We’re coming to the end of a three-month period of public submissions on the Auckland Council’s draft Auckland Unitary Plan. There have been a lot of numbers and figures tossed around, and one which people tend to focus on is that Auckland will have an extra one million people by 2041. That would take us from our current 1.5 million people to 2.5 million people – and this is major growth by anyone’s standards. But where did these numbers come from? How did we get here? Where will those million people come from?
Let’s go back to July 2012. The Auckland Council finalised its “Auckland Plan”, a vision document for the next 30 years. The Council knew that it had to plan for population growth, and the question was how much. For this, it turned to Statistics New Zealand, a government department which makes “population projections” for areas across New Zealand. Councils across the country use these projections to anticipate how their districts will change over time.
Section B of the Auckland Plan lays it out:
“Statistics New Zealand models three scenarios for the future of Auckland’s population – high, medium and low growth. Given Auckland’s history of rapid population growth, Auckland Council believes it is prudent to base its future planning on the high-growth scenario, and unless otherwise stated, this model is used throughout the Auckland Plan. The high-growth model projects a population of 2.5 million in 2041”.
This chart from the Auckland Plan shows the different projections (low, medium and high) for Auckland. I think it’s a nice touch that they also compare the populations of our next five largest cities, which hammers home the point that Auckland is projected to grow much faster than any of them – the situation we face is unique within New Zealand.
The Auckland Plan was used as a guide to create the draft Auckland Unitary Plan – so the assumptions about planning for an extra million people are carried over from this graph.However, there’s no guarantee that we’ll have an extra million Aucklanders by 2041. Indeed, it represents an increase on our current growth trajectory (which would see us to about 2.25 million, or 750,000 extra people, by that time).
You could justify this in various ways: homes in Auckland are expensive, suggesting high demand, and no doubt more people would like to live here. Increase supply to match the unfilled demand, and make sure you’ve got transport and other infrastructure in place, and we could very well get to 2.5 million people.But we might not. And the Auckland Plan, with its intent to allow for up to 280,000 homes within the current urban limits and up to 160,000 homes outside them, may give us more capacity than we actually end up using. If this is the case, we may not get a 60:40 or 70:30 split of intensification to sprawl. It could be more, or less, depending on what the market provides, what the government provides, how those infrastructure costs are divvied up, and so on.
You could make any number of conclusions from this, but the ones I like are:
1) We should make sure that the release of land outside the current urban limits is carefully staged. If you release it all at once, you could undermine the aim of intensification.
2) This is even more reason for the nimby types, and all those who are generally against change, to realise that change won’t come overnight, and perhaps they should chill out a little.
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Please note that the Wellington figures given are for Wellington City, not the Wellington metro area (+ Hutt Valley, Porirua, Kapiti)
Yup, it’s a little odd that the Council put the graph together that way actually. The Wellington urban area has a similar population to Christchurch when you factor in the outlying cities.
I believe one of the outlying areas, namely Kapiti, is growing quite strongly. Not as strongly as Auckland, obviously. But enough to stop Wellington flat-lining.
which hammers home the point that Auckland is projected to grow much faster than any of them – the situation we face is unique within New Zealand.
That’s not strictly true, both Hamilton and Tauranga cities have comparable growth rates to Auckland out to 2031
Auckland’s projected growth rates for the low, medium and high scenarios are 1.1% , 1.5% , and 1.8% respectively
Tauranga city is 1.0% 1.4% and 1.8% respectively , while Hamiton city is 0.9% 1.3% and 1.6%
While the scale of Auckland’s problems are unique, both of these other cities will also face adding 50% of their population cf their 2006 census night figure.
Hi greenwelly, thanks, and you’re right about the percentage growth rates… yes it’s a scale argument I’m referring to (and a sentence that I ended up taking out about how Auckland is projected to account for about 60% of NZ’s growth). Those are the kinds of numbers that people should keep in mind, I think! Plus, Auckland’s growth will take quite a different form, i.e. likely to have more intensification (as opposed to greenfields) than the other cities.
Chill out a little?
Try a whole damned lot haha.
Wellington Regional would be more useful, as the cities function in many ways as contiguous units (and would show slightly more growth, as coastal areas will continue to expand). Christchurch, on the other hand, would be expected to show a drop before a full or partial recovery.
Census data later this year will be very useful. It’s a pity we haven’t had it until now, because I think our picture of NZ has become slightly distorted – we don’t realise how much the country has changed, and how much Auckland is driving that change. Anything that can communicate that to the rest of the country, and policymakers especially, is a great thing.
Greater Christchurch is a major competitor for Auckland so it is vital to know whether the 2011 Christchurch population extimate is pre or post February earthquake. If the projected growth for the Cities of Auckland and Christchurch are based on continuation of the growth rates from mid-2006 to mid-2011 the result will be a transfer of 100,000 residential growth from Christchurch to Auckland by 2031 compared with pre-earthquake growth rates. The best indication of the short term population transfer from Christchurch to Auckland (especially as destination for immigrants) is found in the REINZ Stratified median price index.
http://properazzi.co.nz/insights/auckland-house-prices-making-sense-of-the-data
Hi Kevyn, the population projections I referred to in this post were made before the earthquakes hit – they were made in early 2010. Stats NZ revised the projections in late 2012, though, and they’re still telling a similar story – i.e. the “high” scenario takes us to 2.5 million people by 2040, with “medium” somewhat less than that. I didn’t put them into this post because there wasn’t much difference there.
Incidentally, if you compare Stats NZ’s pre-earthquake projections for Christchurch (2010) to post-earthquake projections (2012), the difference is only about 10,000 people by 2031. It will be interesting to see the 2013 census results though.
Thanks John, That’s the clarification I was seeking. I know the the 10,000 overall long-term reduction is used in ECan’s LURP but hadn’t seen the basis for the figures used in the Auckland Plan.
How not to do it: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/05/quantifying-cost-sprawl/5664/