One of the most concerning aspects of how the structure of local government in Auckland is shaping up is the structural separation that will be created between those in charge of land-use planning (a fairly large chunk of the policy and strategy part of the future Auckland Council) and those in charge of transportation planning (the completely separate Auckland Transport CCO). I have a real problem with the structural separation between these two agencies, as I think the inter-connectedness of land-use and transport is under-valued in Auckland, leading to many of the problems that the city currently faces.
Making matters even worse is the part of the most recent Super City Bill which repeals the 2004 Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Act. While a lot of this Act was based around the establishment of ARTA, and it’s obvious those bits need to go, fundamentally the LGAAA was concerned about ensuring better alignment between land-use planning and transportation. In particular, it gave legal effect to the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy and required councils to make plan changes that gave effect to that strategy. This was all done on the basis that ‘where’ and ‘how’ Auckland grows needed to be linked in with the transportation network, as well as future additions to the transportation network.
This is what a “Key Issues” paper that formed part of this process had to say about the effect of the LGAAA and how it relates to the Growth Concept included in the Regional Growth Strategy:
In response to the LGAAA, the Auckland Regional Council undertook a lengthy process to alter the Regional Policy Statement through Plan Change 6. While this plan change is still subject to a number of appeals, it strongly guides closer integration between land-use and transport – generally by trying to focus development in areas that have good public transport access.
So in short, there is a reasonably decent amount of effort that has gone into aligning land-use and transport planning better over the past few years. Unfortunately, over that same time period we have continued to build motorways that encourage sprawl, and haven’t really shifted the thinking of transportation policy towards something that will support our land-use plans, hence the general problem that the Regional Growth Strategy has had mixed results. This was noted in the ARC’s “State of the Auckland Region” Report, which said the following about the implementation of the Growth Strategy over the past decade:
Fast-forward to the current legislative changes proposed for Auckland, and this whole “Spatial Plan” pops up in the Third SuperCity Bill as a high-order guiding document for Auckland’s future growth and development. The Spatial Plan seems like it will be a replacement for the Regional Growth Strategy although its legislative force is rather unknown at this point. The Spatial Plan is generally a good idea I reckon, seeking to align land-use development with transport and other infrastructure investment. But I do wonder how it differs from the provisions outlined in the LGAAA, that are slowly (but surely) being given effect to through Plan Change 6 to the ARPS and the various accompanying District Plan changes going on throughout Auckland. It is either reinventing the wheel, or (being a bit more cynical) trying to effectively go through the same process but end up with a different outcome about how Auckland should grow than was worked out the first time around. Given the general distaste for urban limits, the second option seems fairly likely.
But this is all real high-order strategic stuff. What about when we get down to the real nitty gritty? How is Auckland’s future local government structure going to go about integrating land-use and transportation planning? How are we going to make sure land-use planning decisions take full account of their transport effects and (perhaps even more importantly) how are we going to assess the land-use effects of the transportation policy decisions that we make? This is where I get worried.
From November this year onwards, all the transport parts of the current councils are going to be split off from the rest of the council organisation and thrown into the Auckland Transport CCO – along with ARTA. While in many respects this will be good for getting transport stuff done (although I have a lot of concerns about the detailing surrounds its set up, as I have repeatedly noted in previous posts) one thing that I think may well be lost is the integration between land-use and transport, because they’re going to be undertaken by two different organisations. Every time the Council wants to put together some sort of plan for improving an area I worry that they’ll be stymied by the fact that “they can’t do transport” and Auckland Transport may not agree with what they want to do. And, as should have been quite clear from my post the other day about Mt Albert, unless you can “do transport” when talking about upgrading anywhere or changing any land-use planning documents, it’s a damn waste of time.
It would seem as though this magical Spatial Plan is meant to ensure proper integration between land-use, transport and the various other aspects that go into urban planning. However, there is no set timeframe for when the Spatial Plan must become operative, there is currently no legislative power to the Spatial Plan and it seems to be aimed at high-order strategic stuff, not day-to-day aspects. I don’t exactly know how this is going to be fixed without completely getting rid of Auckland Transport and rolling transport back into the council’s operations – but something needs to happen to ensure we integrate transport and planning better than we have done so in the past, not worse.
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