The Unseen Landscapes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1049, 2 October 1959, Page 10

The Unseen Landscapes

HE Commercial Counsellor at the French Embassy in Wellington, Mr E. Lestocquoy, spoke recently of the harm that New Zealanders do to their landscapes. He gave special attention to fish and chip shops and ice cream parlours which are so often placed "irrespective of situation and with a complete disregard for planning." There could be other symbols of our bland insensitivity, but these have an added force because they suggest social as well as aesthetic aberration. Ice cream and fish and chips, useful in their season, are forced too much upon our notice by large and _indiscriminate consumption in public places. In Wellington the menace became so acute that ice creams had to be banned from buses and trams. But people who enter department stores where ice creams are sold must walk carefully, and passengers in suburban trains are still afflicted with the hot and fatty smell of fish and chips. One large helping wrapped in newspaper, with a hole from which pieces of fish and potato are extracted by greasy fingers, is enough to permeate a carriage; and if the carriage is overheated the journey becomes a struggle against nausea. If there are enough people in New Zealand to whom such habits are acceptable, shops will serve them. They are opened wherever trade promises to be brisk, and the only questions of situation and design which seem likely to trouble the proprietors are those related to profit. It is in their interests to draw attention to themselves. A fish or ice cream shop in the city may pass unnoticed in a side street, where in any case the prevailing standards of architecture may be reminiscent of an American "western"; but on a country road, under hills that are still unspoiled, it may stand up like a monument to vulgarity. The proprietor, poor man, is not to blame. He is providing a service for modest returns, and nobody has po him that a landscape is something more than a green carpet unrolled to his welcoming door. If there isto be any improvement it must come from gradual changes in public opinion. And the

changes will need to start at home. The prevailing characteristic of almost any suburb is a confusion of taste. Good and _ indifferent homes are set down together; and although by-laws prevent the erection of sub-standard garages, strange things are to be seen as ribbon development goes forward. Many people cannot afford the houses they would like to live in; they must make do with something plain and reasonably cheap. A modest home can still be attractive if it stands in a garden, and New Zealanders have _ green fingers. But the incongruities persist. A modern house, well cared for, can have a dismantled motor car on its front lawn, or a packing case shed at the bottom of the garden. New housing settlements stand at first in unpromising uniformity; but presently the signs of individuality appear, and too often they would be more appropriate in a slum. Insensitive people cannot be expected to know what they are doing to their neighbours. A man who cares nothing for a distant view of hills and sea may build his house in such a way that someone next door will lose the view which delights him from his balcony. It is done without malice, with a firm resolve to make the best use of his own section, And later, if he wants to put up a backyard shack with a rusty iron roof, he cannot see that it concerns anyone else. It is this attitude, spread widely through the community, which places our landscapes in danger when light industries encroach upon residential areas, when motorways are built, and when plans are made for hydro-electric works in the loveliest parts of the country. There are, however, people who think differently-enough, perhaps, to check qa wholesale spoliation in the name of progress. They will not find it. easy to influence the rest until new generations have helped to create an unconscious and delicate relationship between land and people. In the meantime we must expect garish little shops to cater for insatiable appetites, They are merely symbols of that larger indifference which has been part of our history. When they are seen less often, or begin to take some fitting and recognisable look of the country, we shall not need ¢gain to be reminded of landscapes that stay reproachfully outside our culture.

M.H.

H.