidentally, who is the town planner who finds it more interesting and exciting to correct other people’s mistakes than to make his own? I think he must have mistaken his vocation.

J. W.

MAWSON

(Keri Keri Central).