The origin and development of the Wellington town belt, 1840 - 1940

Abstract

In 1839 the Directors of the New Zealand Company in their instructions regarding the Plan of Wellington,stressed that it was necessary to provide for the future rather than the present, and to secure "the beautiful appearance of the future city...rather than the immediate profit of the Company". They also considered it "desirable that the whole outside of the Town, inland, should be separated from the Country sections by a broad belt of land...to be public property, on condition that no building be ever erected upon it" Ward to Smith, 1 August 1839, NZC 102/1-2. This broad belt of land was clearly defined on the first Plan of Wellington drawn up by the Surveyor-General, Captain William Mein-Smith, in 1840, as land "reserved for the enjoyment of the Public, and not to be built upon". It was this land which became known as the Wellington Town Belt, and it included most of the 1519 acres classified as reserves on the first Plan, while the original city itself covered an area of some 1100 acres. Through the century 1840-1940 the Wellington Town Belt remained a meaningfully congruent form of land use. It has helped to give the city "an environment which is not simply well organised, but poetic and symbolic as well" Hihbee (1960); p.326. despite the fact that with technological changes, a growing population, and the physical growth of built-up areas outside the Belt, large areas would have been economically suited to an intensive form of built-up urban development.