The significance of post-war London reconstruction plans for East End industry

This study examines the development of town and country planning in New Zealand as a function of territorial local government. Initial attempts to develop a centralized land use planning system proved abortive. Since then, there has been an increasing recognition that town and country planning is more appropriately undertaken within the political context of local government. Hence, it is only during the last 30 years that territorial authorities have gradually come to accept a necessity for public intervention in land use allocation. Such intervention has come to be undertaken within the confines of a Common Law legal framework with an inherent bias towards protecting private property rights. Consequently, planning has come to be characterized by a prominent legalistic slant and is cast within an adversarial mould.

However, the planning system has found it relatively more difficult to respond to changes and expectations in New Zealand society during the 1970s and the 1980s. Rather than being seen as an activity of environmental management in the wider sense of the term, the scope of the planning function in local government has been restricted primarily to regulating the process of land use change in the context of the built environment. Moreover, central government has remained equivocal with regard to its commitment to the local planning process.