A report by the National Council of Women recommended more houses and fewer flats be built in Canberra, winning praise from civic leaders on this day in 1959.
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The report showed that 43 per cent of households of two or more people living in flats in Canberra would move immediately to any suburb to secure a home of their own.
A further 17 per cent would like to move into a house if they could choose the area in which they would live.
The chairman of the ACT Advisory council and several council members said the survey was a great service to the community.
They said authorities should take note of the recommendations in the report.
ACT representative in the federal House of Representatives Jim Fraser said the Australian pattern of life was in individual homes and that pattern should be followed in the national capital.
He said mathematicians and planners who emphasised population density were wrong.
He said many people living in flats had "no greater desire than to get out of them into homes of their own" calling a The Canberra Times headline titled "The Prisoners of the Flats" apt.
"Obviously the great majority of those now living in the flats are people who accepted them only because they were desperate for a place to house a family," he said.
The report also indicated that the views expressed by the ACT Council on the need to increase the rate of home-building had substantial public backing.
Business and Professional Women's delegate Mrs Dalgarno said the speedy building of flats in Canberra would fulfil a pressing need.