Letters to the Editor: Town Belt, climate change, respect for all

A 1.8km section of Dunedin’s Town Belt has been closed for three months. Photo: Peter McIntosh

Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including praise for Town Belt trial, climate change and the importance of respecting all races.

Finally, some love for derided Town Belt trial

Let's not get too worked up about the seating placed on Queens Dr as part of the trial to turn a stretch of the Town Belt into a pedestrian and cyclist-only corridor.

Rapid prototyping involves creating low-cost, low-risk versions of an idea so it can be tested, observed and improved before committing significant time and resources. Once associated mainly with product and software design, it is now widely used in urban design and planning, where uncertainty and human behaviour call for an iterative approach. The emphasis is on learning fast, using what is at hand.

Rather than focusing on the metal stools, we might ask what kinds of seating could work in this location, and what activities might be supported. What forms of play could be imagined at the north end of the corridor? And what experiences might the paths that cross Queens Dr lead to?

A prototype or trial is not a final statement. It’s the start of a conversation.

Dr Mark McGuire
Dunedin
[Dr McGuire is a former Design Studies lecturer.]

Party on

OK boomers, settle down. I am so sick and tired of reading and listening to some of you, speaking down about changes in our city and the latest one is the ‘‘controversial’’ road closure on Queens Drive.

Well, as a young person who is 23 years old and lives in the area I actually quite like it. I walk it every day and I see families, bikers, joggers and dog walkers using it, who seem, to my mind, enjoying the trail.

As you get older, I understand you don't like change. But that's life. Please put your anger and frustration elsewhere then a damn road closure for families to enjoy. Don't be a party pooper.

Jack Hanan
Belleknowes

Respect your mother

Your editorial 24.1.26 makes some good points:

‘‘It is finally, definitively, time for this government and its successors over the next handful of years to wake up and realise climate change is the most important issue facing us all.’’

And: ‘‘Our continued existence is under threat.’’ Exactly.

And yet, nothing is going to change, because the changes would have to be so drastic - like closing all service stations immediately, and banning key industries such as tourism, livestock farming, mining and most forms of transport, land, sea and air, that any government trying to enact them would collapse at once.

Let’s not blame the governments. The root cause of our problems is that there are too many of us on this planet, with the human population climbing toward 9 billion.

Mother Nature is working hard to bring the number down - or erase it completely. And what that mother wants that mother gets.

Aulis Alen
Manapouri

Movie madness

I was quite wrong.

When I saw the Avatar movie for the first time I came away thinking it was about a ruthless, rapacious mining company intent on destroying the environment on which the Na’avi people depend, in order to make lots of money.

But now Santana and Shane Jones have shown me the error of my ways. It’s actually about a philanthropic company bringing economic development to an empty place inhabited by a few ignorant Ni’imby people and the destruction of their habitat was minor and temporary.

John Drummond
Glenleith

Powerful memories invoked by memorial piece

I was reminded by Leora Hirsh’s article on Holocaust remembrance day (Opinion ODT 27.1.26) that we should make sure that history does not repeat itself and that anti-Semitism is a virus still very much alive.

Because I am 83 years old, World War 2 and the Holocaust was never far from my mind when I was growing up. When I was around 5 or 6 years old I was staying with my family at a friend’s house and sleeping in the den and came across pictures of the liberation of Dachau taken by the owner of the house when he was a Jewish-American soldier and one of the first people to enter the concentration camp during its liberation.

Those of us of European descent should remember that we've been practising anti-Jewishness or anti-Semitism for over 1000 years. Jews were kept behind ghetto walls and exiled from Spain and England and were persecuted in Poland and the Russia.

The massacre on Hanukkah at Bondi Beach frightens me and reminds me of what hatred can lead people to do.

So what lessons do I want to remember from the Holocaust? I want to remember any attack on one ethnic group is not just an attack on that ethnic group it is an attack on all humanity.

When we attack any human community we attack all humanity. We must never accept or excuse genocide or ethnic cleansing anywhere in any country and never seek excuses for genocide or ethnic cleansing.

We must never never turn our eyes away.

Marvin Hubbard
North East Valley