Local body elections are now less than 5 months away. It is probably worth saying right from the start that as part of any commentary on the elections, the blog will do its best to remain neutral only judging candidates based on the policies or statements that they have made. Personally I don’t actually have any political preferences and am happy to praise or criticise anyone from any part of the political spectrum.
While Maurice Williamson has clearly been considering his options, so far the only confirmed candidate for mayor from the right of the political spectrum has been John Palino. His main reason for entering the race seems to be due to his opposition to the Unitary Plan. However unlike some of our councillors and local board members who oppose the plan, at least John is suggesting an alternative and that alternative is what I am looking at with this post. This is from his website.
A Solution for Our Mass Growth
There are many ways to manage the massive growth that is happening in Auckland. We shouldn’t believe that there is only one possiblity. We need to listen to the public at what will best fit Auckland and benefit the people living here today.One plan that does tick all the boxes would be to develop the industrial and commercial area of Manukau City as the new modern most livable city in the world. We have the opportunity to develop the city from ground level. Modern design of apartments, town houses, terrace houses, offices, schools, medical facilities, galleries, museums, sporting fields, new business, industry and importantly, a well designed public transportation system.
Ticking All The Boxes
- A Modern and Smart City Design
- Major Transport Hub
- Long Term Financing
- Small Business Growth
- Job Growth
- Growth in Surrounding Communities
- Leveling the Auckland House Prices
- Reduce Crime and Poverty
- Redirect Traffic Growth
Manukau is the most ideal location for the New Modern Auckland City. It is near the Airport and all major highways and public transit routes. It is in close proximity to Hamilton for future transport development. We can build the most desirable, smart and affordable city in the world, while the existing residential communities of Auckland still grow, but with the involvement of those communities.
Manukau will now create an opportunity for new business, restaurants, cafes, shops, lawyers, accountants, doctors, office complexes, agencies, travel orientated industries and entertainment in a city of smart growth. This not only offers our growing population a place to live, but a place to start up businesses and create jobs. In the current Auckland Plan there is very little room for job growth as it doesn’t allow enough room for business growth amongst its extreme intensification. We need to be very concerned!
From this and his other comments it seems like his plan is to leave the rest of Auckland as it is and simply put all of the intensification and development down south. So let’s look at some of the challenges that would have to be addressed for such a thing to work and I’m primarily going to put aside the issue of housing in this post.
Location
The existing CBD sits fairly nicely in the middle of the urban part of the region. That is of course no coincidence as that is effectively where the city started and from where it spread out from. If the city had of been started in Manukau then it would likely have spread out from there. The primary reason the CBD started where it did was simply because of its access to the harbour. The harbour is also a reason why I can’t see any suggestion of moving the CBD really taking hold. Almost all urban development and regeneration that is occurring around the world is happening in areas with close access to water in the form of rivers or harbours. Manukau simply doesn’t have this and while that alone wouldn’t be enough to stop such a move, other factors would be.
Employment
Opponents of projects like the CRL love to quote that the CBD only contains around 12% of jobs. However as we have talked about before, it is really the entire city centre that should be considered, not just the area bounded by the moat of motorways. Doing so pushes the percentage of jobs up to over 20%. Sure it still doesn’t sound a lot but the total number of jobs dwarfs any other area in Auckland as the map below shows.
Further there is still a lot of places where growth to occur within the city centre. As a start another 10,000-15,000 jobs are expected to go in just the Wynyard Quarter alone. These numbers also don’t count the tens of thousands of students from the universities and other learning institutions that are located in the centre of the city. By comparison the entire Manukau commercial area has around 25,000 jobs at the moment. The Auckland Plan envisions employment in the region will grow by around 275,000 job over 30 years.
The point is that even if you left the city centre as it is now, for Manukau to even come close to rivalling the city centre for employment it would need to increase in size by well over 500% and it would need to take almost half of all of the regional employment growth over that same time. I’m no expert but that would surely take some fairly strong and potentially draconian measures to implement, especially seeing as the area doesn’t have the physical benefits that places like the existing city centre have. Further the existing city centre has one other massive advantage, it’s central location gives it access to a much wider pool of potential employees. Developing Manukau as the future CBD would have massive impacts for people who currently live in North, West and Central Auckland.
Transport
Everyone seems to agree that a city centre flooded by cars is not a good thing but some people will obviously still choose to drive. One advantage that Manukau has it that it isn’t surrounded on three sides by a motorway, but it is on two sides. From the motorway network there are effectively four connections to Manukau – On SH1 there is Te Irirangi Dr and Redoubt Rd/Gt South Rd and on SH20 there is Cavendish Dr and Manukau Station Rd.
Now a motorway lane can handle about 2,000 vehicles per hour so if we are lucky we might be able to get 8,000 vehicles per hour from them. There are also local roads that can be used to access the area but most of them also interact with the motorway ramps at some point so overall road capacity might not be that much more. Let’s be generous though and say that overall road capacity is 15,000 vehicles per hour. Over the two hour peak that would equate to say 30,000 vehicles which is similar to what our existing CBD has. There would of course need to be a hell of a lot of car parking buildings to handle all of these cars but for the purposes of this we will just have to assume they exist somewhere.
That still leaves us needing to get tens of thousands of people into the area by other methods. As we know rail has the most capacity and luckily the rail network has recently been extended to Manukau. But the station is a terminus, just like Britomart however it is worse as it only has two tracks and it doesn’t appear to have been designed in a way that would allow it to be extended in the future. With such a station we would probably be lucky to get 6 trains per hour terminating at the station and assuming each one was full, that is only around 9000 people that could reach the area by rail during the two hour peak. Of course there would also be buses from many places around the region and they would definitely serve to reduce road capacity (so the 15,000 mentioned above would come down).
Either way this is well short of what we would need meaning any serious proposal to make Manukau the main CBD is going to need a lot of transport investment. We would also need a lot of transport investment all around the region if we want to make it practical for people in the North, West and central areas to have decent access. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if sorting out the transport aspects alone ended up costing more than what is proposed as needed for the existing CBD.
Conclusion
In summary I just don’t think that it is practical to make Manukau the main CBD in Auckland. The amount of investment needed from the council, government and private industry is likely to be far greater than what it would cost to fix the issues that exist with the existing CBD. There also isn’t likely to be a great deal of desire from many large firms to shift there over the existing CBD. Manukau is and will continue to be a very important regional centre and is likely to see a lot of growth as more development happens in the south however I can’t see it coming even close to half total size of the existing central city area. A lot of people often site Sydney with Paramatta as an example however even then it is worth remembering that the central city is expected to continue to dominate city wide employment.
John has also repeated some of his thoughts in an article yesterday in the Manukau Courier.
He says the shift would take some of the pressure off Auckland’s congested roading network.
“If you look on a map, where’s the best place for another city in Auckland? Manukau is perfect.”
Adding more commercial aspects to the south would help foster connections with the industrial sector, Auckland Airport and Hamilton, he says.
“It’s almost impossible not to have traffic. We can’t say ‘let’s keep pushing them in’. We need to move them away. We can do that by building in Manukau.”
The likes of law firms, IT businesses and the courts could stay in the present CBD, he says.
The native New Yorker says the move could provide a new start for South Auckland.
“It does have a large crime rate. This will bring up the values of the properties and all of a sudden people start coming in.”
One major piece of infrastructure Mr Palino would consider is an electric train or monorail connecting Manukau with the airport.
And his plan to fund some of the changes would be through a government bonds issue.
Some intensification around Auckland is needed but not to the extent mayor Len Brown is proposing, he says.
He admits he hasn’t spent much time in the Manukau area but plans to touch base with local business associations to find out more.
“The new city which is Manukau will be a world recognised city.”
Getting rid of “high paying” jobs in the Auckland Council’s back office and moving that funding into frontline services is also a priority for Mr Palino.
Perhaps before John continues it might be worth him actually looking into some of these issues – and John if you read this, we are happy to talk through to you about it.
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John is certainly visionary. As to whether he can convince anyone of the merits of his vision is a whole other matter. It seems to be a matter of trying to fix something that isn’t broken. At least not yet.
And all your comments are prelimimary to the issue of the airport flight path and the restraint it puts on Manukau CBD.
Case closed.
Yeah I was going to mention that. Especially given that Auckland Airport remains on a strong growth track, and the number of planes in and out is likely to keep increasing over the next few years.
Yup, can definitely see a few campaign donations from AIAL going to Len.
I don’t know, they seem to really hate the concept of actually providing PT to the airport though….
You’re assuming that the function of an airport is to fly people in and out of a city. Airports make much, often the large majority of their money through “auxiliary revenue”. Which means shopping leases, property leases for hotels and other things, and most importantly for transport; bus charges, taxi charges, and parking. Acres and acres of parking. Providing fast and efficient public transport at a reasonable cost may increase their flow, but it is likely to negatively impact on their profitability.
Sydney, for example, got rail. But the operators were able to abuse their monopoly position such that it was simultaneously a large revenue source and did not threaten their other income streams. We at least (until National forces us to sell it completely) still own most of the airport. And so that money goes back towards Auckland’s residents, and does not constitute a great harm. But AIAL have a different set of imperatives to the rest of the city, and so don’t expect them to support it properly any time soon.
They of course will not want to be seen to oppose it, and they won’t come strongly out against it at any time either.
I think it was Petrick who summed it up very well the other day.
While the airport very vocally supports rail over improved buses, it is only because the rail hasn’t got significant traction yet, once we see traction for rail they are likely to switch back to the least threatening solution.
The council may just have to purchase the land, build the stations, and then sell everything that isn’t a peice of rail or a physical station back at a higher cost due to the uplift.
timr, you do not know what you are talking about; you could build a 40 story building in Manukau and it would have no affect to the airport what so ever.Just look at the elevation of Totara Heights in relation, it is about 100m higher; an that does not stop the aircraft flying over. Also think Hong Kong Kai Tak airport, that was surrounded by buildings; they were right on the door step and they did not stop aircraft flying into there.
Whether this is a good idea or not as Matt has noted above is another story.
AIAL have the right to object to residential and other uses that are within the noise contours of the flightpath. My understanding is that when the old MCC existed they wanted to pursue further resi towers in Manukau CBD – after a couple were built the airport quickly realised they did not want future objectors; MCC had to shift their planning emphasis for resi to surrounding areas.
Happy to have anyone who has knowledge of this in more detail chip in….
I don’t know the actual parameters of the corridor (no doubt they’re well specified). However, I do know that the typical glide path for approach is 3 degrees, or about 30m of descent per km. You want significant margins of safety around that, so nothing of any real height seems likely be allowed on the south of central Manukau. Building north into Papatoetoe could be an option, however.
You also want to avoid putting large and concentrated populations of residents or workers underneath such an approach/take-off. Accidents are thankfully now very rare, but a precautionary approach is sensibly maintained. That’s why there is only farmland and low density industrial, all the way out to the Southern Motorway.
Kai Tak was closed because it was a ridiculously dangerous airport due to the tall buildings and mountains within its vicinity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Tak_Airport
Ah nuts this is going to provide a pile of confusion between Shifting the CBD and producing a Second CBD (so that Auckland has twin cores) in Auckland which won’t help the debate.
Umm Matt would you like to finish your article off to bring it back into balance with the other option being touted that Southern Auckland and Auckland Council (yes Council are considering it after a presentation I rattled off to them recently) have picked up and are talking about.
South Auckland is Choice Blog even has an animation of Manukau as a SECOND CBD (not shifting it) and respect links to both options on the table: http://southaucklandischoice.com/2013/05/23/manukau-as-a-second-cbd/
Or Matt ping me on Twitter and Facebook and I’ll go write a guest post on Manukau as a Second CBD of Auckland
As for the flight path. Already taken it into consideration. In saying that there is nothing stopping 18-26 storeys on the southern flanks of the current Metropolitan Zone, and not much hindering taking up any super tall’s if the land south of the Vodafone Events Centre and near the Super Clinic was redeveloped. Cities around the world have airports close to their super talls and I do remember flying into Hong Kong towers often beside you as you land. Nothing is impossible – just got to be done right
Why do we want a second CBD, we especially don’t need it. Manukau is and should continue to be an important regional centre but I would much rather have one large well performing CBD than two smaller ones that under perform. The only real reason Manukau has the attention it does is that under the old council structure each one tried to create their own competing centres.
The basic and most straight forward answer is The Geography of Sense of Identity.
I highly recommend Matt watching the All About Auckland video feed of the last Auckland Plan Committee where I go into Sense of Identity and how the South identifies Manukau more as a CBD than the existing CBD.
Transport, employment and even the sustainability points were also mentioned which is what got the Council and Planners paying attention especially when 33-40% of the population is either living or will be living south of Otahuhu and the Tamaki Estuary
that’s exactly why they had to build an artificial island to accommodate a brand new airport in HK opened in 1998. Because you can’t fly A380s in between buildings. London has a city airport but only certain (smaller) planes are certified to operate there. I think it’s a no brainer.
If the proposal is just to remove height and density restrictions in Manukau then IMO I dont see a problem. If the area can grow organically and there is demand then so be it.
However, it will need a better transport system as just planning it (as Manukau was originally planned) as an auto city is defeating the purpose and will just create a dead centre full of parking lots (so pretty much the status quo). Ideally extending the Manukau line to loop back through the Eastern suburbs and East Tamaki industrial area and join up at Panmure would be ideal, but that is a massive project.
Rail to the airport is a great idea and should happen but doesnt solve the dead end problem of Manukau station. A monorail is not good. For better or for worse we are stuck with narrow gauge heavy rail and uniformity across the network is the best way to go.
And you can be damn sure that no blue political party in this country will be supporting any rail projects, as Brownlee has made quite clear. I think even a red/green government will be looking to consolidate once the CRL is built. So how does Auckland pay for it?
My biggest objection would be if Auckland adopted policies to actively drive business away from the CBD to Manukau by making the CBD less attractive. If Manukau cant grow without artificial rate payer funded subsidies like tax breaks then it shouldnt happen.
But is anyone really not relocating to Manukau now because of current height restrictions? If development hasnt happened in Manukau before now, what policies (other than planning changes) are proposed to attract capital and business there? It is all very light on detail – CBDs happen spontaneously over time. How do you force grow a CBD?
Not sure with Palino’s idea but I can comment on mine.
My idea was to remove the height and density limits off the Manukau area. Yes we have the airport rules and one takes that into account naturally. In saying that there is nothing that would stop a very bold developer building a Super Tall (200 metres + ) at the southern end on the blank land near the Super Clinic and Vodafone events centre as the flight paths for international aircraft are not generally there.
Coupled with my Centralised Master Community Plan – planning methodology Manukau would then allowed to grow organically. This also answers your bottom question of force growing a CBD. That is no one would force anything.
The zone is in position, a local plan (CMCP) drawn up, the infrastructure invested in and let the “market do the rest” Sim City 4 style.
Transport wise Manukau is a deadbeat being an auto centric city centre. But by design or sheer luck the roads are either super wide or have very generous median strips. This makes retrofitting a decent public and active transport system into Manukau City Centre straight forward without affecting private property as badly as otherwise could of been.
Transport wise you get frequent bus services, separated cycle ways, shares zones, and even plazas which was shown in the Manukau Video. The generous medians also allow one other thing: RAIL
While I mentioned monorail, it was me fiddling with an idea Palino mentioned. My natural bet would be extending the heavy rail system and following the monorail lines I drew up in my own post. The project would be staged naturally and elevated to keep it away from road traffic. Allowing heavy rail would keep the line and fleet homogeneous but those overhead wires are nasty.
Thus my altered inclination would be a Vancouver style sky train that would use third rail. Again staged and elevated. Okay we have a dual system but at least no overhead wires and a system that can handle the grades and sharper turns better.
Getting the Manukau South Rail Link built as absolute priority while electrification under way is critical is well. It allows the rail system to connect Manukau and its population base of South Auckland in a rapid and efficient manner – more so than buses and more so if Papakura gets lugged as a Metro Centre rather than downgraded.
Paying for all this. Targeted rates within Manukau to invest in the infrastructure within the centre itself followed by targeted rates along the areas flanking the expanding airport and Botany Lines (as we know them as). Other methods can range from Municipal Utility Districts although they do not work in Brownfield areas, to PPPs
And as mentioned above if I haven’t there would be no active driving policy moving businesses from one CBD to another. Let the market do its work as Auckland grows. The point being that the zone and infrastructure would be in position in Manukau should the market demand higher buildings, greater density and just may a Super Tall Tower.
Let not Council nor government get in the way
Hi Ben, thanks for your reply. I do read your blog and it is great to see a young guy out there spreading a centrist pro-PT message.
I agree with what you say and your idea for developing Manukau is in line with what I hope to see for Auckland.
However, I am still struggling to see what changes can be made that will encourage growth in Manukau without having negative policies toward the existing CBD or some kind of artificial, rate payer funded stimulus. Transport is one and that is great. I think you will struggle to see a National government support anything other than roads however. Maybe a Labour/Green government would be more accommodating.
It seems to me that little movement of capital and business has occurred in Manukau other than government services over the last 10 years. What do you see is holding that back? For example, why didnt ASB put its new HQ there instead of the Wynyard Quarter? Looking at the height of their building in Wynyard, it would have been well within the existing height limits in Manukau. It would have been much cheaper in land and wages but still they went for relatively expensive leasehold land in a new part of the existing CBD.
Couldnt we be in danger of dividing our energy and limited resources on two CBDs when maybe it would be better to just get the one we have now right? The CBD has been so neglected and strangled with roads for so long that the latent potential there is massive. Promoting a Manukau CBD is likely to just give the naysayers even more ammunition to continue to neglect the CBD and say that projects like the CRL are unnecessary.
How much will it cost to upgrade the PT links in Manukau for say another 50,000 workers? Will that be cheaper than building the CRL? How will it improve the transport situation? If workers then have to travel from West/North Auckland to Manukau for work, how will they do that quickly by PT? I think the proposal assumes that everyone will just live nearby in South Auckland but that isnt necessarily what people will choose or be able to do. What kind of businesses will move there?
I am not against this in principle and it may make sense one day when the CBD is maxed out (a la Sydney) but right now it seems like it is just a way to perpetuate the low density, auto dependent city we have now. And from what I have read on John Pallino’s Facebook page, that seems to be the Auckland he wants to preserve.
ASB moved (or will move very shortly) to Wynyard Quarter because it’s fashionable, just like all the other businesses that have moved downtown. None of my ex colleagues who work at ASB Tower seem keen to be moving there. Banks don’t “do” cheap! They want prominent – Westpac has taken the same route at Takutai Square.
I seriously doubt that ASB with all its shareholders and board of directors discussing the merits and costs would have chosen Wynyard Quarter just to be “cool”. It would have been chosen for the agglomeration benefits of being able to take advantage of easy access to all the high quality, highly skilled employees that a bank needs to function. Those people are more easily sourced in a CBD as ytou can then draw on a much larger talent pool not to mention easy access to ASB’s big customers and suppliers.
I am guessing that all your ex-colleagues are over the age of 40? I know highly educated people under 35 working for ASB who are thrilled that they will be in the middle of such an exciting and dynamic area. Why would any young person want to be stuck out in some auto dependent ghost town of an industrial park where you have to drive to get lunch.
This frustration by older (usually from a rural background) people in NZ that not all big companies are moving out to the ‘burbs (with the obvious benefits of cheaper rents and lower salaries) and away from the CBD shows a fundamental misunderstanding of cities and why they now contain over 50% of the world’s population. The obvious answer is agglomeration benefits – something that is difficult to understand if you think of cities as overgrown country towns and have never lived in a real city (e.g. not Auckland).
Ben – How big do you see Manukau eventually being?
Density isn’t a magic bullet, it is a response to demand. So even if you get a “bold” developer to build to 200m it will be simply filling up the demand for the next 30 years. Solving the Manukau question is a difficult one to manufacture. The one obvious solution is to increase accessibility to and within Manukau. While the existing motorways allow access, they also restrict access. This is the paradox of the self defeating, anti-urbanism of car based development.
I’m guessing that the Shoe Barn employees can’t even get a sandwich at lunchtime without driving.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with having multiple CBD’s. Tokyo has about 5 or 6 (which incidentally built up around the major stations). They just have to be linked with very fast high capacity public transport (between 10-15 mins commute time).
But I don’t think Auckland has the population numbers yet, nor will have any time soon to be able to sustain it. And its not going to save any money, if anything it will increase costs as you need to duplicate functions and facilities.
Agree, Lots of cities in Asia have a string of CBDs linked by rail. There should be more than one in akl. People with houses close to the Grafton CBD will object on lots of other specious grounds, but they’re just rent seeking.
I think that the broad thrust in Auckland’s planning of metropolitan centres is correct, provide activity and employment centres around the wider city to enable a degree of business specialisation and shorter work journeys
and, what happens to the existing CBD under this scenario? are we going to bulldoze the office towers to force a shift to Manukau? it’s a bit like the “Auckland should share its growth” whinge, make your centre attractive to draw growth to it
possibly Sydney’s a reasonable growth analogy, CBD, North Sydney, Parramatta, Airport/Botany, dispersed centres all attracting employment and contributing to the growth of the whole, focussing growth on a single point drives unnecessary travel and causes problems, a degree of decentralisation is healthy and positive
I’d rather see energy and debate being about moving the port to Clevedon, as was discussed in a thread here a while ago.
Clevedon is not on the coast. The nearest coastline is estuarine with very shallow water. Why would you put a port there?
Has anyone modelled the impact of the CRL on journeys South to employment areas in the old Manukau City area?
I’m realising this whole discussion is really part of the ‘supercity’ merging process that was done so hurriedly. Finding a way to honour the previous cities while embracing the region as a whole is similar to what happened in previous amalgamations of the older borough councils.
It takes a sustained conversation to bring everyone along. Leadership, resources and cooperation. A coherent story woven from many voices. That doesn’t just happen on its own. Nor does it happen if key people and organisations are not up to the job
possibly political comment warning!! ;<) I think that Len has done a good job of inclusive governance, Banks simply could not have done it, wouldn't even have recognised the issue
Len deserves another term
I don’t think it’s poltical – it’s an accurate observation. Regardless of the hoopla over the Unitary Plan, Len Brown and the current council have had an enormous job to do, merging the disparate parts of Auckland into a super city – something most Aucklanders didn’t want in the first place. For all the brickbats they are getting, they deserve some bloody big bouquets as well. It was always going to be a thankless task.
I must say I just don’t “get” any of this. Palino used to run Starks at the civic, he had a chef TV show?
The connection to being Mayor is….?
He opposes the UP, is from the right wing, and is vaguely well known. That is all a Nimby needs.
I don’t think building a second CBD is a particularly great idea. But if we’re going to build a whole second CBD, why build it in the current Manukau city centre? It’s poorly connected, with little prospect of improvement, and there’s not much there now to build on. It’s not the largest job market even in the old MCC area – East Tamaki employs more people.
I’d think developing near the airport would make more sense, with rail connections to Wiri, and Onehunga on to Avondale. 19th century (and earlier) cities were built around seaports because that’s where all the overseas passengers and cargo went. These days, being close to an airport is probbly more important for more people.
Smart, creative people will be our key asset. Access to them will mean digital connectedness, more than physical. A different type of ‘port’ if you will. And building the type of region they want to live in.
Definitely. Our existing central city is a huge asset, and I don’t think we should be building a secondary CBD at all.
I agree, but it takes more than just the Mayor.
agreed Sacha, but implicit in my comment was that Len had built something bigger than just the mayoralty
FFS. That was a reply to Steve above: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/05/24/could-we-really-move-the-cbd-to-manukau/#comment-69501
Oh please this is simply naive anti-urbanism from an uber-NIMBY. MC is so not in his backyard.
Anyway cities, especially good cities grow organically and so if this is a great idea, and if Manukau wasn’t so badly planned it surely would be underway already.
Auckland is polycentric, but still has a heart. And for this we should be grateful as highly dispersed cities are very expensive to run.
Manukau certainly needs as much support as possible in terms of removing regulations that may be holding it back, and improvement of transport links other than the space eating and place ruining car focused ones. But both of those are underway and in the UP.
This is no basis for a serious campaign.
Agree Patrick.
I have read a lot recently about agglomeration benefits as it seems to be one of the least understood aspects of centralisation and intensification – especially for NZers’ overwhelmingly rural, small town outlook.
One of the great points made in what I read was about the increased competition between employers/employees and increased labour pool available that centralisation brings. So for example if everyone in the CBD is competing for the same employees/jobs this means that the benefits are:
– employees have a lot more jobs to choose from and therefore employers are trying to outbid each other for the available workers. This allows workers to be more mobile (as they dont need to change general geographical location just their employer) and advance more quickly up the skill/pay scale.
– employers have a lot more workers available with a much wider array of skills. This allows them to find employees much more easily (especially skilled ones) and allows them to expand their business more easily. This adds value to the whole economy as those companies might be more willing to export more quickly and in greater quantities.
If we create a polycentric employment structure this benefit is dissipated. For example, I was recently looking to apply for a job with a company but then saw that the company was located in Mt Wellington. As I live in Bayswater, I would have to turn my current 20 min pleasant commute into a grinding hell of a car commute or a much longer PT commute with ferry then train. As a result I didnt apply for the job even though I am well qualified for it. That means that company doesnt have as many applicants for that position (and the potential pool would already be quite small) and may have to settle for a less qualified employee. I dont get the chance to possibly move my career forward.
I dont think this effect is well understood.
Not well understood in NZ perhaps – perhaps because until now NZ has not had a large city – but well understood in the rest of the world, where the benefits of agglomeration are taken for granted!
Auckland Airport is planning on building a second runway. Some work was already started for that so will affect Manukau even more because of the additional landing paths. some work already started on it but it was delayed because of the GFC
The second runway is to the North so the flight path will a lesser effect on Manukau than the current runway.
http://www.beca.com/projects/transport/airports/auckland_airport_northern_runway_stage_1.aspx#.UZ64xNhv4qQ
http://www.urbika.com/imgs/projects/large/2770_auckland-airport-masterplan.jpg
This is an excellent idea as the South is where the majority of Urban sprawl will occur. Many cities around the world have mulitple business districts and if you refer back to the Employment concentrations map Manukau makes the most sense from a future spatial sense.
but the south is exactly where the sprawl SHOULD NOT occur; fertile soils should grow food to feed the city, not carry the dead weight of houses!!!!
My comment was not in support of Urban sprawl. The unfortunate fact is that John Key and Nick Smith have decreed that developers should decide the future of Urban sprawl. The controlled RUB growth of Franklin is the better proposal. Either way the majority of new Greenfield development is in the South.
“fertile soils should grow food to feed the city”
Why? For the most part they don’t at the moment mainly because the occupants of the city are not prepared to pay as high a price for that food as those in other countries.
So it would be a Business District – not a Central Business District? Does John Polina know what the acronym CBD stands for? Has he heard of the North Shore & West Auckland? Does he realise you can do all the CBD moving you want – move council offices etc – but people and businesses will still go where they want to go – or rather stay where they already are? Maybe in 50 or 100 years Manukau will be on the scale of a second CBD but for now this is just a ridiculous issue to push into public debate when we have real issues to sort out.
All depends on your location as to where the ‘central’ part is. Before the harbour bridge, downtown Auckland was hardly the central part of Auckland, just the most convenient to the port 🙂
Nonsense, Bryce P. Before the bridge, Q St/downtown was still the centre of the city. You just had to get there via west AK or ferry if you were on the NShore, which was generally rural/extremely sparsely developed. Whichever way you slice it the CBD is the geographic, geopolitical. strategic, historical, traditional and designated current centre of AKL. Other satellite centres have and will develop, but the CBD is the CBD – if looks like cat, meows like a cat and cough up furballs, then it’s a cat.
It wasn’t geographically central. It was just the closest point to the easiest port which is what led to the development of the business area. For instance, if someone who lives in Papakura and works in Manukau, the Auckland CBD is hardly the centre point of their world. I don’t even like the term CBD and normally just refer to it as downtown Auckland. After all, other than in dollar terms per sq/m, there is much more physical land attributed to business over the rest of Auckland.
Good grief man. “It wasn’t geographically central?” To what? New Zealand? London? The moon? Reality is, AKL has grown out from that central point, ergo it was and is the geographic centre of the region. Case closed.
Also, it doesn’t matter whether someone lives in Papakura and works in Manukau, if they wanna go see Fleetwood Mac, CBD it is. Or if they want to go visit Len Brown to check out his welts from Nick Smith’s latest beating, CBD it is.
Point being, it’s not about the routines of any random individual.
As for your odd rumination that “in dollar terms per sq/m, there is much more physical land attributed to business over the rest of Auckland,”…. a] where are your facts? and b] this is getting silly
On the contrary Manukau as a Business District should now be very high on the Unitary Plan. The recent concern of intensification by various resident groups and National legislating developer led Urban sprawl into the South means that there is now far more sense to this proposal.
A lot of Auckland Councils expenditure on the City Centre master plan, Wynyard Quarter, the Waterfront plan is based upon the Auckland Plan of a compact city, efficient transport corridors etc. If Auckland City is forced into Urban sprawl then the whole City Masterplan, transportation system, city infrastructure will need to be rewritten to accommodate this new sprawling direction.
National and a few residents groups are essentially rewriting the Auckland Plan on the fly.
This is how Ireland got into the mess so quickly in foolishly thinking that an open market regime will fix its house affordability woes.
A lot of the city’s funding on the city centre?
Isn’t over 30% of Auckland GDP based in the CBD?
The city centre master plan won’t be affected by sprawl on the outskirts. There will still be a strong CBD unless we actively try to stop it. Further most of the money being spent on the city centre is being paid for by a targeted rate on CBD businesses that they asked to be put in place to provide funding for these kinds of improvements.
An interesting thing that the Ak employment map above shows is just how little employment there is in the North West, yet we are building enormous dormitory suburbs out there. No wonder SH16 is now being over built.
So if we are somehow to force growth in MC look forward to both SH20 and SH1, and especially the CMJ to be completely choked all day….
Out of the 1,123 ha of future industrial land in Auckland region,
North Auckland there is 88ha near Huapai and 54ha in Hobsonville,
South Auckland there is 981ha of future industrial land,
http://www.nzta.govt.nz/planning/process/doc/upper-ni-freight-story-shared-evidence-base.pdf
page 64
Exactly Peter. So it looks like we are planning to house heaps of people in the North and North-West but site employment in the South. Oh the joys of the sprawling city: that’s a whole lot of inefficient movement just to get to and from work.
I think Westgate will be a POS. I fully believe that the end result will bear virtually no relationship to the plans submitted years ago and the ‘cool’ stuff will be swept away unless paid for by Council contributions. I would of course be very happy to be proven wrong.
Westgate is 54ha in Hobsonville. this is small stuff.
page 65. Have a look at Hamilton. This should help cool Auckland land prices.
873ha of New areas with infastructure in place, ready now Horotiu, Rotokauri and Ruakura.
Hamilton: South South Auckland
Perhaps Hamilton is really Man City’s rival? For businesses that are not suited to the real AK CBD the option of Te Rapa etc v South Auckland must be very real….Just as easy to service the upper North Island from there; any one now how the land costs compare?
I think future investment from council and govt should go to where the returns are greatest.
The Grafton CBD is beginning to offer diminishing returns in a lot of categories. If the Manukau CBD offers better returns, then that’s where the tax dollars should go. This will displease hipsters who live within a fixed cycle ride of the Grafton CBD, but they gotta think of the regional benefits.
Of course investment should go where the return is greatest. But what investment are you talking about? If you mean the CRL that has huge region wide benefits; like the number of trains that can service Manukau and the Southern Line.
Manukau and South Auckland has had, is having, multiple hundreds of millions in motorway and parking investments, SH20, Highbrook interchange, parking buildings, SH1 widening.
Anyway I’d be careful about the call for investment based on return because of the intensity of employment and spending in the centre you may find that this metric leads to more spending there not less.
Palino is calling for some kind of effort to make Manukau into ‘a centre’ .This is naive.
E.g. Convention centre. Would have been very affordable in manukau. Large messe in Europe in Asia are often based next to intl airports. Cheap land, close to connections, can have big exhibition halls. Wouldnt have had to sell our souls.
Convention centres need proximity to hotels more than airports. You’d also need things for attendees to do outside convention hours. That’s a lot of extra building someone has to underwrite.
Heaps of hotels next to airport. Conventions are fairly self contained, except for the day trips. The whole walking distance to hotel lie was a ruse to get the thing in Grafton.
I’m not sure you actually know Auckland, Grafton is a suburb to the south east of the CBD, it is in and around the Hospital area and not close to the convention centre.
As for conventions, yes they are self contained but the people coming for them often like to get out and see things, especially in the evenings. Being close in the city is important for that.
Convention Centres lose money, which is why they have to be subsidised. This one will fail like the rest, especially if competing ones are built in CHCH and Queenstown at the same time, to add to the regional competition from much better sited [in exciting CBDs] and designed ones on the east coast of Australia. We know from all international experience that Casinos, Convention Centres, and Stadia do not build robust and thriving urban centres. Waterfront developments and great Transit systems do.
A Manukau City Convention Centre would fail even more thoroughly than the AK City one will, as the location is without attractions and supporting infrastructure and cannot be cross subsidised by gambling.
MIT, the coming bus exchange, more apartment buildings, and improved urban design streetscapes are the best bets for the MC centre itself. The Aquatic Centre is another really good investment that’s coming for the south. These are all real and realistic ways to build MC from the failed auto-centric founding vision for the centre, I’m sure it can thrive with more attention at this level… these will lead to local business momentum and the need for further intensity…. It will remain horribly cut off and bisected by motorways and big arterials which will limit it unless it goes up and generates its own economy.
From where I sit, and with a couple of trips to Manukau recently, to place restrictions on building limits there would be a bad idea. Already with the recent apartments being developed there and some re-prioritisation of local streets, the town is feeling so much nicer and used by people than just a very few years ago. With the addition of the train station and the Uni campus, I think the place is on the verge of big change. Rather than heavy rail along the corridor, my suggestion would be to create a separate LRT line from the Airport to Manukau and on to Botany. This could be developed as a BRT line to begin with (and join the AMETI busway) but I could actually see the current Manukau line converted to LRT with an interchange at the NIMT. This would give easy PT access to much of the area and simplify the Manukau branch from a metro point of view. The reason I would choose LRT is that it can be run as a ‘street car’, at grade, through Manukau and then as a grade separated line to the airport and to Botany. I also think the link from Manukau city centre to the sea (at Puhinui) is broken and somehow needs to be repaired. Instead of commercial use, much of the area to the west could make some great medium density housing.
Sustainable cities need food production that doesn’t cost a fortune in oil to transport to market.
NZ manages to export food to the other side of the world and sell it but somehow an extra 20 or 30 km is going to make a difference to the affordability of Auckland’s food? Just not credible. The country is awash with food. Obesity is a national epidemic.
I can’t even be bothered saying which comment that one was a reply to.
Pretty sure the Rugby World Cup planning identified the only zone with enough hotel rooms as being the CBD. Also a reason the big games like the finals had to be in Auckland rather than other cities. The new Convention Centre plans an extra 3000 people per event on top of current base demand. Motels in Manukau aren’t going to help that.
Matt L, why don’t your posts have a reply button?
Grafton is a proud and noble suburb that extends northwest to Victoria park, home of Grafton cricket club. Only in recent years have people referred to part of it as ‘cbd’. I’m just saying that the Grafton CBD is one of several around akl.
Don’t be precious.
Of historical and cricketing interest perhaps but hardly in use anymore. The term CBD only has meaning for one place in a city, is synonymous with City Centre. Auckland does have many centres but only one Centre. And no-one calls it Grafton. A once lovely and leafy gully now sadly nothing but motorway.
Respectfully disagree. I’m a CRL advocate but I think it’s you guys who really don’t understand akl and its people.
I’m curious; disagree with what? That no one calls the Auckland CBD Grafton?
No, disagree with akl having one main centre. It is not preordained, it’s a choice, the outcome of our planning rules and govt investments, as well as personal and business choices. The main reason I disagree with the option of one cbd is that it reinforces unequal distribution of capital, and return on that capital. Those with capital invested in or close to the Grafton CBD stand to gain more if it doesn’t have any rivals. so they lobby hard for more public investments in the area. It’s a straight question about the distribution of public wealth.
Before 2010 each council had its own cbd, the akl plan gav ethe Grafton cbd precedence over the others, in the mean time.
People are beginning to figure out what this means, and soo you get people supporting a manukau cbd. Good on them. The same will happen up north too. And in 20 years we will break off into 3 cities, mostly because the periphery will feel aggrieved that the core has sucked up all their rates and taxes.
P.s. greater Grafton extended right to Victoria st, checkit out on older maps. What’s left is Grafton heights, left over after motorway. I don’t like referring the Grafton cbd as ‘the cbd’ as it obviates the other CBDs in akl, and is also confusing. If you can think of a better descriptor then use it.
Tamaki, this “Grafton CBD” nonsense is making you look foolish. There is no such thing.
No Tamaki like a circle the city does actually have only one centre [with a few exceptions like Minneapolis/St Paul], certainly this is the case with Auckland [see the map above] it is true it has many other areas of importance and concentrations of activity, but none of them rival the actual CBD for intensity. You know that Brooklyn is pretty busy, but it isn’t Manhattan. Same with Sydney, look at the map above, no one denies the importance of Paramatta or North Sydney, but equally no one confuses these place with the CBD.
Furthermore Manukau City has all the help a place could get to try to make it grow, it’s had government departments sent there, the IRD, Police, Courts, and so on… it remains important but it has never grown like it’s inventors thought it would. Part of the reasons for this is that it was conceived for total auto-dependancy… wilfully sited away from the rail line and surrounded by motorways and big arterials. These limit its appeal as a destination and efficiency at the very same time as they provide access.
This is the great contradiction of the auto age: making a place easier to get by car almost always also makes it much less desirable to go to at all.
Vic Park has been in Freeman’s Bay since it was created. Just because Gradton C C plays there doesn’t make it Grafton anymore than the Ponsonby R C having thir grounds at Western Springs makes it Ponsonby.
Just silly
saw an article on this guy in the local paper……..thought Manukau CBD was an interesting concept but I did not take it too seriously to be
honest. Though we are getting another high rise going in next to the new station/campus – so it looks in part like there is some attempt to
make Manukau more metropolitan.
I find the comments in your blog interesting:
“That still leaves us needing to get tens of thousands of people into the area by other methods. As we know rail has the most capacity and luckily the rail network has recently been extended to Manukau. But the station is a terminus, just like Britomart however it is worse as it only has two tracks and it doesn’t appear to have been designed in a way that would allow it to be extended in the future. With such a station we would probably be lucky to get 6 trains per hour terminating at the station and assuming each one was full, that is only around 9000 people that could reach the area by rail during the two hour peak. Of course there would also be buses from many places around the region and they would definitely serve to reduce road capacity (so the 15,000 mentioned above would come down).”
From what I understand are not all the new PT changes out South designed around making the Manukau station a transport hub (but without a southern train connection)
in so far as having all the Eastern line trains start and terminate there rather than running as they do to Papakura now. Is this not implying that Manukau is really not
set up to be a proper hub ? Why then had they not considered Papakura or Manurewa as hubs – they might have actually had more of the capacity in place to grow long term ?
I recall when the Manukau station was put in – lots of things (like having it track all the way to the centre of Manukau and put in the southern connection) were not done –
I think the council were hoping to just get it in before the supercity arrived but on a tight budget & I am not sure how much planning went into what its future use would be – would be interesting to
know though ? As an aside I had also heard that the wide median strip on Te Irirangi Drive was there as a future proof retention of land for a train line as a progression of the station – not sure how
true that is either ?
Papakura and Manurewa are also transport hubs under the proposed network.
The median reserve in Te Irirangi was designed for trams and is a bit narrow for heavy rail, while the station at Manukau was not designed to be extended eastward (and has some major structural elements in the way.
It might be possible with much money spent, but it hasn’t been designed for that.
by this I meant the comments in the blog doh !
Thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on my Manukau City growth option. My apologies to all who were misled by the Manukau Courier article, but as some may have sensed, I was in fact misquoted there and did not suggest moving the CBD.
What I am keen to investigate further is shifting some of the emphasis, and pressures, away from the central city to enhance employment and other opportunities across wider metropolitan Auckland. For example, right now the Council is offering generous incentives to business to locate in Wynyard Quarter. These incentives could, equally, be used to generate commercial activity in other Auckland centres. The reasons why Manukau sticks out have been discussed here and elsewhere at length, and include factors such as access to transport and labour, as well as softer socio-economic benefits.
Just a further point of clarification on the airport: it’s extremely important that Auckland Airport retains flexible operating hours and I wouldn’t support encroachment on its noise and flight paths.
Thanks for stopping by John. I certainly think that there are opportunities to improve areas like Manukau but I think we need to be very careful about how we do it. There are huge economic benefits that can be had by further improving the existing city centre and we don’t want to undermine those.
Happy to talk more about it if you want to.
Yes good to see you’ve found us John. And certainly we wish quality development for the entire city but it is not clear from your quoted position that you understand the powerful agglomeration benefits that accrue from cities with thriving centres and that is observable globally [Ed Glaeser is good on this]. Also Auckland is already fairly polycentric, which exacerbates the inefficiencies caused by our extremely auto-dependant movement system.
But we look forward to hearing your plans for Auckland as Mayoral candidate.