Ngati Whatua on the Unitary Plan

An interesting opinion piece by Rob Hutchison, the chief executive of Ngati Whatua Orakei’s investment arm Whai Rawa, in yesterday’s NZ Herald about the Unitary Plan. Some key points:

As mana whenua or guardians of the central Auckland area, Ngati Whatua Orakei is right behind the council’s desire to protect the sustainability of our natural resources and the heritage of Tamaki Makaurau. We agree with the council that this will come from developing a compact city, one that is built up, not out.

It is time for the Auckland Council to be brave and make tough decisions that allow for intensification. But it must be high-quality development.

We need to be more intelligent and seize the opportunity in front of us. We believe it’s a lost opportunity that the majority of sites near public transport corridors have not been zoned for terraced housing and apartment building – the highest density zoning.

While there’s probably a commercial gain for Ngati Whatua from the Plan allowing greater levels of intensification, at the same time I’m sure they’re also aware of the potential impact of large-scale sprawl on parts of rural Auckland and understand that enabling intensification is the best way of reducing the need for urban sprawl. There’s also an interesting discussion around the extent to which a “one size fits all” approach to planning makes sense or not:

Ngati Whatua Orakei, like many large landowners, is well placed to develop new housing, for its own people and to support social housing in Tamaki Makaurau. But under the current draft plan, we won’t be able to make best use of a lot of our land. We haven’t yet decided what we will build on the land. But as we work through this we want the chance to make the most of the options we have. We may look at apartment developments, we may not. Either way, we do not think it is fair, or in Auckland’s interest, for any landowner to be restricted by an arbitrary “one size fits all” model.

Development should respond to the qualities of each site. The draft Unitary Plan doesn’t differentiate between smaller properties of 1200sq m and larger properties of over a hectare. Our land is mostly over a hectare. In terms of development opportunity this is too restrictive. There is much greater potential to achieve successful development on larger sites without affecting your neighbours. The draft plan will remove this opportunity.

The council can’t sort out Auckland’s housing problems by itself but it will play a major role in making this the most liveable city. It says Auckland needs to be building 13,000 dwellings a year. We agree, but current levels are well below that at only 2500 a year.

While I’m generally supportive of the Unitary Plan’s approach to intensification, I think it is a valid criticism to wonder whether the ‘simplification’ process has gone a bit too far. Is 18 levels really a magic number for the height of pretty much every bit of pretty much all the Metropolitan Centres? Or might some areas within, say, Takapuna be suitable for even higher development whereas in other locations it might be important to have lower height limits for one reason or another.

That said, in a lot of locations the Unitary Plan seems to find a nice balance between enabling quite a lot of intensification but at the same time requiring quite a robust analysis of its quality before that intensification can occur. Nothing at all in the Apartments/Terraced zone or the Mixed Use Zone (probably the two zones where we’re most likely to see apartment developments) can be built without a resource consent, meaning that every single proposal can be assessed in terms of whether it will lead to a “quality” outcome. Even in the Mixed Housing zone you can’t really intensify particularly much before you need a consent, with the criteria for assessment being focused on ensuring good urban design outcomes.

As a useful guide, the Plan is pissing off the large retailers which is probably a good sign that it might lead to better design outcomes.

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