RMA Amendment Bill Submission
Here’s my submission on the RMA Amendment Bill. Might be a chance to speak at a select committee too!
I make this submission in general opposition to the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill. There are some aspects of the bill that I support, but in general I oppose it on the grounds that it will lead to significant adverse effects on the environment and reduce the opportunity for the public to be involved in protecting the environment.…
Comment A Good Day
Today is a very good day for Auckland. Firstly, it’s Leila’s birthday – happy birthday!
Secondly, the Royal Commission has recommended a single city for Auckland’s local government future. It has also recommended some excellent stuff for public transport. Everything is available to read here.…
Uni’s Back
University is back this week, and while I’m not heading off to lectures etc., it is interesting to see the effects that university students have on Auckland’s public transport system. To put it simply, this week it has really groaned under the pressure.…
Why Sprawl Sucks
Although most of the world seems to be coming to their senses that urban sprawl is an unsustainable remnant of the late 20th century, it appears as though that battle is far from won in New Zealand. The Auckland Regional Council had put in place a Metropolitan Urban Limit since 1999 that has curbed the previously crazy greenfield expansion of the city (or at least made it happen in just a few places), yet it seems that day after day the ARC takes flak for doing this.…
RMA Reforms
While it’s not necessarily directly related to Auckland’s transport, as my day job is being a planner I do live and breathe the Resource Management Act on a daily basis, so therefore the reforms proposed by National last week are definitely worthy of some sort of comment.…
Liveable Streets
I have been doing a fair bit of observation around Central Auckland (in particular) over the last few weeks, trying to work out what particularly works and what particularly doesn’t work. The first outcome of this observation was my cry for Queen Street bus lanes in a post a week and a half ago.…
Super City
A big piece of news in the last week has been news that the Royal Commission into examining Auckland’s local government structure is likely to recommend that a ‘super-city’ be established that amalgamates all the current City and District councils together into one entity.…
The Spawl/Affordability Debate
I found myself in a really interesting debate on Frog Blog yesterday, on a topic that I know a fair bit about – and debating it with probably the one person in New Zealand who I would most want to have the debate with: Owen McShane.…
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