Legalising perimeter block housing
One of the paradoxes of planning reform that legalises the development of more housing in established urban areas is that it typically makes it easy to build like this: While still making it difficult to build like traditional perimeter block housing like this: Even from the Google Maps view, you can see that there are some important differences between the first built form, which is in Royal Oak, Auckland, and the second, which in Prague.…
81 Comments Sunday reading 27 August 2017
Welcome back to Sunday reading. This week: Land taxes.
In Newsroom, Zbigniew Dumieński and Nicholas Smith put forward the case for a major shakeup of New Zealand’s tax system. Sounds like it could be a very good idea:
Unlike any other products of labour (including houses), land is not produced and, therefore, won’t disappear when we tax it.…
Would smaller councils approve more housing?
Will Auckland Council amalgamation be good for housing supply in the long run?
In the short term, amalgamation will probably have a positive effect, because it enabled a comprehensive rewrite of the city’s urban planning rulebook to increase the amount of homes that are allowed to be built in Auckland.…
Pouring gasoline on the housing fire
Yesterday, Prime Minister Bill English announced that he would encourage the Reserve Bank to remove the loan to value ratio (LVR) rules that it put in place to take the heat out of rising house prices. As reported in Newsroom:
Prime Minister Bill English has rediscovered his jawbone and has sent a clear message to the Reserve Bank that he expects it to start thinking about scrapping its restrictions on loan to value ratios, now that house prices across the country are flat or falling.…
Sunday reading 13 August 2017
Welcome back to Sunday reading.
This week, I’d like to start out with two stories of self-inflicted screwups (by other people).
Self-inflicted screwup number one is Australia’s broadband rollout. As Jennifer Hewett sets out in the Australian Financial Review, it’s gone much worse than ours:
In September 2009, the Key government in New Zealand announced it would invest in an all-fibre, ultra-fast broadband network.…
The new consensus on transport for Auckland
Over the weekend, the National and Labour Parties both made campaign announcements on transport investment. National pledged money towards upgrades of the Auckland and Wellington rail networks – including electrification to Pukekohe and a third main line at the Wiri-Westfield rail bottleneck.…
Making mischief with multi-criteria analysis
Kiwirail’s recent decision to release the full business case for the third main has provided an interesting look into Auckland’s transport alternatives. As Matt outlined in his post, it’s strange that this project hasn’t been funded while the far costlier East-West Link is being fast-tracked:
The section of track between Westfield and Wiri is one of the most heavily used in the entire country.…
The escalating costs of building roads
The Auckland Council Chief Economist’s most recent economic commentary highlighted a vital challenge for the city: the rising cost of adding road capacity (and the dubious returns from adding capacity).
International studies have shown that expanding the roading network, either by building new roads and/or widening existing roads, typically does not keep up with the increase in the number of private vehicles because of induced demand.…
Sunday reading 30 July 2017
Welcome back to Sunday reading. The most important story of the week was the release of the Ministry of Social Development’s new Household Incomes Report, which provides an update on wealth, poverty, and inequality in New Zealand.
The report confirms that the housing affordability crisis is at the heart of many worsening social outcomes.…
Can value capture help pay for new infrastructure?
When we build new infrastructure that connects places to useful destinations or opens up development opportunities, it lifts the value of properties in the surrounding areas. This is pretty intuitively sensible: Holding all else equal, most people would be willing to pay a bit more for the convenience of having, say, a fast and reliable public transport route nearby.…
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