The growth of Cambridge in recent years has been almost bewildering. When I first moved here 23 years ago the journey from Bruntwood into town was mostly through open country. Now it’s a different story. The new Waikato Expressway has brought Hamilton within a few minutes’ drive, there are new subdivisions everywhere you look, new retirement villages, medical centres, gymnasiums, (or is that gymnasia?) and it doesn’t look like slowing down anytime soon.
It has the look of an uncontrolled explosion but there must surely be some planning going on in the background. New water mains have, and are still being installed, we have a new swimming pool development, new cycleways and roading arrangements, and the Cambridge Town Concept Plan has some pretty big ideas for the future.
There is a lot of talk about a third bridge, despite the outcome of a regional transportation model indicating Cambridge’s two bridges will cope with projected traffic capacity in the longer term. One wonders how much time the architects of that regional model have spent sitting in traffic waiting to get close to, let alone across, either of the existing bridges at certain times of the day.
There does seem to be a bit of argy bargy which comes along with progress. The changes to the traffic flows in and around Cambridge designed to improve safety for children on their way to and from school were by no means universally popular. It seems there are plenty of people who were happy, in principle, to live with the existing levels of risk to children as long as they didn’t have to drive round the block. And the outrage at the appearance of large coloured dots on the road surface at some intersections was something of an overreaction, in my opinion of course.
I heard a conversation not long ago about the absurdity of the need to erect a cell phone tower close to someone’s place of work. The largely subjective objections were all manifestly reasonable when taken in isolation, but collapsed in a heap when one of the participants bemoaned the lack of cell phone coverage in the area.
Then there’s the much-discussed imminent arrival of social housing between Norfolk Downs and Victoria Road – somewhere, but nobody is actually saying exactly where it might be. That gets people up in arms. ‘Not in my backyard’. Fair enough, but where, then?
By the way, it’s always seemed a bit odd to me that the area in question is called Norfolk Downs. Whose idea was that? ‘Downs’ means ‘gently undulating hills’ but it’s as flat as a pancake – as is Norfolk. The name is a perfect oxymoron.
Progress is inevitable, and we must all go with it or go bush. We can’t all go bush because then bush would become town. If we are to live in close proximity to each other, and that’s the way it’s heading, we will have to be more tolerant of the aspects of progress which we don’t much like.
