State Housing at Orakei (Paperback)

The colonization of New Zealand led to the development of particular patterns of settlement.In some cases models were derived from contemporay British practice; in others they came from new world settlements elsewhere. These settlements arose at the same time as the belief that New Zealand was a natural paradise and that it offered the opportunity for the establishment of some kind of new and perhaps even utopian model for settlement. The Auckland suburb of Orakei as it developed in the first decades of the twentieth century provides fertile ground for the exploration of a number of themes which illuminate the New Zealand suburban experience: the role of the state in regulating and providing housing; the development of the discipline of planning; the evolution of the garden suburb in New Zealand; the choice of an architectural style for state housing; the contest for physical and ideological control of development; and the decisive role of individuals in creating the suburb. This book describes the political, social and ideological environments which led to the construction of the suburb of Orakei and the form which it took.