Weekly Roundup – 31-July-2020
Here’s our weekly roundup Decarbonise Transport
We and some of our friends are holding an event in a few weeks on Monday 10th August.
The challenge is clear: Auckland must dramatically decarbonise its transport system in just 9 years.
So how quickly can we get there?…
60 Comments Supercharging Urban Development
Two important events last week mean the council is going to need to drastically rework its Unitary Plan. I’ll cover both in separate posts starting with the National Policy Statement on Urban Development.
Council’s across the country have long talked about wanting to stop or slow our cities from sprawling over the countryside.…
How Should Housing Affordability Be Defined?
This is a guest post by Tamba Carleton. Tamba is a Research Manager at CBRE and her work focuses on the housing market.
A lot of people would agree that housing in New Zealand is unaffordable. Rents and mortgages cost hundreds of dollars a week, and deposit requirements are so large that people need to save them up over many years.…
Building Up or Out – US and UK examples
Leading image from Don Kostelec via twitter.
Creating as compact a city as we can makes good sense from a climate and liveability point of view, yet Auckland is still extending its reach into farmland.
Below are some excerpts from two interesting studies – the effects of going up in the US, and of going out in the UK.…
Getting better use out of Park & Ride
One of the things we highlighted during the recent debate on the Council’s Emergency Budget was that Auckland Transport should start charging for park & ride regardless of what rates option is chosen and not only if councillors are derelict in their duty and choose something other than the 3.5% increase.…
Sunday reading on housing 5 July 2020
It’s been almost two years since we had a ‘Sunday reading’ post – Matt has been doing his ‘Friday roundups’ instead – but with everything I’m doing on housing, I thought it was worth bringing a few pieces together this week.…
The Housing Continuum
The “housing continuum” has become an important idea in NZ policy. Here’s the image used by Auckland Council in their Auckland Plan 2050, and Community Housing Aotearoa has written a good summary of what it all means: Emergency housing: The only short-term housing category, defined as stays of up to 12 weeks but often intended to be much shorter than that.…
The Framework for Housing Quality
The Covid-19 lockdown showed us all how important housing quality is. Some homes were uncomfortable or got cold. Some homes were fine physically, but not well suited for how they were used over lockdown. For me – a numbers-focused economist type guy – it’s a crucial reminder that it’s not just about the quantity of our housing and whether we’re building enough.…
Unitec Development Details Emerge
Yesterday the government announced a fast track consenting process for a bunch of projects. I’ll talk about that in a separate post but one of the projects that it will be used for is Phase 1 of the Unitec development.
The government announced back in early 2018 that it was going to take over and develop the Unitec site with 2,500-4,000 homes (possibly up to 8,000 people) but there has been no information about it since then.…
Weekly Roundup – 12-June-2020
Perhaps it’s because we’re back to Level 1 but there’s a lot to cover this week. Commercial Bay opens
Commercial Bay finally opened yesterday, over four year after the old Downtown Mall closed and of course with a couple of rail tunnels running underneath it.…
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