The Q & A show on TVNZ yesterday morning looked at the vexed issue of housing affordability. Guests Bernard Hickey and Murray Sherwin agreed wholeheartedly that something needs to be done. That’s no surprise really – you have to be living under a rock to not know that housing affordability is a significant problem for Auckland. In recent months we’ve seen the affordability problem spread from home-buying into rentals – with rental prices of inner areas going particularly ballistic.
Of course, when it comes down to the question of “what can we do to improve housing affordability?” things start to get muddied a bit. There are so many questions:
- Do we allow more land to be developed as greenfields – or does that just mean sprawl and excessively high transport costs for both the people living there and infrastructure costs for Council and the government?
- Do we make intensification easier – but how can we do that in a way that works better than what has been done in the past (leaky buildings and chicken coop apartments)?
- What about where people actually want to live – do they want apartments or the “quarter acre dream”?
- If house prices are so high, then how come the market isn’t building more houses?
- How much of the debate is about land cost compared to construction costs?
- Why is it that most new housing built is at the high end of the market, and will building more McMansions in Flat Bush really make a difference to affordability in places where prices are increasing the fastest – like the inner suburbs?
The commentators on this morning’s show suggested a few options:
Speaking on TV ONE’s Q A this morning, business commentator Bernard Hickey and Productivity Commission chair Murray Sherwin said councils and central Government need to take urgent action to bring costs down, whether that be introducing land taxes or opening up more land for development…
…Hickey said the Government needs to consider the “political hot potato” of taxes to reduce the value of land.
“If you really want to come from left field and actually make a difference to land prices, that’s one of the things you could do,” he said.
“Something needs to be done from a central and local government point of view to improve affordability, particularly in Auckland. Otherwise it’s going to continue to be a structural weakness in our economy and the cause of, frankly, social strife.”
Sherwin said councils need to work with developers to make more land available and build low cost houses.
“That can come about by more greenfields development, so more urban expansion, if you like, or intensification within existing limits. I’m perfectly relaxed about which way it goes, but whatever we do, we need to be able to provide affordable houses, so that means lower-cost houses than we’re doing now,” he said.
And then some ideas from Labour’s Annette King:
Labour’s housing spokesperson Annette King has said the Government should be thinking about big building schemes with public-private partnerships.
Sherwin said that is an idea worth considering, with research showing there are few New Zealand companies that build houses on a large scale.
“The analysis we had showed, I think, five companies in New Zealand that build more than 100 houses a year, and about 4600 building companies that do more than 1 house a year mostly. It’s in that sort of order. So we just don’t get the economies of scale,” he said.
“We don’t do large developments, and there are very few entities, very few companies that have the balance sheet that will withstand the costs involved in putting up a large subdivision of the sort that you see in Australia, the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere.”
I’m more interested in the land cost part of the debate (rather than construction costs), because it generally relates quite strongly to questions of whether Auckland should grow through intensification or sprawl – discussion which has a huge transport impact. As I noted in this previous post, within the land-cost side of the debate there are two lines of argument – both of which have some merit:
- Increase the supply of housing across the board, because increasing supply should bring prices down. As most new housing tends to be at the top end of the market this is likely to mean building more high-value housing (unless a compelling effort is made to change this) in the hope that the increase in supply will lower prices across the board.
- Specifically focus on increasing the supply of affordable housing. As most new housing constructed is not “affordable” a concerted effort is likely to be needed to ensure the market provides this particular type of housing.
I tend to think that if we are wanting to make a difference to affordability in the short term, then the focus needs to be on the second option as outlined above. More housing in a particular price range needs to be provided. Of course the inevitable next question is “where?” And this is where things get interesting and we inevitably find ourselves in the sprawl versus intensification debate. Greenfield development is arguably quicker and easier than intensification, banks seem to be more willing to lend money to the construction of single detached housing than for brownfield redevelopment and the development industry is more comfortable building this typology because it’s what they’ve always done. Furthermore, in terms of construction cost it’s actually much cheaper than building apartments – on a per square metre basis you can build a luxury home cheaper than a fairly basic apartment building. Unless the developer can sell the apartment they’re building for a price that probably pushes it beyond being “affordable” then they’re going to make a loss on the project – so it won’t happen.
On the flip side, greenfield development inevitably means higher transport costs for those living in these peripheral areas – as well as significantly higher costs in providing infrastructure to service them. My previous post noted the massive additional infrastructure cost of serving peripheral areas – where should that cost lie?
If the developer has to wear this cost, then they’ll pass it on in the sale price and likely push it beyond being “affordable”. If the Council needs to wear the cost, then basically it’s just a giant subsidy for sprawl. Furthermore, there’s always the question of whether people really want to live out in the back of beyond. Melbourne’s new peripheral housing developments don’t seem particularly popular:
MELBOURNE’S urban fringe has been swamped with 35,000 unsold homes, prompting warnings the glut could trigger a further slump in property values, and fuelling criticism of the Baillieu government’s ”crazy” decision to expand the city’s boundary.
The stockpile of unwanted housing in many of Melbourne’s newest suburbs has led to warnings by some planning experts that ”suburban ghettos” could emerge on the city’s fringe, creating a social divide.
Of the record 55,290 unsold homes in Melbourne in June – the highest number of any capital city in Australia – most were concentrated in about 50 suburbs on Melbourne’s periphery, where more than 60 per cent of all unsold homes in Victoria are located, according to data from SQM Research.
As demand has fallen over the past year, the number of outer suburban homes with ”For Sale” signs has jumped by almost 40 per cent.
Factors thought to be driving the surge in home listings include mortgage stress, poor infrastructure and transport services in outer-lying areas and limited local job opportunities.
I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to imagine Flat Bush, Karaka, Silverdale North and other recent peripheral areas ending up in a similar position if a heap of land is opened up for greenfield development.
Perhaps what this all actually means is that there is no silver bullet for improving housing affordability. We obviously need to make intensification a bit easier, but maybe more at a low-scale (which is why it’s so heartening to hear that the Council is thinking about getting rid of density limits in residential areas to enable the splitting of existing houses) than just thinking we’re going to end up with a whole pile of apartment buildings to save the day. Also, it seems like the problem isn’t going to solve itself without some sort of public-body intervention – either in the form of subsidising infrastructure to service peripheral areas of sprawl, or to make up the difference so that apartment/terraced house building in the inner areas can make financial sense for developers. Or for the government and/or council to get more directly involved in development, with the financial risk that brings.
And that will really be the crunch issue. How much are we really concerned about housing affordability? Enough to spend some serious public money on making a difference – or not?
Processing...
As you said it’s all about demand & supply, and there are several factors affecting the Auckland housing market at the moment –
1. People leaving Christchurch has increased demand
2. The leaky buildings disaster has effectively taken some of the supply out of the market
3. In response to leaky buildings, the building consent process has become expensive & time-consuming
4. Existing homeowners are doing their best to resist intensification
Not much can be done about 1 & 2, but there are opportunities to improve 3 & 4.
If sprawl is so expensive then how on earth did we ever manage to build those country towns?..of which are the ultimate expression of sprawl.
Did you include the cost of demolish-and-rebuild with intensified development in the comparison? Very expensive.
The idea of greater transport costs increasing with sprawl is a myth because facilities follow the the sprawl – transport demand is largely localised to the fringes. Also you can just buy a smaller car – or a scooter.
Just level the economic playing field and get rid of the MUL’s. But it’s not going to happen. Something very strange is going on in New Zealand politics. Young people just need to get the hell out of this loser shit hole. That’s my honest recommendation.
Yes Andrew and they are, to places like Melbourne which is doubling its size from 4 to 8 million entirely within existing urban limits, why? Because it smarter economically and because the resultant place is better, more dynamic, more exciting: Less of a ‘shithole’ you might say. Strange that you seem to think the the young want a more dispersed urban form when all the evidence shows that when they leave they go to much more intense cities elsewhere in the world. So how will more dreary suburbs miles from anywhere with nothing but an oh-so-tidy huddle of identical chain stores set in a sea of car parking do anything to keep the young interested in staying? And what job opportunities? A lawn mowing round or check-out at Pak ‘n’ Save? This is a world for retirees and the timid. Good luck with that idea.
“Strange that you seem to think the the young want a more dispersed urban form when all the evidence shows that when they leave they go to much more intense cities elsewhere in the world. So how will more dreary suburbs miles from anywhere with nothing but an oh-so-tidy huddle of identical chain stores set in a sea of car parking do anything to keep the young interested in staying? And what job opportunities?”
If you are so confident in demand for intense city living, then why dont you support liberalising development across the board? If people have the choice, there is no need for you or I to presume how they want live, they can make that decision themselves.
Fine by me so long as it is a real level playing field and the state and the city don’t, as they do now, subsidise sprawl with the roll out of services.
Please! If we want to get rid of planning controls and government funded infrastructure entirely, then that would be fantastic. Let people live where and how they chose, let them pay the full costs of their housing choices and we’ll see where the market creates new dwellings. I’m fairly confident it won’t be primarily on large infrastructure and land hungry suburban fringe development.
You mean remove the MUL/RUB entirely? We have established that our market only has a vision for one kind of construction, and if people cannot find what they want then they’ll have to take what they can get.
Our housing “market” is not functional. Pretty much all housing constructed during the decade from about 1997 is tarred with the leaky building brush, whether or not the specific property is affected. This includes a huge amount of medium- and high-density housing. Consequently, people are leery about buying medium- and high-density housing in this country, regardless of what they would ultimately like. People moving from overseas would often quite like something in the inner city, but as soon as they start hearing that it’s leaky this and leaky that they, quite reasonably, run a mile.
Plus, the Council has to support whatever gets built. The Council is entirely within its rights to want to constrain what gets built because the market is also not functional (and not allowed to be functional) in capturing the huge infrastructure costs associated with sprawl. The Government has even less capacity to capture the costs it gets socked with as a consequence of sprawl, and the current lot are so loathe to touch taxes that we get stuck trying to pay for ever-more-expensive infrastructure from the same sack of money. As one example, development around the Te Atatu area has necessitated the construction of a new fire station. Previously there was a single-appliance station on the Peninsula, with volunteers. Now there’s a two-appliance station in Te Atatu South, one appliance crewed 24/7 by career fire fighters and the other crewed by volunteers. It’s over a million dollars a year to keep that station running, almost all of it the wages for the 16 career fire fighters, and it’s only necessary because of population growth. There’s talk of expanding the Yellow Watch (Monday-Friday, 0700-1700) career cover at Silverdale into a full 24/7 watch system as a consequence of the growth in that area, and that will result in a massive expansion of the wage bill for that station.
Look at Ormiston High School, which cost $50m. That’s there only because of the need to provide appropriate levels of available educational facilities to the Flat Bush area. Without that development, that’d be $50m of capital available for use elsewhere in the education system, such as expanding existing schools to cope with the additional students without having to add a full complement of supporting staff such as an executive team, facilities management, a new library, etc.
You can’t always move that easily. If you get another job across the city are you going to pack up your family and move them closer. Make them abandon their school, friends, social circles purely to get a better job. What if your partner has a job in one location and you have a job on the opposite side of the city. Does one of you resign and try and find a job closer to the other? Do you flip a coin and one of you has to do the hour and a half commute? Do you compromise and find somewhere in between? I know people who commute from Howick to Albany everyday. It takes them 45 minutes on a good day and they have to arrive at work before 7:30am to be guaranteed a good day. They can’t move to Albany as their partners have jobs in East Auckland. Their children go to school locally. Their social activities take place there. They don’t fit the live/play/work locally mold that you want to force everyone to do. The truth is that people aren’t rational agents and sprawl advocates can’t get their heads around it.
Yes, there is considerable friction within the urban labour market. The couple co-location problem is one such example which can contribute to longer commutes than one would expect …
Your recommendation suggests a bias of some sort… However, that would also be another solution to lowering demand for houses. The idea that travelling further costs more is a myth? Are you daft? Did you read that before you typed it?
Ari what Andrew seems to be lobbying for is the ‘Edge City’ model of places like Phoenix; the almost centre-less totally auto-dependant collection of low density suburbs drifting outward into the Arizona desert. All turnpikes and big box retail on a featureless landscape and one of the place hardest hit by the subprime crunch. A worse model for Auckland would be hard to find; sure Phoenix grew rapidly during the cheap oil and easy credit years but now it is clear that most of that growth was just a massive Ponzi property scheme; now bust. Hard to give those houses away and the desert is drifting back. Why we would want to destroy valuable farmland around Auckland like that is beyond understanding. Greater Phoenix has the population of NZ on a land area bigger than Switzerland, Auckland is on a much more constrained geography, long and thin and not easily suited to this model, even if it was a good idea. Not thought through.
“Greater Phoenix has the population of NZ on a land area bigger than Switzerland”
Greater Phoenix Metropolitan Area is mostly a huge expanse of uninhabited desert. A quick check of a map shows that the urban Phoenix area is about 60km by 80km. That is way smaller than Switzerland. And it isn’t much bigger than Auckland, which must extend 50km from Papakura to Albany. If Phoenix has three times the population of Auckland and isn’t significantly bigger in area, then it is possible that Phoenix is more densely populated than Auckland.
It’s like Mt Isa “city” which has boundaries about the size of Europe.
Well if you want to count the greater population figure 4.3m you have to include the land area that these people occupy too: So the metro area of Pheonix including Scottsdale, Tempe, and Mesa has a pop of 4.3m and covers a land area of 17 000 square miles. Auckland is denser, although I’m sure many of our more recent crappy suburbs have a similar density because they are born of the same idea…. But unlike Ak Pheonix is all sub and no urbs. And is the ideal model for people like the late and unlamented Owen McShane and the arch sprawl advocate Joel Kotkin. The number of defaults on McMansions in Phoenix means it should probably change its name to Foreclosure, Arizona. To build that kind of city in that climate needs untold quantities of water, aircon, and petrol; and none of those resources are as cheap and easy to secure as they were in the second half of last century. It’s over.
17,000sq miles sounds way too high. That’d be an area of 270km x 160km, all covered in buildings. Like I said, the metro area covers some huge areas of unoccupied desert. Nick’s figure of 3,276sq km sounds more reasonable.
I’ve been to Phoenix. The desert near by is spectacular. It was freakin hot though.
Patrick, I see that you’re one of the blog owners, so I guess you can say whatever you like, but may I politely suggest that phrases such as “the late and unlamented Owen McShane” detract from the debate. Apart from it simply being nasty, I recall my high school English teacher teaching us that ad hominems are not helpful in logical debate. On the other hand, “arch sprawl advocate” is quite clever (although I’d never heard of Joel Kotkin until today).
Source: StrapHanger by Taras Grescoe page 86, not sure what his source is. Interestingly also says that at the end of WWII the pop was only 65 000 so Pheonix sure is a boomburb. Those big sprawly sunbelt cities that so grew in the last half of the 20th C are really built by aircon which in turn relies on cheap electricity… I bet it was hot, takes a hell of a lot of water out of the Colorado River too.
Auckland has a very long an convoluted shape, it certainly isn’t square or round. The urbanised area of Auckland covers 531km2. If it were a square, it would be 23km by 23km.
Phoenix has an urbanised area of 3,276km2. If it were square it would be 57km by 57km. That’s about six times the urban area for three times the population, or in other words Auckland is twice as dense as Phoenix.
Just a couple of pedant points,
Be careful with your use of that data in breaking up the costs of developing dwellings for inner/outer suburbs and saying that these are either costs born by the developer or the council….
Digging into the report which that table is from, most of the “transport” costs are direct costs on the property owner in the form of vehicle purchase and operation costs, along with the cost of travel time,,,,,,
They are not costs that are included in the direct price of a property, either charged by the developer or indirectly paid by the council..
This is not saying that these “transport costs” are not valid to include as part of an overall cost, but they are not going to skew the upfront price of a new property by as much as that table would suggest….
also those figures are are 50 year NPV, again, valid for long term analysis, but not something that will impact on the capital price paid to develop a bunch of properties..
Thanks for that greenwelly – at first glance those numbers looked way off, ie $323k per section (inner) and $684k/section (outer), and in AUD too (so add one-third). I’m puzzled that infrastructure costs are deemed greater for outer development than inner – does this take into account upgrading existing infrastructure, eg sewers and water and power reticulation?
Some years ago I got tired of the daily commute so moved from an outer suburb to an inner one, to a house costing three times as much (and only slightly bigger, but new rather than 25 years old). Much of that additional cost was land value, so I’m not convinced that inner city development is cheaper than suburban development, although there are a lot more cafes and restaurants to choose from, which is a bonus.
Greenwelly, you are confusing the financial with the economic.
And jonno1 the way that the more expensive land can support cheaper dwellings is through multiple units on the one site.
OK thanks Patrick, I confess I hadn’t picked up on “dwelling”, but had assumed “section” as the basic element. I’ve now read through the Australian paper but am no better informed. For a start, 29 of 38 pages of content are devoted to GHG and obesity, with almost nothing to support the other cost elements. What’s that all about? I suppose we can guess what the brief/funding model was!
And despite the focus on GHG and health, if you take those elements out it makes negligible difference to the results, so there’s still nothing to explain the conclusion that fringe development is so much expensive than inner city development, even allowing for differences in density.
Don’t be too quick to dismiss the costs of construction as a factor. Tied up in the comments about small-scale builders proliferating, though not explicitly articulated, is that bespoke housing costs more than mass-produced. People want unique houses, but those also cost more than the same footprint in a mass-produced style. As with anything, mass production of housing brings economies of scale that translate to lower prices. Right now the house normally costs at least 100% of the cost of the land, sometimes 200%. Making the land cheaper won’t make the house any cheaper.
Part of the reason Murray Sherwin is “relaxed” about greenfield or brownfield development is that he knows that cheaper land is only a part of the equation and whatever might drop prices by going greenfield will be balanced out for purchasers in other costs.
The solution is right in our faces – council/government/developer co-operation to develop mid-range housing in brown field sites with thought given to easy access to PT nodes, with the emphasis on high quality 100-120 square metre sized family apartments sold or long term leased at cost with low interest rate government available to first home buyers. Politically though this outcome is almost impossible to imaginine in the current do-nothing neo-liberal insanity that still grips our governing two parties (although Labour will probably be forced to do something if they form a coalition with the Greens after the next election).
National is hopeless. Key and co have their heads in the sand on housing and anyway clearly believe in an ideological solution – that is, the solution to the Auckland housing crisis is for them to do nothing. The market will adjust. Eventually the lobbying power of the traditionally friendly to National Auckland property speculators and developers (as represented every second day in what amounts to their in-house rag the NZ Herald) will see an attack on the RMA and the opening up of more peripheral land for greenfield development.
The second problem as I see it is any major housing initiative by the government to build large numbers of affordable houses will automatically collapse the prices of existing houses, and that means any major government initiative on affordable housing run head long into bitter and implacable resistance from the property owning middle class. This sizeable class controls the media agenda like no other – I challenge anyone who saw how quickly the government collapsed into abject retreat over class sizes when the middle class rose in fury to say I am wrong! Night after night on the 6pm news you’ll see respectable folk whining about lazy people getting government housing “hand outs” while they – industrious, virtuous, self made investors every one of them – are “ruined” because a wicked socialist government has skewed the playing field against them and they now have enormous mortgages on properties that have fallen (FALLEN I TELL YOU! FALLEN! ITS A SCANDAL!) in price.
The idea that any government will wish for the political fallout of affecting the property values in such a negative sense to simply provide housing to politically invisible people who might not bother to even vote is hard to imagine.
And that is why I am not as enthusiastic as you about this:
“…it’s so heartening to hear that the Council is thinking about getting rid of density limits in residential areas to enable the splitting of existing houses…”
The reason density were originally introduced was to do away with the over-crowding and squalor of Victorian slums; Given the current ideological policy settings in this country all getting rid of density limits will achieve is the re-creation of slum conditions as landlords take advantage of the new rules to squeeze more people into the same space.
Interesting point you raise there Sanctuary. Making housing more affordable is synonymous with lowering property values. Perhaps that is why the government isn’t at all interested in doing anything proactive.
I’m not sure if reducing density limits will automatically whisk Auckland back in time to the the industrial revolution, removing electricity, sewerage, reticulated water and telecommunications and putting people in uninsulated shacks next door to coal burning industrial factories. That is what density controls are a reaction to, and they simply aren’t relevant anymore.
Plus the current ‘density’ constraints aren’t actually about population density, they are about dwelling density. For example, my family home used to have six residents in one house. Now my elderly parents live there alone. They’d like to split the upper and lower levels into two dwellings, to let the downstairs to a couple or young family. They can’t because of so called density limits. They are allowed to have six people live there in one dwelling, but not four across two dwellings… so all we get is two people living in a two story house on a quarter acre section. Go figure.
It’s interesting that many of the ‘nappy valley’ starter home areas built on what was the outskirts of Auckland in the 70’s and 80’s are still out of favour and remain affordable. With electrification and busway developments all pointing to dramatically improved commuting from these suburbs, if I was starting out again as a first home buyer, that’s where I’d thinks about putting my money rather than a high density apartment.
“If sprawl is so expensive then how on earth did we ever manage to build those country towns?”
You could ask the same thing about Auckland. My ancestors settled down in what is now the CBD. Some time in the late 1800s they helped create sprawl on College Hill. Almost every home in Auckland is built on what was sprawl at one date or another. They’ve all paid back (or are paying back) their local and central government funded infrastructure in the form of taxes and rates. That is the normal way we fund those services. No one has had to ante up money for a school or local roads before building a home in the past… If they had to in the future then it would only be fair to eliminate the tax and rate components that pay for these things.
You’re equating sprawl with growth there obi, they aren’t the same thing. Sprawl is just one way cities can grow.
I wouldn’t call development on College Hill in the late 1800s sprawl. That would have been compact, intensively built and utilised housing, with local services in walking distance, and horse-tram and easily walkable access to employment in the CBD core. And all car-free of course. How in any way is that sprawl?
Country towns aren’t sprawl until they spread all over the countryside between them to form one big habitation. I grew up in Howick and can remember when Pakuranga was the the farming hinterland that that village served; it is now sprawl with the busiest non-statehighway road in the country. College Hill wasn’t and isn’t sprawl; it is still walking distance to the centre and is actually quite dense. I am all in favour of growing Auckland’s country towns but only if they can remain separate with their own centres and good connections to the big centre and other centres. AA above might agree with me here, but to do that you need really good transit, like our coming rail system and very strong urban limits to those towns, strict green-belts, which I don’t think he understands. These places like say Drury, Kumeu or even Pokeno could have a great leafy and local quality of life with a good local economy but excellent access to the big smoke for education, excitement, and employment. But it can’t be done on the unregulated and highly dispersed auto-dependent model.
I am currently involved with some housing proposals for areas of Auckland and builders are generally still resorting to the thinking that they need only to provide the average family home type housing – i.e min 3 bed double garage etc at around 200- 220m2. That is a very large and consequently expensive home by world standards. While these are generally the current default position – we seriously need to look at the fast changing demographics going forward – single parent, one child families, the fast rise of couples with no kids, ageing population etc. The issue of affordability while complex does have some quick fixes in this regard – we could certainly start to build a greater proportion of smaller houses on a smaller sections. Many people I talk to – because of their lack of wider family needs – do not want 3/4 bedroom homes, neither do they want to live in an apartment – they simply seek a smaller exciting version of the mac-mansion’s being trotted out everywhere. We wonder why we have an affordability problem but we continue to build some of the largest average houses in the western world, while having a particularly and in my view skewed focus on housing at least two cars in a garage as a minimum (theres almost 40m2 in area alone and we haven’t started to house the occupants yet) Mmmm. Councils change to the density requirements would bode well for this
Shanty towns anyone? 😀
One problem with affordability, even if done by the council/government is that it will be seen as very attractive not only by those wanting to get into the property market for the first time but by investors who often have a much stronger financial backing.
There would need to be some pretty strong controls in place to stop any scheme being taken advantage of but that means it would have heavy ongoing administration costs.
Along with improving things like consenting and planning processes, perhaps one thing that could be done is for the council/govt to design a handful of high/medium density houses/buildings that they could then give for free to developers. The idea being that these off the shelf designs instantly meet all criteria and can be built for a known price. That means that anyone wanting to develop a site can just pick one or even a few of these designs knowing the consenting process will be quick and easy.
If building more on the outskirts of town is the solution then why are all the motorways still so busy from those far flung places. There is still heaps of business land around Albany yet it is sitting there empty while thousands pile head towards the CBD. The reality is that people change their jobs more frequently than they change their house so you are not always going to be guaranteed a high paying/high skilled job close to home.
I wouldn’t mind if more green fields were opened up on the provision that the costs of it were truly accounted for and paid by those developments. That means that those places would have to pay for any increase in the demand for infrastructure or services.
And Andrew Atkin Also if you think that this city/country is so bad then why don’t you leave and stop commenting on it.
@Matt L,
perhaps one thing that could be done is for the council/govt to design a handful of high/medium density houses/buildings that they could then give for free to developers. The idea being that these off the shelf designs instantly meet all criteria and can be built for a known price. That means that anyone wanting to develop a site can just pick one or even a few of these designs knowing the consenting process will be quick and easy.
Ever since the whole leaky building problem, councils have become super gun shy and will over regulate themselves to lower future potential liability,,,
Stock home builders like Lockwood find that even within the same council, different inspectors have different interpretations of the Act, let alone with different councils…..
http://www.interest.co.nz/node/58756/property
This is something that the City of Portland has done with some success for some single family home typologies.
Personally I think we should redevelop state housing areas like Northcote, Glen Innes, Panmure and other areas of south Auckland. Most of current state houses don’t meet a lot peoples needs and costly to maintain. What Housing NZ done so far with their redevelopments has been very good the town houses I’ve seen they’ve done are the best I’ve ever seen. It would be a good start
One action England has done is legislated new developments must have a percentage (33% I think) of affordable housing in a new development. NZ “copied” this under Labour but before in force was appealed by National. This would make it compulsory for developers to build cheaper homes (usually smaller) but of course still being required to meet other standards and the developers would want the to be desirable as not selling these would affect the profit margin of the whole build
A moderator or admin may wish to redact your email address from being visible to the whole wide world… [Done, thanks].
I think better use of the suburban land in central Auckland could solve a lot of problems. Suburbs like Mt Eden, Mt Roskill, Pt Chev are under utilised, and if theyre situated close to the central city then they can’t really get away with just having suburban housing. What if you had a system where two 1000m2 back to back properties that are in these areas could agree to sell their respective backyards to the government/developer. The combined backyards could then be developed into quality 2 storey units or similar by the developer. People would buy into it, as they wouldn’t have to fork out for development costs, and natural human greed would mean neighbours with the same ideas would look into it for the cash. Then just make sure the Council has a group of architects ensuring quality design of the new units, and that privacy isn’t degraded. Housing shortage fixed, big savings in infrastructure, local economy expansion, central city boost?
I disagree, the likes of Mt Eden, Mt Roskill and PT Chev are the densest, most walkable and most sustainable suburbs we have. Not sure where you are getting 1,000m2 sections from, most of them are around half that size.
They are literally the last place we have to worry about. There are a heap of green and brown field sites on the ithsmus we can look at before taking away the little back yards of our most compact suburbs.
There are plenty of opportunities in these neighborhoods as well. Duplexes, fourplexes, courtyard sceenarios, etc- typologies that are common in other streetcar suburbs – should be an option.
We should add density everywhere especially in areas where the urban form facilitates it.
I guess I’m trying to say that if Auckland keeps growing at a phenomenal rate, then it has to look at an efficient way for its inner city suburbs to grow. Single-detached housing close to the city, limits growth, (nothing wrong with 2-storey villas) it could be much denser without building massive apartment blocks. If you want to have a place with a big backyard, you should be buying in a newer subdivision.
An interesting compare and contrast between the quality of this post and its comments, and one on a similar topic over at Kiwiblog: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/07/free_up_the_land-2.html
An interesting line of reasoning by Mr Farrar over there: “We need both. Just as only idiots argue that it is a choice of roads or public transport (they are complementary not substitutes), only an idiot would say all new development should be just brown fields or just green fields – we need both.”
I agree with the sentiment, but not the conclusion. We do need both public transport and private transport, and a range of housing types from quarter acre suburbs through to high rise towers… but we already have a massive supply of road transport and suburban housing respectively. We have very little of the alternative. So if we need both, why would we continue to built that which we already have a heap of? I think almost all new development should be something other than greenfields suburban sprawl which comprises three quarters of the existing housing stock and 99% of the new stock coming online.
“Furthermore, in terms of construction cost it’s actually much cheaper than building apartments – on a per square metre basis you can build a luxury home cheaper than a fairly basic apartment building.”
Per square metre doesn’t sound like a good way to compare apartment building costs with typically larger houses. The small apartment is going to have many of the same ‘fixed costs’ of kitchen and bathroom fittings without the expanses of large cheap spaces they add to houses typically built in suburban NZ (I know you say luxury, but I have a feeling that is more the Botney interpretation of the word than Herne Bay). The apartment will have features like sprinklers and probably internal pool and gym that the house will lack. Glass area, also expensive, is likely to be higher per SQM of floor than in a typical suburban house.
Almost all buyers look at functional measures like number of bedrooms before they consider raw SQM. It goes without saying location trumps both. The stats mIght be right, but for apples and oranges.
Good points Feijoa. And also the land cost gets spread across a much larger number of units in an apartment complex.
Is that a Labour MP calling for PPPs? Weird.
Not overly weird, really. PPPs have a place. The issue is that their place is in helping the government get involved in something that the market does but is not doing completely, such as affordable housing, rather than as a substitute for the government’s existing involvement, such as infrastructure facilities like prisons or schools. National see them as useful for the latter, which is where we encounter problems.
I disagree that you have to have smaller than normal housing to have high density- there are some examples around the city of decent sized places (>130 m2) on small sites (<130m2). If they're tilt-slab and there's a decent number in the block (i.e not just one or two) the construction costs will be competitive. More of this type of dwelling will change the mix in the city from mainly students to more families, and that's a good thing too.
We need more quality, but we need to also respect some of the things Kiwis like- some individuality and a garage (for the junk and the bike and the paddle board as much as for the car).
A post here a couple of weeks ago linked to Isthmusblog's "Kiwi urbanism" – http://blogisthmus.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/kiwi-urbanism/ – it has some wonderful ideas of how to make this happen in a way that will appeal to a broad range of current surburbanites.
The example he gave from Amsterdam is stunning: http://www.west8.nl/projects/borneo_sporenburg/
Kiwis need to look to Australia for expertise. There must be many Aussie developers (mainly in Sydney and Melbourne) who could partner with a NZ construction firm to build quality high-density brownfield developments. Adelaide faced a similar dilemma of how to kick-start quality high-density housing on a large brownfield site, when the local developers lacked expertise. The South Australian State government purchased the land and now have a competitive process whereby developer proposals are selected based on TOD criteria.
http://www.sensational-adelaide.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1809
I really wish we had proper terraced and semi-detached housing in Auckland. 2-3 storey houses, but still with a (small, but usable) backyard/garden. There are some terraced townhouses out there, but many don’t have any outside space, so are not attractive to families. We could also have small apartment buildings (e.g. 4-5 floors, with say 6 apartments per floor) in the central suburbs (close to transport links) which still have decent sized rooms and windows that open, and that don’t tower over the surrounding buildings.
Aucklanders needs to become used to multi-storey houses, not just single storey vs apartments, without all this silly wasted space between them and above them. I agree that there needs to be some sort of incentive for developers to build terraced housing in central suburbs, instead of just infill housing. And by central I mean any suburb within a reasonable commute to town/work. High density housing will be accepted more readily in places near the CBD/NEwmarket… what we need is people a little further out to also accept higher density and multi-storey homes as ‘the usual’.
These type of buildings are very versatile and could provide more options to potential home-owners. A 2-3 storey house means you can have a large family home with a garden on the same area that is probably currently occupied by a small house and lots of driveway.
Terraced housing also provides options for smaller houses. If I were to try and buy a two room house today, my options are to find a) a particularly small house, b) an apartment, c) a unit, or d) a townhouse. However, a) is unusual except in older suburbs where there are cottages, such as Ponsonby or Parnell, which tend to have hefty price tags. b) is a possibility, but often difficult to find outside the CBD, and the affordable ones tend to be tiny, with no/little outside space (e.g a shared garden or courtyard). c) most often means rooms with painted breeze-block walls (seriously, couldn’t they have used plaster??), that are often low-quality and hard to heat despite their size. d) is becoming more common, but some have the leaky building problem, and again very few have any outside space.
I have lived overseas in terraced houses, semi-detached houses, and small apartments… and they were all comfortable. All felt like homes rather than shoeboxes. All had plenty of space inside while taking up much less land-space than the typical Auckland house. If the rows of terraces seen on Coronation St don’t appeal, then look at some pictures of San Francisco – amazing inventiveness and creativity and colours. Or look at the older suburbs in Auckland which have close-packed houses, reasonably often two-storey, with only a little path or a fence in-between. Or the links that NCD has included above. If built in ex-commercial areas, maybe have a roof garden and balconies, as a ground-floor garden may not be feasible. But in places such as Flat Bush, where there are some ‘terraced’ townhouses, why have gardens not been included for this type of house? They only get tiny courtyards (at least according to google maps satellite view). Again, not as attractive to families. The backyard doesn’t have to be huge, but it should be an option, at least in a new development like that.
I look forward to seeing some really interesting, innovative, and less stuck-in-the-mud house designs appearing…
I realise that the above reads as if gardens and outside space are only really needed for families. Not my intent, just a result of rewriting and not re-reading before posting. Personally I think outside space/access is very important but seems not to be included in much of the high density housing that has been built in Auckland, and also is being lost in the lower density infill/subdivided sections (usually due to driveways). I emphasise it because unless you buy a ‘family home’ it can be difficult to have outside space, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Gardens/parks/courtyards/balconies/roof tops… so many options… And all compatible with high-density housing. 🙂
…….or ‘common spaces’ such as projects like Kevin McLeod’s HAB development include.
Yup, absolutely. I haven’t been following the HAB projects, but just had a quick look at the website and definitely will look in more detail when I have time. They look awesome 🙂
I worked in an office in London which was in a converted basement flat in a terraced apartment. The apartments had a common garden behind them (with apartments/terraces on all sides I think). Lovely to go sit in at lunch time.
I’ve seen some of these in Meadowbank and Ellerslie, and I agree that they’re the way to go- dense but suburban. There are usually decks, but one thing I haven’t seen is the use of the roof as a shared or private open-air space (which I was first introduced to in villages in North India- great for summer nights…)
I agree, most central Sydney suburbs are filled with rows and rows of beautiful terrace homes. Some of them are newly built too. They’re some of the most desirable properties in Sydney. A good example I can think of in Auckland is George st in Parnell. Very nice terraced homes there.
Ooh yes, they look nice. An example of some smaller (older?) terraces in Auckland is 70 Norfolk St. If you look at the houses around them you will see that most of the houses are small and they are extremely close to each other. This is why I think we need to concentrate on high density housing in the slightly further out suburbs. Inner suburbs may not be multi-storey, but at least they are reasonably dense.
Those are real cute. They show up in the 1940 aerial photography.
Cool. Are the photographs available in a public archive/library to view? One of these sold recently for $750k….
Bought and then rented, apparently. Damn investment buyers.
http://www.bayleyswaiheke.co.nz/49585
http://www.crockers.co.nz/ViewProperty.aspx?ref=NORF68
Just saw this article: http://www.stuff.co.nz/oddstuff/7254231/Scaling-New-York-life-to-tiny.
Interesting…
Yes, having lived in inner city CBD for a few years, I was going to cite their terraced housing as an example of what Auckland lacked. There are some fantastic inner city suburbs filled with these, dense areas with narrow streets, cafes, local bars, delis etc. Some of the best areas in Sydney away from the water – areas like Paddington and Darlinghurst.
There was an article recently about how it might be one answer to the housing shortage in Sydney – shame they used such a bad example for the photo.
http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/terrace-housing-could-be-answer-to-shortfall-20120330-1w3ix.html
Its photos like that that give the likes of Quax, Ralston and Hopkins ammunition….
You do realise that type of housing is amongst the most expensive in Sydney?
Expensive because they’re in inner suburbs and heritage-ish (cf villas in Parnell/Ponsonby/Freemans Bay). The idea of using them to fill in ‘middle-ring’ suburbs is great, and should be used in Auckland as well. We may also need to change regulations. I’m not very familiar with building regulations, but even things like stair steepness/width/depth might need to change (hard to build compact multi-storey houses if half your space is taken up by stairs). I also like the fact that the Sydney terraces have balconies at the front, and porch areas. More attractive than flat outside walls sitting right up to the footpath. And allows a greater sense of community.
Yes – I used to live just round the corner from it in The Rocks, in a much more desirable duplex 🙂
But as they say: “image is everything”
Really it’s about getting rid of MUL’s and letting people live where they want – on a level economic playing field. But this simple truth is going to be eternally clouded with false debates, and points that are really beside the point, so it will never happen…not for decades, anyway. That’s why young Kiwi’s just need to get out of here.
What if people want to live relatively centrally, on the isthmus? Current prices and rents suggests demand exceeds supply there. Removing the MUL and building at the fringes will not help lower these costs.
Sure, I could move overseas, and I could find and afford a place that would suit me (close to work/transport, compact, terraced/semi-detached, garden/courtyard). But I like Auckland, despite all its problems, and so I’d prefer to see it improved for everyone. Leave the hinterland as a hinterland, and improve our current central suburbs. What’s wrong with that?
Very fatalistic viewpoint Andrew. I’m a young Kiwi who recently returned to help fix the situation, not run away from it and let the city slide.
One thing you seem to be ignoring is that in the absence of anything close to a free and fair housing market, the MUL acts to level the economic playing field. The playing field is very much tilted toward greenfield fringe expansion of detatched homes, our planning regulations make that basically the only way new homes can be built. Without a massive planning reform first, removing the MUL would only serve to further unbalance the field.
Nick, could you (or someone) give a brief summary of the planning regulations that favour detached homes and make it difficult to build higher density housing? And suggested changes to promote such housing? If this is not the right place to ask, let me know. I’m just trying to get an idea of why these buildings aren’t more common.
Geez, that’s quite a tall order. I’m not that sort of planner myself, but I’ll have a go. Anyone else please feel free to correct and expand:
Almost all of Auckland is zoned to prevent more than one dwelling per lot, and have minimum lot sizes such that you can only usually subdivide a parcel into two lots at the most. So dwelling density becomes synonymous with land area.
There is a general ban on anything taller than, I think, 9m. Which prevents anything taller that two or three stories regardless of the conditions. So you can’t go up regardless of your land area or site context.
There are all manner of other rules, including specification on setback from the street and from boundary lines. Off the top of my head it’s 4m from the front boundary and 2m from side boundaries. So housing must be built with a minimum 4m gap between them. The front setback is a complete waste in most cases, it achieves nothing but requiring each dwelling to have a small patch of wasted useless lawn out front.
Already you can see how building terraces are almost impossible.
Then there are minimum parking requirements, every dwelling needs x many car parks per floor area, whether you want them or not.
Thats the case for huge swathes of Auckland (anything but the CBD and a handful of other areas), to get around that you need to apply for a planning diversion, a process that is costly with no guarantees. Say I wanted to demolish a large house and replace it with three terraces. I’d have to have the terrace plans designed and drawn up, then submit them for review. That process could cost $100k and they’d probably just come back and say no anyway.
Yes, I looked at your request Liz, and decided I didn’t have the time! 🙂
Briefly however, I work in an architectural office, and a lot of our work is undertaking alterations and extensions to existing housing, and the odd new house, on the isthmus and inner North Shore.
The development rules depend on the zone, and very little of the isthmus outside the central CBD (which has its own separate plan) is zoned residential 7, which allows for medium density development. We have occasionally looked at brownfield sites, and even on major arterials it is often difficult to make a medium density devlopment stack up financially for the client. They may have paid too much for the land, providing carparking takes up valuable space and budget, etc etc.
You can look through the isthmus district plan here if you are so inlcined: http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/district/default.asp
Nick: Haha, sorry for a difficult request. But thanks for making the effort, I appreciate it! I have heard people mention most of those issues, but didn’t realise the regulations were quite so constrictive. Definitely need some changes. The article link I posted somewhere above about NY is interesting here because it’s a situation where the city is removing some of the regulations in order to help supply housing for the current demand.
Raffe: I looked at the zoning a while back, but not recently or in much depth. Thanks for the link 🙂 If it doesn’t take too much time, do you think that the carparking rule has the biggest negative impact for medium-high density projects? Or some other rule? Or do none stand out and it’s just the whole lot together?
But there go my plans to win lotto, but a chuck of land and build some decent houses… sigh…
Probably the biggest one that impacts this is minimum parking requirements. Basically for any development the developer is required to include a certain number of car parks and that number is dependent on the type and size of development. It has largely come about by traffic engineers obsessively trying to keep roads free of congestion so the thinking is that if you can just get the cars off the road and into easy car parks then the congestion issue will go away.
The problem is that parking buildings are expensive and putting them underground is even more so. That means the cheapest option is often to put them at ground level but to do so needs a lot of land and that is usually cheapest out on the fringes. These requirements are the same even if your development is served well by PT and it’s only in the CBD where they don’t exist.
Removing the minimum parking requirements would leave it up to the market to determine how much parking they want to provide. If there was no parking in an area then that may open an opportunity for a company to build and run a parking building but the key is that it would be letting the free market determine the value of parking, not traffic engineers or politicians.
There are other issues too, another one is building setbacks. For this there is a requirement that any new building is set back a certain distance from the boundary. This most likely came about as a way of making it easier for local authorities to widen roads as they would be able to do so by purchasing a portion of the land rather than the whole site and demolishing the buildings. The problem is it extends to all developments and means more land is required for a development.
A classic example of this is our new suburbs in which you see all houses having massive front yards that are often unused while there is little to no private space out the back.
Nick: There is no such thing as a highly unaffordable property market in the context of no MUL. Demographia demonstrated this.
You see, when people can build their own new home at real construction costs on the city fringes, they don’t spend crazy money on an existing (grossly over priced) home in the established market. Fringe development becomes a supply-response safety valve. Take away that safety valve and shit hits the fan – as it did.
Andrew you continue to ignore that most people don’t want to live out on the fringes. There is a reason why places like Mt Eden, Ponsonby and other fringe suburbs are some of the most sought after places in the region. There is also a ton of land still in the MUL but it isn’t being developed. Perhaps you should focus on getting that land released and developed first.
Matt L:
So people are not interested in living in the fringe in a tastefully built development for, say, $200,000 if the opportunity were presented to them? They would rather pay the average of $450,000 or so for an existing property…even though it will make them poor and stressed as hell for the next 30 years plus?
Again you only have to look at the relationship between MUL’s and property prices, world over.
“So people are not interested in living in the fringe in a tastefully built development for, say, $200,000 if the opportunity were presented to them?
Generally,no. Firstly, for $200,000, its going to be an apartment. And given the choice between an apartment on the fringe and one closer to the CBD, they’ll prefer the latter. If they can’t afford it? They’ll rent inner-city instead. They’ll attribute a value to the wasted hours stuck in commute everyday and the lack of vibrancy in the life stuck out in the sticks and realise the cost saving isn’t worth it.
If you don’t believe me, and you thought property prices inner-city were ridiculous, try the rental fees and the hundreds turning upfor viewings every weekend.
Just another message stressing the same point – people prefer to live inner city……but yeah, expanding the MUL will be the answer (?!?!?)
“Fringe development becomes a supply-response safety valve”- only for those wanting to live on the fringe in the first place.
And besides, any new house on the fringe is going to be at least $450,000 anyway
I agree with KLK. I currently have a commute of about 30-45 minutes to work on the bus (up to an hour if it suddenly rains and Auckland drivers can’t cope). I can deal with that, but it’s about the maximum. What is worse is the frequency – a bus every half an hour in peak times and once an hour at weekends. I’d much rather live closer, have say a 20min commute, and also be able to use public transport more easily. I want to jump on a bus or cycle or walk to see people at weekends, but the default at the moment is getting in a car, because I live too far away. When I previously lived in an inner suburb, I could catch the bus to town easily, both for work and during the weekend. It took about 15 mins. I was closer to local shops, and could walk to them to do my shopping. Whereas I currently drive to a large supermarket to do my shopping, as there is no high st/local shop area nearby. I didn’t need a car, but now I do.
So, even if the inner suburbs are more expensive, they’re much more convenient. If we had better housing in these suburbs, then more people could live there and benefit from being closer to pretty much everything.
Andrew for someone so sure of how the future will pan out your worldview is laughably out of date; the sprawl boom has ended. Look at the price spread between inner suburbs and distant ones out there on the freshly ruined countryside: What does that indicate? Desire; many more people want to live closer to the centre, the action. Now perhaps you’ve bet your capital on a big fringe landbank but no amount of nagging is going to change the fact that the tide has turned all across the western world back into town.
Feel free to think hard about why that might be, I suspect there are lots of reasons. Not least of which is a simple reaction against what the younger generations grew up with; they know what suburban life is like and want something more. But also there are simple calculations about travel cost; both financial and in terms of time. They don’t seem to want to do it and are prepared to pay to avoid it. And perhaps they’re being real smart; investing in an appreciating asset [property] instead of a fast depreciating one [car]?
Andrew most people wouldn’t take it even at that price because people value other things than just price otherwise students would rent flats out at Papakura because you get places to yourself that cost the same for a place where you flat with others elsewhere. I lived out in the fringes for over month, hated every moment it was lonely life out there, came back to North Shore as soon as I could.
KLK:
Can you please do me a favour. Check out Houston Texas property prices in the following link. It is an “uncontaminated” property market. People pay real values here.
http://www.homes.com/Real_Estate/TX/City/HOUSTON/
Those are not real prices. They are massively subsidised. Especially in terms of provision of transport infrastructure.
Houston! Who on earth wants Houston here? Also you will note that Houston like Phoenix is on a flat arid plain and enjoys no physical constrains like, ohh, two oceans, or some of the best and most productive farm land in the world on it’s doorstep. It’s a ghastly auto- and aircon-dependant, high energy cost mess, is that really your model? And except for the luck of finding itself at the centre of a gas and oil revival it would be enjoying suburban foreclosures on a level similar to Phoenix now too. But its time will come; its model just isn’t sustainable. Oh dear, I suggest you move there then, and leave damp old Auckland to those that like both a viable future and a bit of intensive city life. ‘Uncontaminated’. Funny.
Let’s not forget the huge, underpaid labour pool of Mexican and other immigrants in Houston, many illegal. I’m wondering which cheap labour is going to build your $200k miracles, Andrew?
Haha, sorry for a difficult request. But thanks for making the effort, I appreciate it! I have heard people mention most of those issues, but didn’t realise the regulations were quite so constrictive. Definitely need some changes. The article link I posted somewhere above about NY is interesting here because it’s a situation where the city is removing some of the regulations in order to help supply housing for the current demand.
But there go my plans to win lotto, but a chuck of land and build some decent houses… sigh…
Sorry, post appeared in the wrong place.
Peter M:
Are you sure?
Yeah just look at the myriad of massive highways criss-crossing Houston.
Were they paid for by petrol tax alone? Don’t make me laugh.
So you would be all for road pricing then? Once we price road use properly, we don’t have to worry about its costs anymore than we need to worry about the cost of a new supermarket in a new suburb. The thing is, I dont hear to many people round here advocating pricing transport properly (see, for example, CRL funding proposals).
Swan, but does that make up for all those billions in sunk investment in the roads? It’ll take decades before there’s a level playing field.
It isn’t rational to say we need to “level the playing field”. We’ve spent the money, wisely or unwisely. Sunk costs are just that. What are we making up for?
In any case we should charge for roads (and other forms of transport) based on a rate of return on the cost of capital, including all the billions already spent. So the playing field would be instantly leveled.
Sure thing. Do the calculations and get back to me on the details.
Lets do some rough numbers. Auckland motorways – 1million trips per day
Auckland rail – 30,000 trips per day.
Money spent on Auckland motorways??? Lets say $25b
Lets charge 10% of the cost of capital. So $5b per year
$5b/(1m*365) = $7 a trip on average (more for trucks and longer distances, less for cars and shorter distances). Lets double the cost to include local roads = $15 a trip.
Money spent on Rail??? Lets say $2.5b
So,
250m/(30,000*365) = $23 per trip average.
Give or take, we would have prices in that sort of ball park. Lets do it!
Prizes for spotting my error :). End numbers are right though.
And you still think the economy and society would function charging those sums?
Well they are a bit on the high side, but trucks would happily pay $10 a trip for uncongested roads (which they would be). It would be profitable for them in fact (as well as many trades people). Bus tickets might go up by 50c or so, but in this context people would be flocking to them. Every run would be virtually RTN standard. So yes the economy and society would function very well.
Your error is that 10% of $25b is not $5b 🙂
Any number of sources; here’s just one: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2011/01/04/actually-highway-builders-roads-don’t-pay-for-themselves/
And which state do you think has sucked hardest at this veritable socialist programme of national subsidy? Why it’s Texas:
“Most Interstate mileage in a state: 3,233.45 mi (5,203.73 km): Texas, in 17 different routes”.[61] Wikipedia.
‘Uncontaminated’ Even funnier.
“People pay real values here”
You can pay real values in Auckland too. Just drive as far away from the inner city as you can while staying inside the MUL. And they are that value for a reason. Their distance from the inner city makes them less desirable.
The fringe location will always have demand. Just nowhere near as much demand as further in. Which is why its perplexing that some people’s answer to satisfy demand for product A (inner city living) is to give them product B (fringe living in far away suburbs) and then expect them to like it. Its insulting really, when you think about it.
Why not allow both, and let people decide for themselves.
What is really insulting is assuming you know what other people want.
…or assuming that I assume I know what other people want.
My post above was about the higher demand for inner-city living and the idea that extending the MUL will do anything to satisfy it isdelusional.
The “you” wasn’t directed at you.
$25b on roads? You must be joking. Its many times that number
7 new ones in just the next 10yrs are costing us $11bn alone…..
KLK I am talking about Aucklands motorway network. I dont think I need to remind you that most were constructed when construction costs were far lower than today.
But how much would the motorway network cost if it was built from scratch today, probably more than $25b when things like mitigation and land costs are considered
What a mess. The MUL’s are going nowhere. so much crap. so much confusion. Again young NZ needs to find some greener pastures.
Check out this interesting link:
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002966-housing-affordability-protests-occurring-livable-hong-kong-not-sprawling-atlanta
Extract:
“Exorbitant House Prices: Hong Kong’s housing, the largest household budget item, is profoundly unaffordable. The 8th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey rates Hong Kong as the most costly out of 325 metropolitan areas. The median house price in Hong Kong’s is 12.6 times the median annual gross household income (the “median multiple”), which leaves little more than a pittance in discretionary income for many households. Perhaps this is why Hong Kong’s fertility rate has fallen to rock bottom levels near the lowest on the planet – people cannot afford kids.”
…I have speculated myself that forced urban intensification might be motivated by a population control agenda. Or in our case, here in NZ, maybe a way of recolonising our nation which will effectively weaken the culture and leave us with easy-to-manage citisenry.
Geez conspiracy theorist much. The MUL is, in effect, an ‘ambulance at the bottom of the cliff’ because we do not accurately price development properly. Once we work out a way to properly price exurban development’s negative impacts then we might not need an urban limit.
But I think we’re a long way from that point, assuming it’s even possible to do in an efficient way.
Peter M:
You need to get out of the camp and start studying the other side of the story.
No its not an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff. Its a madness that has turned an entire generation of young property buyers into debt slaves. We do not need an MUL – we never did. And pricing motorways is as simple as congestion charging with modern electronic systems. Nothing to “work out”.
The real problem is that we’ve got tunnel-visioned bigots and sociopaths who, at base, don’t really give a shit, and wide-eyed zealots running Auckland. People who keep on pushing old myths when they know better because THEIR vision is the RIGHT vision…so lying to the children is justified for their own ultimate good.
Also, indirect population control might be a conspiracy, but it might also be true. With or without a tin foil hat.
http://andrewatkin.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/operation-population-control_18.html
Why do you assume that getting rid of the urban limits would make much of a difference? What if Aucklanders don’t actually want to live a million miles from anywhere?
An interesting media release from Auckland Council yesterday contained this tidbit of information:
Yet uptake of this greenfield capacity has been extremely slow in recent years.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO1207/S00259/auckland-government-alignment-shows-promise.htm
This is a further interesting take on the issue by Ed Glaeser, Harvard Professor of Economics:
Peter:
That’s just it. It’s not an assumption. MUL’s = restricted land supply = cost of land goes through the roof. This is demonstrated in Auckland and everywhere else restrictive policies are employed. You can build on the fringe, in areas, but you pay BIG TIME due to the restricted supply. In turn making other markets (not at the fringe) more attractive. The reason why many Aucklanders don’t want to live on the fringe is because they can’t afford it due to artificial price inflations.
If you want to see what people really want (and what people want is of course always a price-relative function), then review the development of cities that don’t employ artificial restrictions on land supply – give us a non distorted market so we can see the non distorted demand. They sprawl. Why? Because developers know what their markets want (if they don’t they go bankrupt) so they build the optimum for what people are prepared to pay for.
Andrew, I’m not saying that the MUL has not impact on land value inside it. Clearly restricting supply of something in demand will increase its price. That’s the most basic law of economics.
The questions relate to whether there are other ways of increasing housing supply that meet a number of criteria:
– better provides for what people actually want
– is relatively inexpensive to provide for through infrastructure
– pays for its own marginal costs, to as great an extent possible
My issue with urban expansion is that it doesn’t actually do this. It’s becoming increasingly obvious, around the world, that people prefer to live in higher density, central, mixed-use, walkable urban environments – compared to outer suburbia which was more preferred by previous generations. Secondly, a huge number of studies (such as the one I highlighted above) say that it’s much more expensive to serve with infrastructure – plus loads decades of additional costs onto its residents. Thirdly, and linked to the previous on, it doesn’t adequately pay for its marginal cost: all those extra vehicles on the road, all that lost rural land, all those new schools and hospitals and other services which are required.
I do imagine a day in the future when we don’t need a MUL. But that will first require the proper pricing of all those marginal costs which urban sprawl imposes. And I don’t see that happening any time soon.
Why the comment re “lost rural land”? There are repeated statements that this rural land is somehow valuable for its ability to grow food. On the periphery of urban Auckland the market determines that it is worth around ten times the value for its ability to accommodate housing.
Because the further we need to truck in food from elsewhere the higher we all pay. Food’s the most obvious basic item we need to survive to keeping its price as low as possible helps everyone.
Or are you another mindless economic purist who can’t see this?
Peter M,
Edward Glaeser in that video has not looked at the relationship between mobility and density. He is a classic case of pushing discredited assumptions, that I spoke about before. Try the link by Wendell Cox I posted earlier. Wendell is a true broad-focus researcher. He doesn’t cherry-pick his cases to “prove” his prejudice (in fact, like me, research lead to a conversion from his old assumptions…for Wendell that was back in the 1980’s, I believe).
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002966-housing-affordability-protests-occurring-livable-hong-kong-not-sprawling-atlanta
Edward Glaeser also thinks we need to stay out of nature to protect it. That’s his tunnel vision due to an over-specialised background, and he’s plain wrong. Check out this link for the point.
http://andrewatkin.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/green-sprawl-why-not.html
By billy goat I can’t let you get away with that assertion. Edward Glaeser is one of the world’s leading urban economists who has published extensively in a range of leading peer-reviewed economics journals. Wendell Cox is, well, not and most of his publications are not peer-reviewed (in fact most of his assessments of housing affordability simply suggest that areas with high stabbing rates are cheap to live in – truly profound).
That does not mean Edward is always right, or that Wendell is always wrong. But I would suggest that your attempt to cast aspersions on the quality of Glaeser’s research shows up your prejudices (and lack of education?) more than it does Glaeser’s.
Yes and Glaeser, in his book, Triumph of the City, correctly points out that the only credible argument for restrictions on urban sprawl are enviromental (basically global resource use). Nothing to do with making life better for the residents of the city. Now this is a fine argument, but those promoting MUL’s need to be clear about the reason for the policy.
Peter M:
1 part 150 of New Zealand’s land area is covered over in houses and general urbanisation. Isn’t funny how you were never told that by the anti-sprawl advocates. I wonder why?
A little bit more sprawl will only have a tiny impact on the food bill. In fact increases in agricultural production efficiency have been overwhelmingly more significant. We already eat 5x more meat than is good for us or that our bodies can even process. But, our mortgages are killing us.
The human footprint on earth is overwhelmingly a food issue – always has been, and for as far as we can see always will be.
BTW: Be careful with the research you read – especially the stuff that defies commonsense. You have been fed more bullshit than you realise.
Please provide a source/data on which this statistics is based. I’m particularly interested in whether the denominator is “usable” or “total” land – if it’s the latter then the credibility of your statistic approaches zero.
Andrew, today’s paper, some facts:
Full story here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/7324389/Funding-required-for-new-housing
This is a great article. Summation is that releasing land in the countryside is not going to reduce demand (and therefore prices) of high demand central suburbs.
I can’t see this because there is no evidence to support your claim. It’s hard to see something that isn’t there.
There is no shortage of land for growing food in NZ. There is such an overwhelming surplus that there is a large food export industry predicated on the fact that the price is lower in spite of the distance travelled. When I lived in the UK I could buy NZ lamb in England at a lower price than English lamb. You can gather some data for yourself at your local supermarket. It’s a matter of observable data; no theory required.
More nonsense MFD; exporting food is vital to our economy and we do not suffer from a vast surplus of arable land. The fact that NZ farmers can get a leg of lamb to the UK in order to sell it cheaper than the locals does in no way prove that we should stop farming and just trade houses with each other…. Lamb and beef farmers have not been making much money at all, and this is one of the reasons why sell the farm to a landbanker must appeal.
The question posed was why is agricultural land in the vicinity of Auckland deemed “valuable” when the evidence from the market is to the contrary. The response was that it is valuable because food produced close to the city is lower in price than food produced further from the city. The evidence from local supermarkets does not support this claim. The claim was also made that low food prices are in the interests of all of us. This is clearly false as NZ food producers in NZ are doing their utmost to get as high a price as they can; as you point out, it is important to the economy.
At no time have I advocated that “we” should stop farming. This is a straw man of your making. Neither have I advocated relaxing the MUL. If the agricultural land surrounding the city really were so valuable there would be no need for the MUL. Why would the owners sell it?
I am genuinely interested in understanding why claims such as these are made when the evidence is either lacking or indicates the contrary. The “valuable agricultural land” shibboleth appears as an article of faith in the Auckland Plan. If articles of faith such as this form the the input data one must question the validity of the output. Garbage in, garbage out.
NZ has many competitive advantages in producing agricultural products, such as climate.
Just scrolling through and may have missed something, but from what I can tell the anti-MULers seem to gloss over some major transport distortions and negative externalities that would lead to lower density development than is economically optimal (and that people would freely chose in an accurately priced environment). It’s not just about congestion pricing, but also council parking regulations that cause a gross over-supply of parking. And about the durability of development.
Now of course, the ideal scenario would see these distortions addressed. Problem is, development is highly durable and five decades of minimum parking requirements mean that it’s likely to take at least as long for us to reach “accurate” parking prices across Auckland. In contrast, if we remove the MUL now then we’ll get a lot of development that is “economically sub-optimal” in the meantime, i.e. too low density (because it’s predicated on cheap parking).
So I’d suggest that Peter M’s “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” metaphor for the MUL is quite accurate: We need it as a response to other distortions, but these distortions are significant and durable. The durability is quite important for reasons of political effectiveness as well as economic efficiency: Andrew suggests that we can easily just “implement” congestion pricing: But how much harder would it have been if the city had been allowed to sprawl out in ways that meant meany more people were commuting long distances by car and hence affected by the congestion charge? They would (quite reasonably) turn around and say that they would not have made the choice to live where they did had they known congestion pricing was coming.
So in this context we need to actually come to a plan about congestion pricing and promote it well in advance of implementation so that we’re not changing the rules on a whole load of people who are making long-term decisions about where to live. The reasonable approach (from where I’m sitting) is that we work progressively to rectify the transport distortions (indeed as Auckland Council seems to be doing with congestion pricing and parking reforms) and then we consider removing the MUL. In the meantime it seems reasonable to simply ensure that the MUL allows for sufficient amounts of greenfield land in various places around the city such that there is some competitive tension between developers to meet demand.
P.s. Conversations of “housing affordability” really need to focus on rents rather than capital costs. When you have an asset that has a durable lifetime that is longer than its users (i.e. residents) then it seems natural to me that renting a house is actually more economically efficient than owning it. And if you look at rents in Auckland then up until recently they have tracked broadly in line with CPI. Recent changes to depreciation seem to have pushed them up, but it’s definitely not related to the MUL.
“The reasonable approach (from where I’m sitting) is that we work progressively to rectify the transport distortions (indeed as Auckland Council seems to be doing with congestion pricing and parking reforms)”
I agree that the lifting of the MUL should ideally be coincident with sorting out transport as well as development distortions (ie density restrictions).
But I cant see how the Auckland council is working towards this. They have given no indication that we are working toward a ‘post-MUL/RUB’ world, or that they are going to sort out development restrictions. As far as transport distortions, that is almost totally out of the council’s hands – it would require central government approval at least, and probably implementation. You would need congestion charging to be broadly revenue neutral – that is cut petrol taxes at the same time – for it to be politically acceptable.
No, the MUL/RUB for Auckland Council is, as well as their myriad other development restrictions, business as usual. They are quite happy with it. In this context we are not working toward a more liberal city at all, and saying ‘we will sort out this wrong when we sort out the other wrongs’ is not credible. It is better to be all-else-equal and no MUL than not – it is still a more liberal state of the world.
In relation to other development restrictions, the council has utterly failed on that score as well based on my reading of the (glossy, mainly Orwellian propaganda) Auckland Plan. They intend to gradually loosen the spigots some time into the future. This wont do anything. We need a total reset in Auckland with massive liberalisation of development in order to change the equilibrium in terms of housing supply.
Re the agricultural land argument (one that is used by the council), MFD above is right. The value as residential land is an order of magnitude higher than the value as agricultural land. The prices tell us that. There really is nothing else we need to know on the matter. This fib about agricultural land is one of the most egregious when it comes to this type of discussion – and it is telling the council chooses to use ot.
Wow some nice Ayn Rand channelling there.
The Auckland Plan discusses pricing options and the week AC released a paper on road pricing. So it seems to me that they are working on it pretty hard, and have been more or less since 2006 when the first road pricing study was released. It’s not a matter of if but when – and in what form – Auckland gets road pricing. But it’s pleasing that since 2006 ,more people and organisations have got onboard with the idea. This is actually where most of the effort goes – fostering discussion in the community and gaining some degree of engagement with the issues and choices. So I think it’s fair to say that Auckland Council/Auckland Transport is working on it fairly hard, but it’s a multi-year project that needs some nurturing and as you note central govt has a key role.
On the other hand parking regulations are the council’s responsibility. They are also a far large problem than congestion pricing, mainly because they cause large amounts of high value land to be tied up in a less than optimal use while also subsidising travel that leads to congestion. Parking subsidies are, from my calculations, a more significant distortion than congestion pricing. So sorting our parking regulations can help to kill two birds with one stone. In 1999 the council removed minimum parking requirements in the city centre. Since then they have gain a lot of experience with the management of the ensuing demand for on-street parking. I think it’s fair to suggest that this knowledge will embolden them to take further steps in this direction. Indeed, in 2010 (I think) they loosened parking requirements in Newmarket and Parnell.
While this may seem like baby steps, I’d suggest that they are all building towards quite significant changes in road pricing and parking policy – which ultimately will mean that users, specifically drivers, will pay more directly for the costs that they impose on society from their choices. And once that happens, then we can start rolling back all the other second-best policy initiatives, such as subsidies for public transport and the MUL.
So I’d suggest that the anti-MULers would be better focusing their energy on supporting road pricing and parking reforms, which once achieved will create a much stronger case for rolling back the MUL. I.e. let’s solve the problems that the MUL is trying to indirectly address first before we chuck it out.
I dont actually see a lack of road pricing as much of a justification for the MUL so much as a lack of liberalisation of development on brownfield sites. This is what the council really really really can change. But they aren’t, or not at anything like an acceptable rate. The reason we need road pricing if we allow sprawl is because sprawl demands roading. But…
We dont HAVE to ‘build the big pipe’ that a no-road-pricing world demands. So we can say – “go for your life out at Dairy Flat, but don’t expect the northern motorway to be 8 laned any time soon. When congestion starts getting really bad – we will have a road pricing scheme up and running by then”. in which case there is no need for an MUL, just a clear statement that there wont be uneconomic motorways constructed to cope with unpriced vehicle movements.
On the other hand brownfield development restrictions are what the council really needs to sort out prior to lifting the MUL – in order to level the playing field for future development. (I would support lifting the MUL even without this on the grounds of liberty, but that is a different argument). And they can do this. But there is no big bang, no real plan, just more pussyfooting around while the residents of Milford pretend they live in a ‘village’ and heritage fanatics get their NIMBY on etc etc.
You are correct – we don’t have to build the highway. But then again the person who chooses to live at Dairy Flat and then commute into the city not only incurs congestion themselves, but also imposes extra congestion on everyone else using the motorway. Stated differently, the person who exercises their liberty by living at Dairy Flat curtails the liberty of other people living somewhere else. In fact, this is why I find transport/land use planning such a fascinating area to work in: Because it is so full of externalities, path dependencies, imperfect competition, and arms races – all the things that makes economics actually interesting.
While I do tend to disagree with you on the MUL, I completely agree with you on Brownfields development restrictions, especially height restrictions. In fact I think it is the interplay between the MUL, height restrictions, and minimum parking requirements that is at the root of our housing affordability issues: We’ve drawn a line around the city (MUL), then put a cap on the city (e.g. 3 storey height restrictions), and then within that confined envelope we’ve specified minimum parking requirements that take up a whole heap of valuable land (as well as a whole host of other space-intensive regulations such as floor-area ratios, minimum dwelling sizes etc).
I think it is this combined regulatory pressure cooker that is the big issue: Auckland can’t be both a compact city and a low density city at the same time. So I’d suggest we lift/relax the height restrictions, remove minimum parking requirements, implement congestion pricing, and then have this discussion again :).
The question is, can we make all off of the changes needed in one big bang type event. I don’t think that we can as the amount of work that is needed for each of them would be huge but by not doing them together we get these other distortions. Perhaps it is key to get the ‘easier’ ones done first i.e. parking requirements, height restrictions etc. then leave the MUL/Road pricing ones till later.
One interesting thing to think about though is the Government wants the MUL gone but it also doesn’t want road pricing while the council wants to keep the MUL but wants road pricing. I wonder if they could come to an agreement where the council gets to implement road pricing but at the same time removes the MUL. That way they both get one of the things that they want.
Nice observation Matt – the Council and the Government do need to sit down around their table and have a conversation about priorities and trade-offs. It seems crazy to me that the National Government is keen to remove the MUL yet is not prepared ot have a conversation about rectifying the inefficient road network pricing that has created much of the need for the MUL in the first place.
I think that it’s a bit naive to believe that the government would trade road-pricing for lifting the MUL. They appear to believe that ‘drivers’ already pay all the costs of driving via fuel taxes and general taxation, so that once built roads should be free to use. Perhaps behind closed doors they admit the obvious flaws in that argument, but I see no evidence to suggest that they are remotely willing to consider road-pricing of any kind. The MUL, on the other hand, they see as a restraint on the God-given right of developers to build wherever the heck they like, regardless of the infrastructure costs entailed (and passed on to the rest of us in various ways).
So, while logic argues that both changes would remove market distortions, the powers that be see road-pricing as interventionism, and the MUL in the same light. Given their ideology that means MUL has to go, and road-pricing is non-negotiable (especially if the main reason for implementing it is to fund the CRL which they are pathologically opposed to).
On top of this, recent political history (worldwide) suggests that it’s playing with fire to give the neoliberal right an inch (see e.g. Obama’s attempts to reason with the Republicans – it hasn’t got him far) – they will just take a mile. It’s not at all clear that ceding MUL in exchange for road-pricing will yield the hoped for results, and is it worth the risk? Developments once built acquire a logic of their own, and lead inexorably to demands for public infrastructure. Road-pricing on the other hand would be resented on its introduction and be an easy target for a CRL run at the mayoralty, and hence fragile at best. They would have my vote, but a council pinning its hopes on road-pricing will face serious electoral handicaps. Ken Livingstone could do the prospectively very unpopular congestion charging in London only because there was a PT system already in place that could quickly and visibly be improved from the proceeds. In Auckland it will take a lot longer for follow-on benefits to appear, by which time whoever introduced them will have been kicked out of office, and the policy will most likely have been rescinded.
Given their track record, I’d want a lot more than a handshake deal on this sort of thing from the developer lobby and their political allies.
Stu Donovan:
I’m going by total land. Source? LOOK AT A MAP. I did a direct measure from a map a few years ago and I came to the same approximate (it has to be approximate, within reason) conclusion that others who have researched this have come to. I took the direct measure because at the time I couldn’t find the information.
Urbanisation figures can be misrepresented because bias researchers, in other lands, have included extremely low-density (practically rural) lifestyle developments in their measure of urban zones. Owen McShane had it right when he said the real urban area is the bulk area you see lit up at night when you’re flying over in a city in a plane.
Shouldn’t the market be able to choose between the ratio of a garden out back, and the amount of meat to eat? Shouldn’t we be able to make our own balance of priorities? And with urbanisation being such a tiny amount of land in any circumstance, you can’t tell me the figure I quoted means nothing. We have a lot of land for houses. Land is not the issue.
Right because we can easily grow food and build lots of houses in the Southern Alps and many other areas in the country.
From what I have read it actually appears that everyone agrees that we should leave it to the market to decide just how we develop. Where people seem to differ is that the market has a number of built in flaws so the question is about whether we should address these first or just pretend they don’t exist. The free market is a wonderful thing but it is hard to get right and I suspect that the majority of the population would actually oppose it if they new truly what the impacts were.
Ah so this is your number! Well you’ll will have a lot of luck subdividing Fiordland or growing much food there. Meaningless then. For there to be any kind argument here you’ll need to work just a little bit harder and get the arable land area and the urban area figures. Let us know when you’ve done that, with sources, and who knows you may be right; maybe that farmland is just a big wasted resource that will be so much more productive with largely unwanted little houses and miles of asphalt all over it.
And if want a pure free market I’m sure they’ll let you into to Somalia, no rules there; totally ‘uncontaminated’.
Heh, I know I shouldn’t enter this debate, but how about deleting from the calcs all land that is unsuitable for either housing OR farming – there, that’s the Southern Alps and Fiordland out – and do the sums then.
Seriously though, whether urbanised land (that could equally be used for farming) is 1% or 5% of the whole, it’s still a small percentage, so not really worth arguing about in the context of urban limits. I’m old enough to remember when large parts of the Hutt Valley were market gardens, and now look at it. (Actually, I think I’ve just raised an argument for re-ruralising it. Ditto for South Auckland.)
“From what I have read it actually appears that everyone agrees that we should leave it to the market to decide just how we develop”
I thought the market had actually decided? People are willing to pay (buy or rent) significantly more for a house (often smaller)closer to the CBD than on the urban fringe. And that’s with urban fringe developments having infrastructure heavily subsidised.
Doesn’t mean there’s no demand for urban fringe living, but you’d think any sane economy would be directing supply to meet demand……
Patrick Reynolds:
http://www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/land/land-cover-dbase/
50 per cent native forest, native vegetation and other native land cover
39 per cent pasture (high-producing and low-producing grassland land-cover classes)
9 per cent exotic forest and exotic shrubland
1.6 per cent horticulture (horticultural, viticultural and cropping land-cover classes)
0.8 per cent artificial surfaces such as urban and built up areas, landfills and transport infrastructure.
———————————————————————————-
Lots of room for, say, another 0.2% urban expansion. Or even 2%…or 10%.
A fair bit of that 1.6% is in Kumeu and Karaka for example, which are prime horticultural soils and obvious areas for urban growth. Cities generally sprouted around the most productive land, and your table says nothing about the class of soils. I think you’ll find many of the best quality soils near urban areas. Also agree a little that 600m2 sections won’t have much noticeable change to productive land, however Rural residential subdivision does, and this is chief culprit in many areas. This is where rules are most required to prevent everyone getting hold of their several acre block, and that is what really makes city sprawl out endlessly.
Just look at fringes of US cities, and also areas which were fringes 20 years ago and now surrounded by intensive urban development. As everyone has to drive past this low density areas it increases transport and utility costs.
Luke C:
Land consumption for houses is just not an issue. Zero point eight percent. Jesus Christ just leave it at that.
Quote: “As everyone has to drive past this low density areas it increases transport and utility costs.”
Read the earlier link by Wendell cox.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/002966-housing-affordability-protests-occurring-livable-hong-kong-not-sprawling-atlanta
Andrew you totally miss the different geographical context of each of these cities. Hong Kong is a tiny mountainous island, so naturally housing is very expensive. Even if commute times are the same between Hong kong at Atlanta, citizens of Hong Kong would only need a short walk to get to amenities, and kids would not need shuttling around the city as they would have access to high quality public transport. This is just as important as commute items for quality of life.
Also the geography of Atlanta is very important. The city is generally surrounded by trees on relatively flat land. The city can expand in almost any direction, and there are no competing land uses for the land. Remember the price of farming land has also risen significantly in the last decade, so land here as a higher base price to begin with. Also “Atlanta’s urban land area expanded 47 percent between 1990 and 1996” (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-763) I dont think you could say that sort of expansion would have no effect on the important horticultural areas on Aucklands fringe.
These articles off a different perspective on Atlanta, one of heavy traffic congestion and bad air pollution:
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/04/28/daily97.html
http://www.bryancountynews.net/archives/4754/
Luke C:
Let me tell you what game is really being played.
Existing urban land owners are creating a collective monopoly on their “product” …basically, so they don’t have to directly compete with rural land of which can be converted into urban land. And we are all being shafted for it. It’s disgusting. All this shit on “save the farmland!” has always been a joke. Just like the b.s on the transport efficiency claims on PT and densified cities.
Hong Kong is one example. And regardless of how and why its land supply is restricted we can see what restricted land supply has done – that’s also the point of the Hong Kong example. The main point of my reference to it is the relationship between commute times and density. To have $500k mortgages in this modern age is absurd. Can’t you see this?
Please read the link to my name. Until the myths are broken people will forever be confused with bullshit arguments. That’s why I tell young NZers to look for somewhere else to live. Indeed most of them seem to be taking my advice already.
I agree there are clearly monopoly issues, that help artificially raise the price of land on the fringe, no reason a section should cost 300k.
However what I’m saying is the MUL is good for other reasons of stopping low density sprawl development, which is impossible t oever serve with public transport, and locks people into car dependency. By low density sprawl I don’t mean Flat Bush densities, look at Aunceston Rise in Alfriston http://goo.gl/maps/4b4G. The monopoly issues are more to do with developer finance, deliberate landbanking, and limited directions for outward growth unlike Atlanta. There are other much better ways of solving them than expanding MUL, which won’t help as Council Engineering Department won;t allow them anyway, or infrastructure costs very high as developer needs to build an excess of infrastructure that will only help others nearby, and increase costs.
Luke C:
You can check this out too. Low density does not need to be costly at all.
http://andrewatkin.blogspot.co.nz/2011/12/green-sprawl-why-not.html
Also take note we are on the brink or an transport revolution that will change “everything”.
http://andrewatkin.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/automated-transportation-network.html
And check out Google’s development: