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Rolleston—Subtopia in the South

by Len McGrane

Yet another government project is going to fail. The plan to build a city for 50,000 — 80,000 people just out of Christchurch is just not going to do anyone much good.

That's the view of Dr Ron Johnston, reader in geography at Canterbury University.

Because Rolleston will be a satellite of Christchurch— the present township is about 15 miles west of the garden city it can only develop into a low-cost, unattractive suburb, Johnston says.

The project was announced last November when Hugh Watt said it would stave off a land crisis in Christchurch by creating a supply of sections near the city at a reasonable cost. Ten thousand acres are involved and the government wants to produce homes for the 80,000 by the end of the century. The present population of the Christchurch urban area is 290,000.

But according to Johnston the project is a blunder. The only good thing the government did, he says, was to keep negotiations secret, freeze land prices, and stop speculation. The result will definitely be cheaper sections in the new city compared with Christchurch where there are few under $7,000. But the land out on the plains is dry, stony, and flat and the climate is cold in winter.

Rolleston is not the ideal place to live in, but it will be even less so if the ministry of works designs and builds the houses. According to Johnston Watt is not letting in any private developers and individual sections will not be offered. The new city is intended to be a display centre for the government builders, he says — if of course they can find any builders. If the state's acheivements in Otara are anything to go by its going to be some display centre — a "Porirua-away-from-the-sea" as Johnston puts it.

Watt has answers of course. Poor siting and state housing can be overcome with imagination and money. But it will take a lot more than that if the industrial base of the new city is to be established to the extent Watt wants.

The minister hopes to attract industry there, but that'll be difficult. The main employers in Christchurch are not the manufacturing industries but commercial and service firms. So few large employers will be likely to move from there to Rolleston.

But Johnston's main argument against the new city is that it will develop into a second class area. His starting point is the Christchurch zoning scheme. Christchurch has an urban "fence" — the only one in the country — which all the local authorities broadly accept. This urban "fence" is the outer limit to Urban residential subdivision. And because of it, land prices inside the "fence" are pushed up.

The zoning scheme dictates that all land inside the "fence" will be developed eventually, so undeveloped land becomes increasingly expensive as time passes.

There is little uncertainty for the speculator in a zoning scheme like this one. Because of town planning many sections zoned residential are deliberately kept off the market by owners who cannot be forced to sell without great difficulty.

So, the new city of Rolleston will push the price of land in Christchurch up. If 80,000 people are to be diverted there from Christchurch the urban fence will certainly not be extended. If anything it will be drawn in, and the supply of land will be even more limited. Higher land costs will cause some to move west. But these people will be those who cannot pay Christchurch prices. With the less financially well-off moving to the new city, Rolleston will become a deprived suburb both economically and socially and that will polarise the community even further.

The ministry of works, of course, doesn't agree. For one thing, one of the town planners in Wellington says, Johnston's assertion that the government will keep private developers out of the area is "quite untrue". "It is not intended that the ministry of works plan and build the town." He says "Perhaps I should add that it is not intended that the new housing corporation will plan and build either."

Just who will lay out the new city will not be decided until an officials committee and the Town and Country Planning Appeal Board have reported back to government. Although the committee is almost ready to table the report, the board will have to wait until it has heard any objections and this will take some months.

Even if the ministry does build the present policy is that only 15 per cent of the housing will be by the state.

Another of the arguments Johnston was putting forward — that the new city will be slow to attract industry — is a shaky according to one of the divisional planning officers in the ministry of works, David Clark.

Part of the regional development thing is to make Christchurch counter-balance Auckland, he says. So, Clark says, the government will be making strong moves to see that the new city appeals to industrialists.

A new city of 100,000 people would never offer such a balance on its own.

But built next to Christchurch, and with really attractive, incentives for big industry, the place could become the metropolitan area the government wants. It all depends on the incentives. And since the government is controlling land sales it is likely that attractive offers will he made, says Clark.

Industry already in Christchurch will also act a magnet, Clark thinks. He believes that the Horn by industrial area is pretty big and that the city has a lot of heavy and light industry. He doesn't go along with Johnston on that.

But just how much industry is in Christchurch is not important for Johnston's argument. The very existence of subdivided land only a few miles out on the plans it. Christchurch, with its well-established status areas, will always be the fashionable place to live not Rolleston. A house in Fendalton was sold for $61,000 in mid-June. The owner of that lot, and the others like him show little readiness to live anywhere but in the high-class suburbs either in Christchurch or other "better" centres, Johnston points out. "I don I see a sudden change of heart coming about either," he says.

So he's sticking to his guns in spite of the government planners.

Christchurch is nearing capacity, but Rolleston will take some of the pressure for land off. People will go west, but they'll be heading into a poorer area because Christchurch is already attractive to some people — the wealthy. So Christchurch land will be in demand and prices for sections will rise in direct proportion to the clamour for it, so to speak.

Unless Kirk and Watt make drastic changes in the local planning scheme and alter the system of land sales, Christchurch prices can only go up when the new city is built. And according to Johnston, faster than ever.

The government had better wave that magic wand it is leading us to believe it has.