The following is an op-ed I wrote which ran in the Sunday Star Times and The Post on March 8th 2026. Yesterday, Auckland Council agreed on principles to guide a review of PC120 after the government amended the plan.
Everyone agrees we need more housing in Auckland, and that it’s best located near transport options, and places people work, study and shop. This is precisely the point of Plan Change 120 (aka PC120): as well as restricting development in flood-prone areas, it puts more housing where it makes the most sense in our wonderful city.
With housing and transport as major household expenses – and Aucklanders’ savings at a national low – this is also a major cost-of-living issue for every generation.
So it is galling to see senior politicians (and coincidentally property-owners) like Christopher Luxon, Simeon Brown and David Seymour vehemently opposing the plan to make Auckland more liveable for the rest of us.
They claim to be ‘listening to Aucklanders’. But which Aucklanders? We’re still waiting to hear the wealth of public feedback on PC120. In the meantime, the so-called ‘government of yes’ is amplifying misinformation from the usual suspects, to say ‘no’ to more homes.
The irony is that dropping the headline-grabbing number from 2 million to 1.6 million changes very little. That’s simply the nominal ‘planning capacity’, designed to enable a flexible, free-market approach to development – something self-styled libertarian Seymour supposedly stands for.
The number of actually buildable homes remains similar. It’s like a supermarket – no matter how many items on the shelves, your budget and trolley are the same. The problem comes when whole aisles of healthy options (in this case, neighbourhoods with ample infrastructure and good transport access) are removed to please a noisy few.
Which is the other problem with the backdown: it rewards NIMBY groups and councillors to keep scaremongering about PC120. Genuine compromises that solve real concerns would be great, but these groups seem intent on preserving Auckland in amber.
Everyone can see it’s not sustainable for our city to keep sprawling out across greenfields, putting us further away from everything and trapping more of us in traffic. Likewise, the more central suburbs clearly have the infrastructure and transport options to support more affordable growth.
Auckland will succeed when we work together with a collective vision for a city that works better for everyone. Nobody wants younger generations forced to leave as the cost of housing soars out of reach. And we all want to live in a city with greater access to the good things, less traffic, and cleaner air.
One ray of light amid the recent argy-bargy: Minister Chris Bishop is looking at improving planning rules in the City Centre, which is ideal for more homes, as it has substantial capacity in water and transport infrastructure – albeit it needs more schools and other social infrastructure.
It’s astonishing that we’re still debating intensification years after the process started. Council’s creaky bureaucracy is somewhat to blame. But Mayor Wayne Brown is right to reject government’s desire for a veto over Auckland’s housing plans. We need less chaos and interference, so we can finally see some progress.
One more political fly in the ointment: a sudden pushback on minimum requirements for parking, from the likes of Simeon Brown.
Parking minimums require new developments to include a certain number of off-street car parks per unit. Which may sound logical, but parking minimums have major unintended consequences.
For starters, they raise construction costs by up to $100,000 per housing unit, discouraging development as well as increasing prices. And, with more people locked into a car-centric transport system, we all suffer more congestion and more emissions.
The removal of mandatory parking minimums in the Auckland Unitary plan was a triumph, and has led to many more affordable homes being built.
True, some suburban areas are filling with vehicles from new developments. This tells us two things – that development is happening in the wrong places, and people need greater transport options along with housing.
PC120 solves the first part, by prioritising development in the right places. To fix the second issue, we need real alternatives to driving: better public transport, safe routes for cycling and scooting. The upside: we all benefit from greater transport choice, because a) not everyone can drive or wants to, and b) for those who need to drive, the more people using other modes, the smoother your journeys.
Behind all the back-and-forth, backdowns and not-in-my-backyarding, there’s hope. We all want our premier city to be a place that everyone can afford to call home. And despite last week’s climbdown, we’re still heading in the right direction.
Auckland is growing up to meet the 21st Century, and not a moment too soon.
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Chris Bishop and Wayne Brown have talked a lot about restrictive view shafts during their term. Are we ever going to get any progress around that? There’s so much potential to drive development regarding removing those.
I suspect that Bishop’s latest push to unlock more capacity in the City Centre may be related to removing viewshaft restrictions.
But Council did not propose to remove any viewshafts under PC78 and submissions requesting this be considered were dismissed, with no expert evidence backing them up presented at the hearing.
Hands off view shafts! They are public property and an amenity. Those views are priceless and once they are gone they are gone.
I’m sure there are lots of people with land next to the Eiffel tower demanding to be able to build higher than 25m.
Most of them are ridiculous and serve no purpose at all other than placating NIMBYs
The central isthmus definitely shouldn’t have parking minimums, everywhere should be relatively close to high frequency public transport. But further out? I would be willing to trade for a more granular approach to parking minimums if it shut the naysayers up.
How many developments outside the central isthmus aren’t providing any parking though? If the minimum parking standard rules were reinstated, only one space would be required, which most developments are providing anyway. The percieved issue is from people either not using their garages as parking spaces or having more vehicles than the minimum parking spaces assume.
I am sure you are right on the numbers, but if it takes away a NIMBY talking point I would be happy.
Are you suggesting NIMBYs were quiet and didn’t say anything when there WERE parking minimums?
You can’t appease the unappeasable..only way is to simply stop giving voice to the minority and stop using electioneering when it comes to things like infrastrcuture.
Te Atatū Peninsula would like a word ( lots of developments gone in without parking) I actually support intensification and parking restrictions however I think what we have seen out in places like West Auckland is developers providing builds aimed at the rental market ( Williams corp even advertised one of their first builds as ideal for investors based on rates they could get from housing benefits) and understanding many renters have to take what they can rather than what they want and need ( hence any garages being used as supplementary accomodation etc)
Downzone Te Atatu Peninsula, massively upzone Mt Eden. Done, and done.
Or put 24/7 bus lanes + bike lanes on Te Atatu Rd and whatever side streets need it for bus services, and charge for parking in areas without empty spots. It connects to WX1.
Agree Freddy we should have bus lanes for Te Atatu Rd and Lincoln Rd but as with the recent plans for NW Busway AT and WK both said no plans considered for bus priority
And then, put a bus and active mode-only bridge from the eastern point of the peninsula over to Taitapu St on the mainland and link with SH16, the NW busway and cycleway.
Second entry exit but incentivising non-car modes (but we’d probably get car lanes too, not an entirely bad result).
Looking at the map again, Selwood Rd on the isthmus side is probably better.
I believe one of the BRT Lite/express bus plans from a couple of years back implied using a Te Atatu–Selwood Rd bridge connection to run a limited stops high frequency loop service, Lincoln Rd–Henderson–Te Atatu station–Te Atatu town centre–Lincoln Rd
Vinny has it right. the ‘market’ isn’t the residents, it’s the banks and the builders who know that parking supply doesn’t affect them. Parking minimums are a blunt, untargeted tool that do nothing much for good design. Unless review of designs covers the way people will need to live at first and later, utes over footpaths, cycleways and anywhere they can be fitted in will continue.
I’m all in favour of people having the choice of where to purchase or rent a property with or without parking, but the issue has come about because the assumption has become ingrained – enabled by AT – that purchasing a house comes with an inalienable right to park as many vehicles as you like directly outside your property – on the street, or the berm, or the pavement. By all means, don’t have parking requirements, but for the sake of everyone else, don’t let that be at the expense of not being able to walk along the pavement for the cars parked all over it, or that it is impossible to drive down narrow residents streets due to vehicles parked both sides, or that we can never install cycle lanes or widen footpaths or paint yellow lines to enable traffic flow because someone might loose “their” publically-provided carpark!
In our 100 + suburbs in Auckland most of them have areas where the houses are run down, cold, old and viewless. In Morningside, Mt Albert, Mt Eden, Avondale there are already 100s of apartments and townhouses. Not all of our leafy suburbs are 100% character and leafy and there is room for renewal. In these areas the new buildings have improved the character and they look modern and much better than before .
PC120 was a bad plan that was rejected by the wider public on its merits.
Its a shoddy repeat of the previous medium density housing plans that turned suburban Auckland over to the most degenerate impulses of our mostly ‘here today Aussie tomorrow’ developers.
It was a plan that catered for no extra parks, no extra schools; just a city serving a trainset for a crowd of graph-worshipping rail-fans whose only social interactions involve gurning at bus drivers and clapping when airplanes magically land.
With a lower-than-replacement birthrate, it seems that the benefits of this slumification will only be enjoyed by landlords and no-skill migrants who enter on bullshit ‘student’ visas.
How about the Establishment asks naturalised New Zealanders what we want from our future; instead of handing it over to landlords and other bottom feeders who subsist off the cash of ‘student’ migrants (a demographic whose presence simply adds to inflation and whose earnings are promptly remitted out of the economy faster than you can say ‘half a tank of 91 petrol; please’).
People are imaging turning Auckland into something resembling the Cities of Europe, yet the Mayor and this blog are championing a vision that more closely resembles a third world country.
ah, the thinking mans racist!
The current suburban sprawl often results in young Aucklanders choosing south island universities over the University of Auckland because commuting times from their parents’ house are so long. They then never return to Auckland because house prices are too high. Rather than responding to the prejudices of existing homeowners, policy settings should be designed to make Auckland more attractive to young New Zealanders.
The supply of services like new schools and more buses usually follows population growth. More terraced housing will also make Auckland resemble European cities more. Furthermore, free markets and increasing the labour supply reduce inflation.
What level of immigration is appropriate for NZ is a seperate debate.
A debate at National, not Local level though.
One we should be having, for sure.
But because it is so fraught, we are by in large, avoiding, leaving it to political opportunists to exploit for there own, rather then National interests.
But here, we should not be distracted by this from providing input into local decisions, and influencing local decision makers to make Auckland better in a changing wider world. We know the world is changing and we can anticipate the likely directions of those changes. So we have no excuse for not participating in planning for change. The only certainty is that the status quo is unsustainable.
The delivery of additional parks and schools are outside the scope of plans under the RMA like PC120.
Whatever Auckland gets turned into can’t be worse than what we have now
Oh really? Do you really want that to be tested?
Believe me, it can get a LOT worse…
agree & it likely will get worse
Hooo boy this started out as a subtle dogwhistle and then just turned into a bullhorn with every sentence.
Yeah, this guy is so outrageously anti-migrant and NIMBY at the same time I don’t know why the mods tolerate him here. But that’s always been an issue with the blog, the comments are often rendered unnavigable by trolling
Potentially unrelated, but did anyone else see the hilarious quote from AT representative Rick Bidgood in the news today? https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/589206/cyclists-frustrated-by-drivers-illegally-parking-on-auckland-s-cycle-lanes
“As cycling was relatively new to Auckland compared to European cities, it would take time for people to recognise it as a real form of transport”
yes as we know the bicycle is a fairly new invention and the average Aucklander approaches it with incredulity. “How can it stay upright as it moves with only two narrow wheels?” they ask.
Oh the horror https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/09-03-2026/bicycle-face-the-terrifying-medical-condition-that-threatened-1890s-cyclists
Possibly slightly contentious answer, but surely if someone parks in a cycle lane, then they should not be surprised if they find that there has been an “accident” and their side mirror has been broken off, or front or rear windscreen has suffered damage in that accident. They will probably learn quite fast that way: do NOT park in a cycle lane.
People are more worried about other drivers hitting them, which is why they generally park on the footpath and berm.
Most cycle lanes lack sufficient protection even for most drivers!
Perhaps it is beyond time for a sustaibed long-term campaign from Council pushing the virtutues of the “one-vehicle household” in an intensifying city. To advocate for the “no-car household” will be decried as part of a “war on cars” whereas seeking a reduction in car ownership and use may be more likely to be accepted as a reasonable trade-off.
Very good piece, Connor.
Don’t let the crummy Central Govt distract you from how bad Mike Lee has been for Auckland’s progress. He’s the councillor for the white-haired, retired, empty nester, multiple-property-owning population of the inner suburbs, the exact ones that should be intensified.
There’s just so many flaws with this article that I don’t know where to start. Maybe when I have a moment this evening
Why post until tonight if you have nothing to say?
And how exactly are we going to move an extra X million people around? Traffic is bad enough, and the rail lines are too sparse for us to be the new Tokyo..
Firstly, if a politician wishes to “view (my) shaft”, said politician would need to politely request my consent.
Secondly, apartments make a city. A city without apartments is a town, and worse, a one story hicktown.
Auckland is growing up, we will have an underground bit on our train network soon, almost like a real city.
We have already lost a quarter of a million persons to Australia with this government, and we are almost half a million on the dole.
If we wish to create a city, we need more apartments (preferably constructed by OCKHAM), and to plug the leaky boat that keeps losing persons overboard (for a county of five or so million, a quarter of a million is a massive loss of personnel.
Mr Luxurious Seventh Day Adventurer landlord of seven houses given to him by God, currently also the prime minister (embarrassingly) only knows how to sell stuff (Unilever), plane rides (air NZ), and gold (to orange guys in charge of a much more personed country.
We need apartments, they should be built close to train stations, then we might not have to relive March Madness like Groundhog Day?!!?!!?
bah humbug
No way, the ugly 13 house monstrosity that’s being built next door where there were just two 3br houses in my opinion, will most certainly cause my resale value to diminish. They can see directly into my now ex ‘private’ yard.
That’s why I purchased a 700sq/m dwelling 11years ago.
Was I consulted, visited by anyone? No!
Its ugly and poorly made, are the ‘carpenters’ NZ qualified?
They dont speak english so how can they be?
I’ve visually checked quality and measurements after hours, very disappointed!
Shameful Auckland Council!
My elected representatives with my best interests at heart, bullshit!
Removing parking minimums as part of encouraging denser development naturally arouses opposition from existing residents who expect more competition for “their” kerbside spaces.
Here’s how you can manage this:
1. Kerbside parking is unlimited for residents displaying a resident’s parking permit, time limited otherwise. This gives some flexibility for visitors, deliveries etc but does not allow the kerbside to become a permanent car storage space for residents without permits.
2. At the start of the scheme every *current* residential property is given a permit. Note that the permit attaches to the property, not the resident.
3. You make it clear that no more permits will be issued. So future densification will not increase competition for kerbside parking.
4. Property owners are allowed to buy and sell their permits in a secondary market.
5. When people buy a new build property in the area, it’s their choice whether to find a place with offstreet parking or, if they want kerbside parking, to buy a permit from an existing permit holder who doesn’t want theirs. Developers’ choices about whether to include off street parking in new builds will take account of the price of permits.
There is off course a windfall gain to current residents who are given a permit that they can then sell. I think we can wear that for the sake of the benefit of reducing opposition.
The local authority would need to keep records. If property owner A sells their permit to property owner B, it needs to be clear that no further permit will be issued to property A. If a future owner of property A wants a permit, they’ll have to buy one in the market. Property owner A, if they’re thinking of selling their permit, will need to consider how that may affect the resale value of their property.
An interesting idea. The status quo isn’t working, where we’re just piling more cars into neighbourhoods that can’t cope – blocking berms, footpaths, cycle lanes, etc. We will need creative solutions, so good to hear some different ideas.