On Monday Auckland gets to find out how Bill 3 relating to new Auckland Governance structures has been changed after the Select Committee processes. This will include how the Government now considers how spatial plannning should be carried out by Auckland Council, and for what purpose. So we are all ears.
In the meantime my research into spatial planning has been conducted. This has emphasised looking at international best practice, and the use of indicators as a means of measuring how the implementation of the spatial plan is proceeding, as well as a means of getting stakeholder buy in and participation into the planning process itself. I will be putting up the whole of the research on this blog in the fulness of time. But I thought it timely to put up my research conclusions here. Now.....
Preliminary Research Conclusion
"....While there are many differences in detail, there is clear consensus across National Government, and Regional and Local government in Auckland, that Auckland needs a spatial plan. There also appears to be clear direction in law that the spatial plan should be consistent with the purposes of the Local Government Act which includes that:
….local authorities play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach.
However the contest of ideas and ideologies that have led to Auckland governance reform will continue to influence its implementation. The broad quadruple bottom-line goals that informed the commencement of Auckland local government reforms have been transformed into a political restructuring that supports an economic growth oriented infrastructure program driven by central government. The proposed Spatial Plan is a tool that could be used solely to support that program, or it could be used to assist Auckland’s development more broadly.
This research into the Auckland strategic planning documents that will form the building blocks of the new spatial plan, and their associated indicator sets, highlights deficiencies that are endemic in Auckland local government planning. These deficiencies include:
* the absence of integration in policy, strategy and implementation;
* the avoidance of accountable cause and effect approaches to planning and outcomes; and
* the impoverished engagement with stakeholders and the community.
This new research serves to confirm the long standing regional criticisms of ‘what is wrong with Auckland’ that are recorded in the body of the research document, and which include:
* Long term strategy needs: refined classification for Auckland’s centres, corridors and business areas, in order to provide greater certainty as to the location and sequencing of growth; strengthened alignment of land use, transport and economic development
* Implementation issues: difficulties in implementation; mis-located activities, responsibilities or decisions and a lack of regional control; slow plan changes that enable quality centres-based development; the lack of approaches to encourage quality intensification and redevelopment in centres and corridors
* Integrated planning gaps: Unclear or poorly defined roles, responsibilities or mandates; lack of alignment between national and regional priorities; the need to broaden the partnership around social objectives, at both the strategic planning level, and at the local implementation level (using place-based, master planning and ‘whole-of-government’ approaches)
Best practice spatial planning in Europe and Britain suggests a process that needs to be followed in Auckland to deliver the best planning framework for the future, but also to make a decisive break with Auckland’s bad planning habits of the past.
* Select the issues: Public process of identifying and defining a limited number of strategic issues; build public confidence through involvement and perception that the real issues are being addressed
* Develop long term plan: Take account of power structures (including land owners, businesses, local boards, central government); develop decision-making structures and processes (to enable implementation to happen); develop conflict solving processes and structures that enable and ensure action and implementation
* Build consensus: Ensure vertical integration in planning process through effective involvement of central government in regional decisions; ensure horizontal integration in planning process through effective involvement of local boards and local stakeholders in local decisions
* Sustainable development: Ensure compliance with four well-being principles of Local Government Act and public consultation requirements; address issues of social exclusion in decision-making; respect and emphasise priority of local place-making alongside regional development objectives
Modern spatial planning is about much more than a map of new infrastructure projects. It is about changing the way Auckland goes about implementing its strategic economic development plan. Unless these process changes are made in Auckland, then old problems will remain and history will repeat.
Auckland’s planning failure is an issue. It must be addressed. Such changes in process must become part of the spatial plan. As such these processes need their own indicators and their own measures of success.
The indicators that are adopted do not need to be perfect nor complete. Nor does the spatial plan. But it does need to include the issues to be addressed. It does not need to be comprehensive, but it does need to be integrated. And it needs to be based upon a set of indicators that are reasonable rather than perfect measures of the outcomes that spatial planning is designed to influence...."
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