Yesterday, the NZ Herald chose to celebrate Auckland’s 175th anniversary with an editorial celebrating the city’s motorways. It’s an extremely odd piece to read in the wake of a string of good editorials discussing shared spaces, new cycleways, and the light rail proposals.
It’s also sad that the paper’s editors chose not to highlight Auckland’s many other features that we can take pride in. No mention of the city’s preserved natural heritage – the beaches, the Waitakeres, the Hunuas, the maungas, and two harbours. No mention of its preserved urban heritage – the villas and shops of Ponsonby and Devonport. No mention of its humming, vibrant centre, which has been brought back to life by Britomart, waterfront redevelopment, and pedestrian spaces, or the many other places, like the multicultural night markets or the Otara markets, where Auckland happens.
Instead of celebrating Auckland’s glories, the Herald chooses to make a virtue of its dysfunctions:
Auckland’s landscape and coastal attractions made its sprawl as inevitable as its preference for cars over public transport.
This is total hogwash. The Herald is attempting to re-cast Auckland’s outward expansion as an inevitable process in an attempt to win today’s argument about how best to accommodate future growth. “Planners”, they contend, cannot and should not attempt to fight the tide of suburbanisation and road-building.
Unfortunately, their own account reveals that Auckland’s current shape – and dependence upon cars – was in fact a planned outcome, not a natural one.
Here is the Herald discussing how Auckland got its motorway network:
They would do their utmost also to stop the Ministry of Works planning motorways south and west of the city. The southern route extended well past the green fields of Ellerslie and the meatworks at Southdown. If the ministry was not careful its motorway would allow housing to cover the fine farming soils of the Manukau County, absorbing the small towns of Otahuhu and Papatoetoe on the Great South Rd.
There were even plans to put a motorway on a causeway across the Whau estuary to the Te Atatu peninsula which could change the shape of West Auckland, developing to that point along the western rail line at New Lynn, Glen Eden and Henderson.
That’s right: the motorways were planned by central government. They didn’t happen on their own. They happened as a result of political fiat and bureaucratic intervention that aimed to shape demand, rather than responding to it. We have taken a look at how planned the roads were in a number of posts over the years. The bottom line is that Auckland’s pre-1950s public transport system was popular and well-used – and it was dismembered by planners who didn’t believe that we should live that way.
What was true for motorways was also true for housing development. The government was heavily involved in planning and building Auckland’s suburban lifestyle through a major programme of state house construction on greenfield sites:
The Government was building big state housing projects at Otara and Mangere in the 1960s. Suburban development crossed the Tamaki inlet to Pakuranga by the end of the decade.
In light of these facts, it’s hard to figure out what to make of the Herald’s criticisms of “planning”. Their attitude seems to be that urban planners are bad… but motorway planners are good. In other words, plan away, but only if you are planning a society and a city that conforms to the editors’ preferences and prejudices.
Ultimately, the editorial only serves to reveal the Herald’s own myopia. When they say:
It has never been Auckland’s character to look back, or forwards for that matter.
They are not speaking for the many Aucklanders who have a keen sense of history… and who look forward optimistically to the future. They are simply admitting to their own lack of vision.
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In a way Jack Tame probably did a better job at bringing out some of Auckland’s defining characteristics in his Op-ed on Sunday than The Herald editoral: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11391406
Rallying against planners and being crazily pro motorway and sprawl has all the hallmarks of being written by John Rough an. The other good ones recently were clearly not.
It’s this sort of stuff from the Herald that drew me to cancel my subscription to the paper this year. I love newspapers and have since forever but do not in any way want to support something with such a split personality on local issues. It’s impossible to know where the paper as a whole stands on anything. One day it will be ‘shared spaces forever’ and the next ‘we need the traffic lights fixed’ and nonsense like the above.
Notably we have not yet had the ‘Northern Busway:I was wrong’ followup article from JR.
Why do such an article when you can be busy being wrong on new things! Lets look forward!
I’m kind of being devil’s advocate here, because I can’t stand the Herald, but it’s not unreasonable to say both “shared spaces forever” and “we need to fix the traffic lights”. There’s no logical reason why these are incompatible, unless you subscribe to a simplistic “anything that hinders drivers = good” / “anything that assists drivers = bad” view.
That’s quite an extrapolation from what I said. It’s more around things that are working and driving the city forward versus a belief that somehow tweaking the traffic lights is going to fix everything with references to how ‘other cities’ have these amazing traffic lights that we don’t.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10879979
Yep this has the whiff of John Roughan all over it. He’s never been one for facts or figures or qualifying his arguments with anything substative. His whole argument is ” if we needed it we would already have it”
“Auckland’s landscape and coastal attractions made its sprawl as inevitable as its preference for cars over public transport.” Makes sense to me, I went to Scandrett Regional Park with the family. I didn’t see many people use a Hop card to get there.
Yes and of course a huge percentage of every day trips in Auckland terminate at Scandrett Regional Park, so logically there is no need for public transport and everyone should just drive everywhere. I see it now.
Well done.
Yes of course claim someone said something they never said and then destroy that. You should be a lawyer! But don’t claim your advocacy is logic.
The point is how is it relevant to a discussion about the inevitability of sprawl and car dependence to mention a regional park that is visited by people for recreational purposes? You seem to be suggesting that because no one uses PT to get there that reinforces the idea that PT is not suitable for Auckland.
Sounds like traffic engineer logic. AKA complete nonsense.
The point was that you can’t get everywhere by public transport particularly the interesting bits that make this regional a great place to live. Perhaps I should have simply said that in the first place and we could have avoided growling at each other. Public transport is an absolute necessity for trips to or from the centre or to a few other very busy bits but absolutely hopeless beyond that. We need public transport and we need roads so people can drive places. It is the one sided nonsense that prompts me to wind people up. The PT only comments are little better than the one sided car only crap of the past.
“We need public transport and we need roads so people can drive places. It is the one sided nonsense that prompts me to wind people up.”
I agree with this point. Horses for courses. I think what the authors of this blog (and many, but certainly not all) commentators are saying is that Auckland already has an extensive and useful road network, but underdeveloped PT and cycling networks. Given this, new investment should be focused on improving the “missing modes”.
Nobody’s proposing ripping up existing roads – just reallocating a bit of space on them!
Well that be a good point if anyone had ever suggested that only PT was needed. Thinking that you need to wade in and “defend” a mode that already gets 95% of transport funding suggests some naive belief that there is a “war on cars” – again nonsense.
If we had a 20% PT modal share that would be fantastic and make the city a much better place to live. That is a fantastic, ground breaking change but would still means around 60% (assuming cycling and walking also increase) of trips would be made by private motor vehicle. Hardly everyone travelling by PT.
Auckland’s most outstanding geographic feature is its location on two harbours and its close proximity to the many islands in the Hauraki Gulf. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never driven a car to Waiheke, Rangitoto, Tiritiri, or Great Barrier. Ferries – a form of public transport – are the most practical option for accessing the islands of the gulf.
One could argue, I suppose, that Auckland’s geography makes it uniquely suited for high rates of boat ownership, and that the council should regulate to ensure that we all have boatsheds and marinas available to us. Minimum boatshed requirements, anyone?
But the Council planners wouldn’t do that would they Peter. They would say we should not be using our own boats to go anywhere we want at any time that suited us. They would say we should only use public boats and all trips must start or end in the CBD and so they would try and bring in maximum boat parking rates to make boat ownership harder. And then when people decide they would like to buy a bigger section to accommodate all of the boats they and their family desire then the Council would inflict a Rural Urban Boundary on us to push up land prices and encourage people to move to a different city.
Let’s return from boats to cars for a moment, and look at what local and central governments have *actually* done in Auckland, rather than what people’s fevered imaginations are conjuring up. Over the last half-century, planners and bureaucrats have:
* Imposed minimum parking requirements that *legally require* people to provide space for cars even if they don’t want to
* Spent vast amounts of taxpayer and ratepayer money building motorways and wide arterial roads for cars
* Opened up vast tracts of greenfield land for suburban housing developments, and, in some cases, spent taxpayer and ratepayer money constructing said subdivisions
* Regulated to prevent people constructing apartment buildings in the inner suburbs by extensive imposition of building height limits and density controls
* Intentionally dismantled an efficient and popular, if somewhat run-down, tram network, failed to invest in a replacement service of similar usefulness and quality, and then deregulated and privatised bus services with the effect of destroying the network’s remaining usefulness.
In short, it’s simply insane to argue that urban planners are forcing everyone into apartments or onto city centre-bound public transport. The historical record suggests that the *exact opposite* has occurred.
Nice reply Peter. Excellent points to portray the steady but sure bias we’ve had against livable and walkable communities and towards the total bias towards auto-dependancy.
Agree 100%. Now let’s do counter approaches going back up your list. First step Public Bus and Tram. Step 2 Network Repriorisation -protected cycle and 2 bus lanes where possible and peds maximised.Then just keep doing the counter measures. Auckland liveability index shooting up.
Haha. Just emailed Mr Roughnam this… “Just wandering if you are going to publish a retraction (slash – “Oh dear I was so wrong”) to your Northern Busway critism from a few years back about it being a white elephant and a complete waste of taxpayer dollars?
Thanks, Patrick.”
It’s hard to think of a bigger social engineering project than the suburbanisation of Auckland: prohibition of attached housing types, incentivised homeownership, and state construction of motorways and other infrastructure. But of course to Roughan this is a natural result of free markets and Auckland’s geography.
Even if it was natural (so is polio) or even if it was free-market choice (so is letting people starve when you can get higher prices for food elsewhere), that wouldn’t mean it is desirable to encourage or support.
+1
I think some people are so entrenched in their car-dependent existence, so unaware of what the alternatives are, so convinced that the “vast majority” think exactly as they do, that they can’t conceive of anything even vaguely different.
To such people it is unthinkable that car-dependency won’t simply continue forever, or that planning should be for anything other than more traffic, or that a significant number of people would ever wish to change away from this.
The idea that even a small amount of transport funding should go elsewhere scares them; thus they automatically poor scorn on any proposals for better public transport or traffic-limitation.
No matter how disastrous the environmental degradation due to mass-road-transport, how poor the economic efficiency of many highway schemes, or how dysfunctional our urban centres become, these people continually clamour for more. They simply cannot help themselves. They are devoid of any other vision.
Yes George Wood fits that description very well. He spends a lot of time on social media (and everywhere) whiteanting CRL and Skypath while advocating another motorway across the harbour. When you ask him why (when current crossing is not congested, when traffic volumes have been falling since 2005, when the price tag is $5 billion) he ignores the question.
I seriously believe he can’t comprehend that actually the world has changed.
I would say it’s an age thing except I’m from the same generation.
Yeah, it really looks like there is an age thing, it does seem hard for many to learn new things after a certain age… But Wood is a curious case, it’s pretty hard not to conclude he’s working for some very specific and focussed interests on those two issues. The handful of SkyPath opponents have deep pockets and let us know here that they believe they deserve more influence because of this. I think he’s just working for his funders on these two issues.
Freemasonry Patrick, thats the only way I can explain Wood’s behaviour 🙂
As for Skypath opponents, yes they can feel they are entitled to more influence, not sure that the RMA actually gives them that – other than that they can afford an appeal to the Environment Court on points of law if they don’t like the result.
“Working for his funders”. Despicable if true. Shades of the gun lobby and the GOP. Very sad if our local pollies are stooping so low.
And on housing affordability, another issue that no doubt Roughan believes nothing can be done: http://www.planetizen.com/node/73400/more-critique-demographias-international-housing-affordability-survey
How can you take that seriously Patrick?
It’s worded like a piece of propaganda and the author is quite obviously bias, just like the people they seek to criticise!
Matthew. The link is there with his evidence, feel free to peer review and show us where Todd Litman is so mistaken…
And then there’s the “Heritage” Department…
Erawan Thai on Jervois rd- ready to to be chopped up.
Thanks to a Council Planner who suggested the new owner “may as well get a demolition permit, could come in handy”
Happy 115th birthday massive villa! Now die…
http://www.trademe.co.nz/property/residential-property-for-sale/auction-839404125.htm
That is a sweet as building. I hope it goes to a good location on a section near the edge of town.
The bit about stud height (3.7 metres!) also makes me think of that Motu report from last week criticising draft rules that aimed to set a 2.7m minimum stud. That seemed a bit short-sighted given the way people place a high value on old buildings with really, really high ceilings.
Sounds like you work in ACs “Heritage” dept already
There’s a bit more planner bashing in this thread so given planners are useless at engaging in forums I thought I’d just point out that many (most?) planners I know under 40 would agree with the outcomes you wish for. The difficultly can often be in the out-of-date plans inherited that reinforce keeping things the way they are, or newer plans that got tinkered with and kneecapped by interest groups and political agendas.
I agre first paup draft was good the second draft written effectively by politicians and residents is far less ideal
I hope it doesn’t sound like I’ve been bashing urban planners! The planners I know are conscientious, thoughtful people who care about making the city a better place. And, as you note, they’re working in a local government context where it can be difficult to change things.
I might not agree with every single rule in the plan, but I also don’t think it’s appropriate to demonise the people whose job it is to write them. (As the Herald has done.)
“They would do their utmost also to stop the Ministry of Works planning motorways south and west of the city. The southern route extended well past the green fields of Ellerslie and the meatworks at Southdown. If the ministry was not careful its motorway would allow housing to cover the fine farming soils of the Manukau County, absorbing the small towns of Otahuhu and Papatoetoe on the Great South Rd.
“There were even plans to put a motorway on a causeway across the Whau estuary to the Te Atatu peninsula which could change the shape of West Auckland, developing to that point along the western rail line at New Lynn, Glen Eden and Henderson.”
This confuses me. It is mocking in tone which suggests that the motorway planners (engineers, to be precise) were wrong to propose motorways that would “cover the fine farming soils” and the statement about the causeway. So I read this the opposite of how it’s presented, as sarcasm, not promotion of motorways. But then, it doesn’t fit with other points in the article.
I think it’s actually a sarcastic criticism of Auckland’s Metropolitan Urban Limit. One of the rationales for the MUL is to preserve farmland at the urban fringe. The Herald is saying that if we had applied that logic in the 1950s and 60s, we never would have built suburbs in the west and south.
As I said – call the rightists bluff. Lets go mega Houston. Deregulate the landuse. Deregulate the height restrictions and parking restrictions. Do it in Epsom and Remuera. Call these rightists on their policies, good for goose and good for gander.