Our Planning Poor

The city council’s carefully colour- keyed maps in the recently released South West Area Plan for development of Hornby, Hoon Hay and Halswell hide an ongoing lack of imagination in Christchurch’s town planning.

When you strip away weasel words like “integrated land use planning”, our future will continue to be one of steady outward creep across productive farmland inextricably linked to the ongoing use of the private car as the primary means of transport.

Implementation of public transport solutions are complicated by amorphous urban development, and the proposed southern motorway has nothing to do with improved bus access.

The strategy only mentions new cycleways, but lines painted on busy, glass-littered roads will struggle to get the bus-averse masses onto their bikes.

The question posed by the plan — will the future be all’s well?- – must be answered in the negative.

DAVID HAWKE Halswell

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