Lost CityLost City

Chris HarrisNorth Shore City CouncilFebruary 2007

Forgotten Plans for an Alternative Auckland

AucklandIn 1950

EbenezerHoward’s‘Social City’,1899-1902

Land acquiredat rural valueto pay forrail, etc.

Not just a physicalplan

Also a socio-economicvision

Hugelyinfluential onEuropeanthinking,especiallyScandinavia.

E.g. ‘Finger Plan’for futuresuburbandevelopment,Copenhagen,Denmark, 1947

Railway-basedsatellite townsdeveloped inWellingtonregion from1920s

Hutt ValleyLands SettlementAct 1925:

All capital gains toCrown to payfor railway (etc)

NZ also:

‘Social City’ plans advanced under State Housing Programme.

Key texts:

Ernst Plishke [Plischke],Design and Living (Dept of Internal Affairs,1947), D&L for short.

Cedric Firth & Gordon Wilson, State Housing in New Zealand (MOW,1949), SHNZ for short.

“Housing is more than designing and building houses. In these days, physically speaking, the house is a kind of knot in a network of pipes, wires, roads, and footpaths, with larger and more complicated knots for shopping centres and other community facilities…”

“The fundamental premise , then, about housing hadundergone a change. Housing was to become aPublic Utility…” ----SHNZ

“The exciting novelty of the motor car has worn off, and we are becoming aware of its problems.”

---- D&L

Pedestrianised ‘social’ town centre, Hutt Valley (1962 photo, built by NZ Gov’t in 1940s)

From The Shape ofThings to Come (MinistryOf Works, 1946)

Regional plans for everyregion in New Zealand

“Special legislation” passedso land for “great new settle-ments being built by the state”around Auckland, Wellington,Christchurch could be gotwithout risk of “inflated price.”

Precedent: Wellington sincethe 1920s.

‘Wellington style’Auckland plan

Appendixto the Journalsof the House ofRepresentatives,1946

‘Greenways’ for Tamaki, in SHNZ

TamakiTownCentre,fromSHNZ

Tamaki Community Facilities, from SHNZ

Promotion of Pumice Construction. Fascinating technological‘What If?’

‘Konka’ insulating wallboard (widely used)‘Fabricona’ structural insulating concrete.

Decision taken to abandon pumice technology developmentin 1950s, in favour of plantation pine technology development.

Initially treated --- later untreated (1990s).

What would have been better for flat roofed constructionin Auckland?

What would have been better for NZers’ winter health?

Passive Solar Design, from SHNZ(intended to go with Pumice-concrete walls)

(All state housing solar-designed to some degree)

Greenlane Multimodal interchange, 1951 OD Plan

Cartoon in Building Progress, March 1944Note ‘Wellington Express’ in Background

Early Cold WarElectioneeringPamphlet,1948

Planning nolonger quite sofashionable?

Railways,Greenways,Satellite towns,State housing,all declineduring 1950s,

Shift to roads,including ‘userpays’ applicationof petrol tax toNational RoadsFund from 1953

Ironically, theNZ state kepta largepresence inhousing untilthe 1980s!

But morevisionary formsof planningfell off theagenda, infavour of anarrowerinfrastructurefocus

‘Robbie’s Rapid Rail’, 1969

Similar toPerth,1970

Return toa visionarycorridorplan

AucklandRapid TransitLogo, 1974

ARA ‘Green City’ Plan, 1980

By RogerJohnson,Designer ofCanberrasuburbs andsimilar toD&L, SHNZ

ARA ‘Green City’ Plan, 1980

Rail loop recurs too…

Some look at what is, and ask why?

Others look at what is not yet, and ask why not?