RURAL PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT 223 



tion of private interests. The provincial authority is the proper 

 one to secure compliance with that procedure. Unless a planning 

 and development act provides for these things it will be largely inef- 

 fective. If, on the one hand, it does not enable the local authority 

 to prevent undesirable development taking place while the scheme 

 is being prepared, or if, on the other hand, the method by which 

 this is accomplished unduly injures private owners, the effect of pre- 

 paring a development scheme would not be likely to be beneficial. 



WHY RURAL AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT SHOULD BE DEALT WITH 

 IN ONE MEASURE 



Prima facie it would seem as if the proper way to control rural 

 and urban development would be either to have two acts namely, 

 a rural development act and an urban development act or to have 

 one act so framed as to enable urban schemes to be prepared for 

 urban areas and rural schemes to be prepared for rural areas. In 

 practice, however, this would not work out satisfactorily, owing to 

 the absence of any clear division line between urban and rural terri- 

 tory and between urban and rural conditions. Moreover, to suggest 

 a division of this kind would be to emphasize a distinction between 

 the two kinds of areas and their problems which does not exist, al- 

 though it has erroneously been assumed to exist and has been fostered 

 by many whose one-sided experience has blinded them to the inter- 

 dependence of urban and rural life. Not only is there no sharp divi- 

 sion line between town and country under modern conditions, and no 

 certainty that what is isolated rural territory today may not become 

 the site of a town tomorrow, but the arbitrary divisions between 

 urban and rural municipal areas are such that the conditions and 

 problems on both sides of a boundary line between such areas may 

 be precisely the same. 



The only satisfactory method, even if it be somewhat defective, 

 is to have an act which will regulate all new settlement and develop- 

 ment in all kinds of urban and rural areas. There is, of course, a sharp 

 distinction between the problems that have to be dealt with in areas 

 which are fully built up with substantial and more or less permanent 

 improvements, like those in the central parts of large cities, and other 

 problems in suburban areas where the land is either unbuilt upon or 

 is only in process of being developed. Land which is fully built upon 

 and served by improved streets, which cannot be altered or replanned 

 except at great cost for reconstruction, is not suitable for inclusion in 

 the area of a development scheme. Even if the planning of such land 



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