More Housing Plan Changes on the way for Auckland

The government requiring the council to zone for more housing in Auckland is dead, long live the government requiring the council to zone for more housing in Auckland. One of the governments key housing polices when was to make optional the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) requirement for councils to allow up to three storey town houses throughout our cities, something National made a bipartisan deal with the former Labour government to introduce in the first place.…
26 Comments

Richer or poorer?

Patrick Reynolds is deputy chair of the City Centre Advisory Panel, and a previous director of Waka Kotahi/NZTA. Recently there has been some good attention on New Zealand’s relatively low productivity. Just last week the Mayor led on this issue: Brown stressed that Auckland’s economic future relies on shifting from low productivity and long hours to high-value, scalable innovation.…
60 Comments

Stadium Unfeasibility

Tomorrow Auckland’s Councillors will decide on the next steps in the city’s ongoing stadium debate, and it appears one option is technically feasible but isn’t financially feasible while the other one might be financially feasible but not be technically feasible. As a quick reminder, the Mayor started this process as a way to put an end to new, unfunded stadium proposals or upgrade plans for Eden Park popping up every few years, so that there was at least one preferred option.…
121 Comments

Maximising the value from our investment in the City Rail link

This is a guest post by Malcolm McCracken. It previously appeared on his blog Better Things Are Possible and is shared by kind permission. New Zealand’s largest infrastructure project, the City Rail Link (CRL), is expected to open in 2026. This will be an exciting step forward for Auckland, delivering better access to the City Centre, increased network capacity and more frequent trains across the network.…
33 Comments

Pūmanawa Downtown West

The plans for the buildings that will replace the downtown carpark have been publicly notified giving us the first detailed glance at what is proposed for one of the biggest and best development sites in the city centre. The council agreed to sell the site to Precinct Properties for $122 million in 2023.…
40 Comments

Growing Auckland

An interesting article in Stuff a few weeks ago asked a couple of interesting questions in it’s headline, “How big can Auckland get? And how big is too big?“. Unfortunately, the article doesn’t really answer those questions, instead focusing on current growth projections, but there were a few aspects to the article I wanted to highlight.…
74 Comments

2025 – The Year Ahead

Welcome to 2025. After wrapping up 2024, here’s a look at some of the things we can expect to see this year along with a few predictions. Council and Elections Elections One of the biggest things this year will be local body elections in October.…
56 Comments

2024 – A Year in Review

Well, it’s the last day of the year, so it’s time for a quick wrap-up of the most important things that happened in 2024 for urbanism and transport in our city. A huge thank you to everyone who has visited the blog and supported us in our mission to make a greater Tāmaki Makaurau.…
46 Comments