Auckland Plan launched

I spent most of today at the launch of the Auckland spatial plan. Somewhat oddly (although understandably I suppose) the actual plan wasn’t released until right at the end of the day, and most of the day was spent exploring some of the ideas people have about what should be in various aspects of the plan. While some of the speakers were a bit disappointing – continuing to expound 1960s thinking – others were quite interesting and the discussion workshops explored some interesting ideas.

In terms of the plan itself, the whole thing can be read here. There’s a lot of information, options, discussion and so forth here that I haven’t had the chance to dig through – but overall my general feeling is that it’s quite good. The two sections that I find myself most interested in are “People and Place” and “People and Infrastructure“: which look at the big questions of how Auckland should grow, and how Aucklanders can get around in 20-30 years time.

Looking first at how Auckland can grow, the Plan’s discussion document includes a couple of interesting diagrams identifying options. In terms of how the city may intensify, I think there’s a useful approach to split the development centres into different types – which is shown below: I quite like this approach actually. A big problem with implementing the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy was that many of the centres of intensification simply didn’t happen. There were obviously a variety of reasons for this: out of date district plans, community opposition to change, infrastructure working against the strategy rather than with it, and whether the market supported such development or not. Splitting the centres into different types recognises these problems, and by splitting the town centres into those where the market will make it happen and centres where the market isn’t there offers a good pointer that public intervention may be needed in these “regeneration areas” in order to achieve the outcomes sought. Obviously the thing I find slightly scary, as someone who’s not a particularly big fan of urban sprawl, are the potential areas of urban expansion to the south and to the northwest (as well as a little area between Takanini and Flat Bush). The area to the northwest could potentially be OK as a growth area – as long as we integrate that with transport upgrades like the Northwest Busway. To the south, the area around Drury could also make sense: as long as electrification is extended further south. The areas further to the southwest scare me a bit more: they’d put pressure on for a bridge between Weymouth and Karaka that would have huge impacts on Weymouth and these branches of the Manukau Harbour. Also, the recent development on the Hingaia Peninsula has turned out to be the worst form of urban sprawl imaginable: and I hold little hope any further development would be different.

Turning to transport, it’s very heartening to see that the Auckland Council has “stuck to its guns” in the face of the government’s 1960s transport vision, and put out a spatial plan with a very strong focus on public transport options. Here’s a good map showing the projects considered to be of regional priority over the next 20-30 years:

It’s certainly good to see a lot more blue than red on this map!

I need to have a look through the plan in a bit more detail before developing a full opinion on the discussion document, but obviously over time this is meant to be just a starting point for debate about what should go into the Auckland Plan and what shouldn’t. There will be debate over issues like whether the city should grow in a compact manner or whether it should sprawl, whether we should have a public transport focus or a roading focus to the transport system. I’ll look to formulate my feedback in the relatively near future and share it with others, but my main hope is that people do get involved. The powers to be are listening, so now’s the opportunity to talk about the Auckland you want in 20-30 years time and how we get there.

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