Urban Sprawl: further thoughts

My post the other day on the Productivity Commission’s housing affordability report generated a number of really good comments – but also prompted me to have some further thoughts on the issue. But before I get onto that, the excellent Bob Dey Property Report makes some criticisms of the study too that are worth commenting on:

The difference of opinion between central & local government on whether Auckland should have an urban boundary is well known, but the commission’s calculations before reaching the conclusion that Auckland needs to make more land available – and preferably 20-year supply – are remarkably poor.

Equally poor is the assertion that Auckland should make adequate supplies of land for greenfield & intensive housing available, without any consideration of how you would encourage intensive when you’re supplying far cheaper land for stand-alone homes, and without any consideration of how the existing markets – for housing and for finance – would accommodate the supply of land at sharply lower prices.

This matter of supply, and the pricing of it, is a central question which the commission has failed to address, let alone try to answer.

This is similar to one of the key criticisms that I have of the report – which I could summarise by asking the question: “did they actually read the Auckland Spatial Plan?” The reason I ask such a basic (and cheeky) question, is because the report seems to ignore the incredibly obvious fact that the Auckland Plan actually provides for a lot of urban expansion. Here’s what the Plan’s summary document says:

The Development Strategy contains policies to maintain our rural and urban distinction. It promotes urban intensification and carefully managed peripheral growth.

A high growth scenario of an extra 1 million people living in Auckland in 30 years, means an extra 400,000 dwellings. Of these, 300,000 dwellings can be accommodated within the 2010 Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL) through intensification. This equates to a 75:25 split between growth in existing urban areas and growth in new greenfield land (currently classified as rural land) and rural satellite towns. Existing greenfield areas are already identified (“in the pipeline”) or under development within the 2010 MUL. This will provide capacity for around 30,000 new dwellings. These areas will generally be developed before new greenfields are released.

To accommodate the shortfall of 100,000 dwellings and business and employment growth by 2040, around 5,000 – 6,000 hectares of new, undeveloped greenfield land will be needed. Areas for greenfield development are identified for further investigation (see Maps D.1 and D.2, red dotted lines around areas for investigation), and will fall within a new Rural Urban Boundary (RUB) that will replace the MUL.

The release of greenfields land will be staged within the RUB to meet market demand, and is supported by policies to ensure:

• there is always 5 years’ available land which is zoned for residential development and serviced for water and waste water (“unconstrained capacity”) and a further 15 years capacity planned
• there is a forward supply of unconstrained business land capacity, earmarked for particular purposes (especially Group 1 industrial land).

Future growth and development will be supported by a suite of tools to enable the desired change and ensure delivery is timely and well-executed.

If we add together the greenfield capacity for 30,000 dwellings within the existing urban limits and the 100,000 dwellings proposed to be located outside the urban limits, we get 130,000 total dwellings by 2040 that are planned to be located outside the current urban area. That’s quite a lot of urban expansion or sprawl.

Where will this sprawl go? Well the Auckland Plan provides some answers to that question too – in the areas shown in yellow below as well as through growing a number of satellite towns like Pukekohe and Warkworth: The yellow areas look pretty small in the map above, but once you put them together you get some idea about the level of urban expansion proposed: Another way to get an idea about how big an area 130,000 units will encompass is to look at the number of dwellings in the old council areas. This is shown in the table below (data from 2006 census): You can see that 130,000 dwellings is approximately the total of adding together Manukau City, Papakura District and Franklin District in 2006. At two and a half people per dwelling, it’s around 325,000 people (not far off the urban population of Christchurch or Wellington) living outside the current urban area.

And that’s not enough sprawl. Apparently.

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