Surveyors and Town-Planning

Progress, Volume XIV, Issue 7, 1 March 1919, Page 447

Surveyors and Town-Planning

The remarks of some enthusiasts of Town-planning projects who blamed the surveyors for “ laying out a town in rectangular blocks like a chess board,” have caused Mr. Geo. Mclntyre, of Christchurch, to defend the surveyors. In a letter to the Christchurch “ Press,” he says ; “ Official survey regulation 55 is as follows; The streets of all towns are to be laid off in straight lines, and at right angles to each other as nearly as a due regard to the natural features of the country and drainage of the land will permit, and allotments are to be laid off wherever practicable at right angles to the streets which they front.’ “In order to secure that there shall be no departure from these requirements, regulation 56 provides that plans of all such proposed subdivisions must be approved by the Governor-General prior to sale. Under the Land Act, a ‘town’ has been authoritatively defined to mean ‘ any parcel of land outside a borough divided into areas for building purposes.’ So that even half a dozen sections or less have been officially branded as a ‘ town.’ ”