ALTERNATIVA RESULTADOS PORCENTAJE

In the widest sense, planning is about how people make decisions about the future. At a personal and simple level, suggests Barry Cullingworth, planning could be a decision to visit a library the following day. This represents a plan, made after looking at options which could also have included staying at home or doing something else.1 This example also demonstrates that a plan need not necessarily be a document portraying a map, drawing, sketch, or written description of the desired product or outcome. Planning can be an idea or a concept that usually deals with aspects of the future. It is also a process that Peter Hall believes can be applied to most aspects of human activity.2 More formally, Cullingworth states that planning may be defined or described as the process of setting

goals or objectives, and agreeing on how these will be achieved. This definition underlines that planning is about the future, about possible choices, and making decisions.3

Lewis Keeble, in his textbook on town and country planning, reflects the view of planning in the 1950s when the focus was on spatial matters and physical design. His definition states:

… Town and Country Planning might be described as the art and science of ordering the use of land and the character and siting of buildings and communication routes so as to secure the maximum practicable degree of economy, convenience and beauty.4

Some authors have endeavoured to draw distinctions between town planning and related fields. For example, in 1972, Michael Hugo-Brunt distinguished between town planning, regional planning, civic design, landscape architecture, and landscape gardening. Historically, he says that these activities “originated as the stepchildren of architecture”5 and reflect the design-led aspects of planning. These descriptions are of interest, as one might expect to find examples of each of these activities in Napier for the period covered by this study.

Anthony Sutcliffe, writing in 1981, provides a broad definition that recognises that planning has two aspects, positive and negative, and cannot be divorced from economic and social considerations. In an introduction to a collection of essays on the early development of British town planning, he writes:

Town planning is the concerted intervention by public authority in the development and subsequent use of urban land. The intervention takes positive and negative forms. Positively, the planning authority draws up a programme of development for publicly-provided facilities such as thoroughfares, sewers, and water supplies. Negatively, it imposes restrictions on the development and use of private land, in such forms as use zoning, density limits, reservations of open space, and wayleaves for privately-provided facilities. Both modes of intervention are based, on the one hand, on a scientific analysis of the urban area’s current condition and future prospects, and on the other, on certain standards of environment and amenity that are considered essential or desirable for the effective operation of the area as an economic and social unit. Thus carefully interrelated, both modes are incorporated into a single programme or plan.6

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Sutcliffe adds that, while public authorities have controlled or influenced urban development on a partial basis for some thousands of years, the idea that such development could be managed and controlled in a comprehensive manner for the benefit of the community did not crystallize until about 1900. Further, the principle of planning control of new development was not completely enshrined in statute in the United Kingdom until the passing of the Town and Country Planning Act 1947.7 Sutcliffe’s definition, while embedded in a post-war British model dominated by new towns, still has much to offer to a study of Napier’s planning, given the positive participation of Napier public authorities in planning and providing infrastructure and other amenities.

Writing in 1997, Eleanor Smith Morris identifies two principal planning streams – the physical planning approach and the policy planning approach. The former, with an emphasis on design, can be traced back to medieval times and continues into the 20th century with the Garden City model. The latter has developed since the Second World War, and promotes plans that are not just physical, but take into account economic and social factors.8 This reflects a trend apparent from the 1950s onwards in which planning became increasingly based on a model founded on social science approaches. It raises the issue of whether planning in Napier was solely concerned with the physical planning stream, or whether the policy planning approach came to have some relevance from the late 1940s through to the 1960s. In other words, were the planning influences on the growth and development of Napier purely about physical planning or was policy planning included as well? While planning in Napier has been based on physical design to a large degree, economic and social concerns have increasing relevance, particularly with regard to planning suburbs after the Second World War.

Hall observed in 2002 that planning has a scientific basis, in which problems requiring a solution or plan are addressed in a sequence or cycle of events that includes option identification, analysis of options, choice of solution or plan, implementation, and monitoring or review. This mode of planning was derived from cybernetics and became increasingly accepted from the 1960s onwards. Planning practice in the period from the 1920s to the 1960s was based on the survey-analysis-plan model, developed by Patrick Geddes in the context of his study of regional settlement patterns.9 The Geddes approach is relevant to a study of planning activities at Napier, especially following the 1931

earthquake, to ascertain whether his model was used for the reconstruction planning. The formal options model described by Hall may be of little relevance, because this thesis does not extend beyond the 1960s. However, there may be situations where decisions were made about the location of infrastructure and other amenities after several different options were considered.

Writing in 2009, Stephen Marshall, in his book Cities, Design & Evolution, considers that city planning comprises four classic elements – intention, design, ordering and instruments. Planning intention is about formulating a desired future state, usually expressed as objectives for future outcomes. Design is about how a city or a part of it might appear at a particular time, as might be represented on a map or plan. Urban ordering is about how component parts of the city relate to each other, such as patterns adopted for street layouts and relationships between buildings. Planning instruments include the actual planning documents that might also include regulatory controls governing the use of land.10 The various elements, of course, relate to each other, and should not be considered in isolation.

To summarise thus far, there is no simple and commonly accepted definition of planning. The search for a concise definition is difficult and may be counter-productive because a brief statement of what planning is might suggest that some activity that does not quite fit within the definition is automatically excluded. It also has the risk that 21st century concepts might be used to define what occurred in the 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, the definition of planning, when used in a historical context, is likely to be shaped or compromised by knowledge of the outcomes. As E.A. Powdrill remarks, “almost every thinking planner has his own ideas, and that is as it should be. To lay down a precise meaning for it is to limit in some way its scope for the individual.”11 Instead, it is better to describe planning in terms of characteristics or aspects, following the approach of Sutcliffe already referred to.

For this thesis, planning is therefore defined as an activity that is concerned with the arrangement and control of activities over space, with the intention of creating a better living environment for the inhabitants of the area concerned. The different parts of this definition bring in the classic elements of planning, as described by Marshall. Planning as

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such is future-oriented and is largely, but not exclusively, carried out by public authorities. It is acknowledged that such planning may take a number of forms or cover broad subject areas, so planning might be more specifically concerned with land use and design controls, the provision of housing and infrastructure, and future urban development. Moreover, planning is seen as being not confined simply to the work undertaken by personnel designated as “town planners” or similar descriptions. Instead, planning has many nuances, and involves a wide range of participants including politicians and members of the public, as well as professionals working for public authorities or private firms. Those professionals, for example, could include surveyors, civil engineers and architects. As Patricia Burgess comments in her study of planning history literature relating to the United States, “there was planning before there were planners and individuals who were not planners planned.”12 The term formal planning refers to a distinct field of knowledge that has evolved from a mix of planning theory, practice and law, and which has developed in the early part of the 20th century. The term informal planning covers those activities that have occurred since the time that city design began, and might be regarded as a precursor to formal planning. Both types of planning could coexist together, as indeed did occur in Napier during the first two decades of the post-earthquake era.

The definition adopted for this study anticipates that planning is to be carried out for the benefit of the wider community of the area within which the planning takes place. It is acknowledged, nonetheless, that the individual inhabitants need not each necessarily benefit from such planning to the same degree. However, planning is not intended to be just for the benefit of business interests, specific organisations, or individual persons or elite groups that make up the wider community. Rather, those who benefit from the implementation of planning include the wider community, or at least significant parts of it. The definition suggested embraces not just formal planning, but also includes informal planning activities, as mentioned above.

Robert Freestone comments that the aspirations of planning “have always soared above the practicality of their implementation, as a constant stream of good city theories have been buffeted by broader economic, political and social constraints.”13 He acknowledges that while planning sometimes has had its darker side, with outcomes that have worked against rather than for the benefit of the community, planning has also produced many positive

outcomes that have led to more liveable communities. Examples of these accomplishments include the better supply of open space, housing, transit and basic services, enhanced protection of resources, and improved decision-making about the use of land. Freestone also refers to observations made by David Harvey, who comments as follows with regard to planning in the 20th century:14

There are plenty of contemporary critics, of course, who, armed with their techniques of deconstruction and of Foucauldian analysis, might look back upon this period with jaundiced eye as a classic case of progressive reformism disguising capitalist plans for capital accumulation and speculative land development, a mask for concealing bourgeois guilt, paternalism, social control, surveillance, political manipulation, deliberate disempowerment of marginalized but restive masses, and the exclusion of anyone who was “different.” But it is undeniable that the aggregate effect was to make cities work better, to improve the lot not only of urban elites but also of urban masses, to radically improve basic infrastructures (such as water and energy supply, housing, sewage, and air quality) as well as to liberate urban spaces for fresh rounds of organized capital accumulation in ways that lasted for much of the twentieth century.15

Within the New Zealand context, the governance model for local authorities has been founded on the principle of community benefit, whether undertaking planning-related or other functions. Throughout the period studied in this thesis, the mayor and other councillors have been specifically required by legislation to act diligently and fairly, and have been forbidden from acting in a manner that would provide them individually with any personal financial advantage. In particular, the Municipal Corporations Act 1876 required members of Councils, following their election, to make a statutory declaration in which they pledged to carry out their statutory duties “faithfully and impartially, and according to the best of [their] skill and judgment”.16 Further, no councillor could “vote upon or take part in the discussion of any matter before the Council in which he has directly or indirectly, by himself or his partners, any interest”, nor could anyone be elected to or hold office as councillor if they were interested in any contract or work to be undertaken for the council, unless as a shareholder in a company or partnership comprising more than 20 persons.17

The effect of these statutory provisions, which have generally been carried forward in all subsequent legislation, is that the mayor and councillors of New Zealand local authorities cannot act in their own personal interest if they are able to derive some financial benefit

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from doing so, unless the financial interest is one that is shared with members of the public generally.18 Decisions made, therefore, including planning decisions, should be made for the greater public benefit. Indeed, the very reason for the establishment of a municipal council for Napier, as mentioned in the previous chapter, was the mutual desire of the petitioners to greatly improve the “comfort and prosperity” of the town’s inhabitants.19 However, for special purpose authorities, such as harbour, education, electricity, hospital and river boards, decisions would be made to further the interests of the particular board, rather than the interests of citizens generally. This meant that, on occasions, differences could arise between territorial (borough, city and county) councils on the one hand and special purpose boards on the other. In Napier, the Napier Harbour Board was to become involved in reclamation and land development projects that had a community impact well beyond the immediate port areas, so the emergence of competing interests and benefits was to become a major issue in the developmental planning of Napier, particularly from the late 19th century until the 1940s. Such conflicts were primarily between the Harbour Board and Napier Borough Council, and are discussed in Chapters 4 and 6.