Discussion.

Professor Knight has provided much food for thought in his paper and has shown the necessity for civic authorities to face up to this vital problem. It is interesting to note that Wellington had its own town plan in the early days providing a grid subdivision for Te Aro Flat, which was divided into Town Acres. A wide area from the Basin Reserve to the sea containing a canal and suggestion for adjoining park lands would have been a feature worth carrying out. For every town acre, a similar acre was dedicated to a green belt or the Town Belt as we know it.

Had the development of this plan been followed it would have provided a good and conventional layout for the city, which would have had its centre moved from where it is to-day. In the years which followed the preparation of the plan, indifferent civic authorities permitted land speculators to drive alleys and cul-de-sacs into the town-acre subdivisions, producing the warren we know as Te Aro Flat to-day and completely spoiling it as the centre of the city.

In Washington, to which Professor Knight refers, the same thing happened. The original plan, conceived by Charles Pierre L'Enfant, a French engineer, was laid out on similar lines to his native Paris, with circles and squares, the principal boulevards or avenues radiating therefrom. In the years which followed, the same civic, or in this case federal, apathy permitted