Auckland Plan: first thoughts

As I discussed this morning, the Auckland Plan was notified for consultation today. The whole plan can be read here, while a list of sections and chapters can be read here. While the plan is a 250-odd page tome, it follows in the steps of the London Spatial Plan by summarising most of what the plan discusses in one somewhat complex map: A more zoomed out version of the map, showing the whole Auckland region, can be found on page 9 of this document. More information on the numbers in the map above is outlined below: Before I move on to discuss some of the details of the plan, there are a few things in the map above that are noteworthy, particularly in comparison to what was hinted at in the “Auckland Unleashed” discussion document.

• There seems to be quite a lot less greenfield ‘sprawl’ development proposed in this plan than the Auckland Unleashed document. In particular, the details of the plan suggest that the “Rural Urban Boundary”, which will replace the Metropolitan Urban Limit as the ‘fence’ around Auckland will be much stronger and more difficult to shift in the future. This is definitely not a plan that encourages much urban sprawl.
•  While ‘future rail’ is proposed for the City Rail Link and Rail to the Airport (and the Avondale-Southdown Line), a future rail link to the North Shore is left a bit more open, as just part of the Rapid Transit Network. One would assume this means it could either be in bus or rail form, although the transport chapter does mention ensuring any future crossing (which the Council strongly wants to be a tunnel) should provide for rail.
• There seems to be a good mix between centre-based and corridor-based intensification. Many of the corridors on the isthmus (Dominion Rd, Manukau Rd, New North Rd, Great North Rd) are the areas that I suspect might prove to be most attractive for significant residential intensification. You can already see that happening with apartment buildings popping up along Great North Road around Grey Lynn and along New North Road around Kingsland.
• A fairly small number of ‘metropolitan centres’ are proposed as the main ‘secondary’ growth nodes after the CBD. It’s interesting to see that Westgate is considered one, but Henderson isn’t. Papakura is, but Onehunga isn’t. Sylvia Park is, but Glen Innes and Panmure aren’t.
• Major intensification is proposed along the Te Atatu peninsula, yet the Northwest Busway isn’t really being considered as a key transport project.
• None of the main centres for development on the North Shore are adjacent to the Northern Busway (except for Sunnynook, which isn’t considered to be a major growth node).

Chapter 8 of the Plan is a particularly interesting read, focusing on Urban Auckland and how population growth will be managed largely within the existing urban boundaries. The first few paragraphs of this chapter provide a useful overview of the issues being faced:

Auckland’s population growth projections are dramatic. We expect between 700,000 and 1 million new residents in Auckland over the next 30 years. If Auckland continues to grow as it has in the past with its suburban settlement patterns, then we will require approximately 32,000 hectares of new land.

Given the environmental consequences and wide range of costs associated with a larger, more sprawling city, including costs of transport, water and wastewater infrastructure, Auckland’s challenge is to create opportunities for a more intensive type of living and working environment. However, intensive living and mixed-use developments have had a chequered past in Auckland, and there is some mistrust at a community level that we can deliver desirable intensive urban environments. The fact is, well designed, quality schemes are possible. 

Interestingly, some of Auckland’s more intensively developed suburban housing is in Ponsonby and Freemans Bay, showing that more intensive living can have highly desirable qualities and still provide the lifestyle choices that Aucklanders want. More recent examples of quality intensive housing (e.g. the Stonefields development at Mt Wellington) also highlight the fact that intensive housing can include a range of housing types, from single houses on a single site to apartments. This example also demonstrates that developments can be 2-4 storeys and still achieve increased densities.

It will certainly be a key task of  the Auckland Plan and perhaps more particular, the Unitary Plan, to find ways to encourage high-quality intensification to occur in a way that makes financial sense for developers and can also provide a wider range of housing options – and prices – for residents of Auckland. As the plan explains later on, there are a multitude of reasons why Auckland hasn’t been building enough housing in recent years, and we need to tackle each and every one of those reasons to make housing more affordable. The proposed changes to Auckland’s housing mix over the next few decades are outlined in the table below: The plan quite cleverly picks off a few centres to focus efforts on over the next few years – the ones that were discussed a few weeks back. Takapuna, Onehunga, Hobsonville, New Lynn, the City Centre, Tamaki, Pukekohe and Warkworth (really not so keen on that one) are priorities for the next few years. I think that the Unitary Plan will be the other huge opportunity, as one would assume that zoning restrictions in many of the areas highlighted for further development will be relaxed in that Plan.

I’ll go into the details of the part of the Plan that relates to the City Centre in a future post – but of course there’s the obligatory pretty picture of a tram running up Queen St to keep us all happy: I think overall I’m generally pretty happy with what the plan says about land-use planning – with a few minor tweaks such as focusing a bit more intensification around various busway stations (like Smales Farm & Akoranga), probably not including Warkworth as a satellite centre (it’s not on the rail network and is surrounded by a pretty fragile environment), and also getting a bit more clarity on where urban expansion will and will not happen (the words of the plan suggest there will be lots of land for development, the maps suggest very little land will be set aside).

In terms of transport, there’s an overall map of the transport system in 2040 – which obviously forms part of the holistic map I included at the start of this post: The City Rail Link is obviously considered to be the key transport project that underpins most of what’s detailed in the Auckland Plan, and the document provides us with a useful reminder of what effect the project will have on rail travel times to the city centre: Of course without the CRL we are forever stuck with having trains running at no more than one every 10 minutes, so the CRL will reduce wait times for trains by enabling them to operate at higher frequencies (and with less overcrowding).

There’s quite a bit of focus on an additional harbour crossing, which I think is probably unnecessary until the very end of the the time period covered by the plan. The plan considers that it’s unlikely we’ll see rail north of the crossing (in other words, anything beyond what I described in this post) before 2040. My idea of building the rail connection between Midtown and Takapuna before any road crossing will be something to mention in my submission on the Plan I think. I would also obviously advocate pushing back (or cancelling) the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” project from the proposed timeframe of before 2020 for the section south of Warkworth, and between 2020 and 2030 for the section north of Warkworth.

The complete set of transport projects in the plan ends up being pretty eye-wateringly huge, and probably the result of “this one or that one – just chuck them both in” thinking from the Council. I suspect that some tough decisions will end up having to be made over the time period of the plan – especially if the Council’s hopes of additional revenue streams don’t quite work out (as I suspect they probably won’t): As a final point to note, I’m extremely happy to see that there’s some strong direction in the draft Plan that parking regulations will be completely overhauled in future planning documents: Overall I would probably give the plan around an 8-8.5 out of 10. There are a few tweaks that I think should be made before the draft plan becomes a final plan. I will explore those matters in a bit more detail in future posts, as well as looking at the other plans that were released for consultation today – particularly the City Centre Master Plan and the Waterfront Plan.

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