Photograph by courtesy Dunedin City Council. • Aerial photogrammetric mapping • Large scale photo enlargements • Mosaics • Ground control surveys AERO SURVEYS New Zealand)LTD. P.O. Box 444 Tauranga Telephone 88-166 UCAM MIRMEM °TIM- Editor: J. R. Dart Number 33 September 1973 Technical Editor: M. H. Pritchard Department of Town Planning, University of Auckland. Layout, Design & Production: D. Vendramini J. Graham Editorial 4 Reviewing the Act D. R. Hall 6 Casebook 1: Conditional Uses and Bulk and Location Requirements D. R. Hall 8 Casebook 2: Building and Uses 9 Employment D. D. Millar 12 Urewera National Park Ivan Boileau 20 Thoughts Upon Venice Rosemary Eades 21 Shopping Mall at Onehunga R. C. MacPherson 27 Economic Units related to Horticultural Production R. Gilmore and 30 Practice Notes: Systematic Data Handling for Wellington S. Shaw City and RegiOn M. J. Foster 32 Housing the Aged in Urban Renewal (Part 2) 36 Book Reviews 38 Letters 40 Progress at Last Town Planning Quarterly is the official journal Address all correspondence to the Editor: of the New Zealand Planning Institute Town Planning Quarterly, P.O. Box 8789, Incorporated, P.O. Box 5131, Wellington. Symonds St, Auckland I. Telephone/Telegrams: 74-740 The Institute does not accept responsibility for statements made or opinions expressed in this Journal unless this responsibility is expressly acknowledged. Published March, June, September, December. Annual Subscription: $3 (New Zealand and Printed by Acme Printing Works Ltd, Australia) post free, elsewhere SNZ4.50. 137 Great North Road, Auckland 2. E1N The editorial columns are not the place to examine at length the findings of the Town and Country Planning Act Review Committee whose published report was recently submitted to the Minister of Works and Development. Nevertheless, the event is one that demands space for contemporary debate and posterity's records. The Committee was under the nominal chairmanship of the Office Solicitor of the Ministry of Works and consisted of eight members ranging from the senior chairman of the Town and-Country Planning Appeal Boards, through officers of regional and local authorities, to the Director of the Town and Country Planning Division of the Ministry of Works. Altogether, there was three central government officers, two regional government officers, two local authority officers, one lawyer in private practice and one Appeal Board Chairman. No elected person: no member from any of the country's many planning committees; no planner from the private sector; no representative from the traditional professional triumvirate of architects, engineers and surveyors; no spokesman for the subdividers' associations or the developers; no one from the many amenity societies; not even, let it be whispered, anyone from the universities. It was a loaded committee just like the British Planning Advisory Group which published its findings in 1965 under the title of, "The Future of Development Plans". And Yet somehow, whether by instinct, or design or simply because it was more modest in its intent and more aware of the realities of planning practice, the N.Z. committee has avoided the mistakes of its counterpart. The Committee offers further support to the claim that the democratic process is not the most efficient of systems, by producing its findings in a mere fifteen pages of text and ten pages of appendix. It has confounded its critics by failing to give priority to ways and means of streamlining administrative procedures under the Town and Country Planning Act for the benefit of the administrators. It has resisted the temptation to produce a planners' creed or to pursue the twin tar babies of structure plans and environment impact studies; and it has avoided the black hole of national planning. It has quietly gone about its appointed task of coming up with suggestions for improving the Act in the light of experience in working with it and to bring it into line with current attitudes and current practice. The result is a gentle entry into the cold waters of regional planning, setting up a few ripples but no splashes; a firm conclusion that the time has now come for the Crown to be bound by the REVIEWING THE ACT provisions of the Act; a call for an extension of third party participation with the statement that: " . N.Z. is now unique in the extent to which its planning legislation confers upon third parties such full opportunities of objection and appeal. The community now greatly values these rights and accepts them as positive tools of planning." It has passed on the message that not all local authorities need to adopt the full regalia of an operative district planning scheme; it has called for clearer directives concerning coastal, lake, river and bush conservation; it has pointed out that inflation has gnawed away at the penalty provisions; and it has indulged in the minor luxury of offering a new label for the legislation by seeking to truncate it to "Planning Act", an unhappy choice compensated in part by the proffered "Planning Tribunal" in place of the existing clumsy "Town and Country Planning Appeal Board". The report is by no stretch of the imagination a manifesto for even a minor revolution. It is a working document by people who have sifted representations made to the committee by numerous groups, measuring them against the light of its own experience. In its introduction the committee said; "In presenting this report on our review of the Act we must say that neither the present Act, nor any new or amended Act, can of itself guarantee good town planning or provide well-founded solutions to the problems which arise from the physical development of our country. So much depends upon the skill and imagination of the technical officers responsible for the preparation and administration of district planning schemes, the technical resources at their disposal and the local govern- ment structure within which they must work. So much also depends on the extent of the commitment of the elected members of local govern- ment to the concept of seeking the best environment for all sections of the community which they govern." The committee has confirmed that there is nothing basically wrong with the Act, but that it must be constantly re-examined with a view to substituting new for obsolete parts. Political commitment and technical competence are the areas that need the closest scrutiny, but a discussion of those and Latham's recently published research paper, "Planning Objectives in Local Government" must wait for a later issue. It is to be hoped that the Government will not waste time in issuing instructions for the committee's proposals to be woven into a draft Bill for debate during the first, 1974, session of the House. —J. R. Dart. Derek Hall, LLB(NZ), DipTP (Hons) (Auck), (M), is a Senior Lecturer in Town Planning at the University of Auckland. 8CCI in the Ordinance relating to the stringent standards also. That does D. R. Hall Licensed Hotel Zone are determinative not arise for decision because the of the relevant conditions under only part of the decision under Conditional Uses and Bulk and which a development proposal for attack said to be less stringent, Location Requirements the site might be approved as a relates to height, in which connection conditional use." the Board relied both on the specified Smeaton and Others v. Queenstown Beattie J. said:— departure application and the s. 30B Borough Council and Another (to be "It is quite clear that in giving its application." reported: Beattie J., Supreme Court consent to a conditional use applica- Apart from a further determination (Administrative Division) Wellington, tion, the Council can impose on the question of whether less 27 October, 8 November 1972) was conditions as to height, such as stringent standards may be allowed an appeal by way of case stated, stipulated in the Ordinance. The in a conditional use consent, which pursuant to s. 42A of the Town and fact that the Ordinance for the hotel His Honour indicated did not have to Country Planning Act 1953, from a zone had a restricted height of 35 be decided in his decision, the ruling decision of the Number One Town feet must be viewed against the wide is clear enough. It has already been and Country Planning Appeal Board. power vested in the Council under applied by the Number One Town and An applicant was seeking approval its own Code in giving consent to Country Planning Appeal Board in of Council under ss. 28C and 35 of conditional use to alter that condition. Williams v. Bay of Islands County the Act, and of the Appeal Board All-embracing applications were filed Council (unreported, 5 April 1973, under s. 30B, for the erection of a to meet this position, but even if it Decisions P. 9839. hotel and three ancillary shops in was treated only for conditional use, This decision should be an effective Queenstown. "Licensed hotels" were then, in my opinion, s. 28C (3) lead, then, to solving the problem of a conditional use (the only permitted applies so that, despite the restrictive trying to draft bulk and location use) in the relevant zone, and the nature of the Ordinance, there was requirements for a conditional use proposal did not comply with the a wide power both in the Statute ordinance for a miscellany of uses, existing scheme or a proposed change and the District Scheme to consent. many of which may be of the "one- as to the height of the building. The To summarise on questions (a) and off" variety; that is, they should be relevant ordinance included typical (b), in my opinion, the Board was treated as a guide only.