Sherriff Block Survey
In 1972 were you (or someone you know) living in the streets between Huxley Rd, Tyndall Rd, Lyell Rd and Dalton Street? If so it is likely that you participated in a survey undertaken by Laurie McCallum, a Massey University masters student in planning. Laurie is now a senior planner for the Canterbury Regional Council but was in Gisborne over summer and talked to Hans van Kregten, Environment and Planning Manager at Gisborne District Council who put him in touch with Manu Caddie from KaPai Kaiti. It turns out that Laurie’s Masters Thesis submitted in 1975 has been sitting at the Gisborne Public Library all this time. It is in the Reference Section of the library and available for people interested in reading a snapshot of what local residents thought about their new neighbourhood in 1972. The thesis talks about how poor planning meant that trees could not be grown because (a) the top soil from the subdivision had all been scraped off and put on the area that is now Waikirikiri Reserve; and (b) sewer and water pipes were placed under the grass verge so tree roots would have wrecked the essential service pipes. It also reveals that the ‘reserve contributions’ (funds that housing developers pay to Council to establish parks and recreation areas for residents) were used to purchase and develop the Heath Johnston Park on Wainui Road which is much further away than the recommended distance for residents to have to get to if they want to use the park. At the time of the research, a high school was still planned to be built by 1980 on what is now the Waikirikiri Reserve. The research also shows that there were established principles for state housing that required them to be of high quality construction, as good or better than the houses of ‘ordinary citizens’. State housing was also supposed to ‘be considered individually’and ‘every attempt was to be made to avoid the label of Government mass-produced house’. 271 houses were included in the survey. Eighty percent of the people interviewed were married and one third of them were in their first six years of marriage. 10% of household heads were unemployed and 55% identified themselves as Maori. 82% said they liked their neighbourhood but 86% said the recreation areas were inadequate. The document is useful for a number of reasons: 1. It provides a detailed record of the kinds of families living in that neighbourhood nearly 40 years ago; 2. It reveals how town planning in Gisborne was conducted in the 1960s as large numbers of whanau moved from the East Coast and inland rural areas into Kaiti and Gisborne city; 3. The thesis shows how important it is for residents to be properly involved with planning decisions for their neighbourhoods; 4. The data from the survey will provide an invaluable comparison if local residents were to conduct a similar survey with members of the same households again. Contact Manu Caddie on 8686889 if you want to talk about the 1972 survey or the idea of doing another one.	Cavendish Crescent, 1972 (Photo: L. McCallum)     Click the image above to download a PDF version of the thesis (7mb).