Auckland Unleashed - Part II

Auckland Unleashed generally got the panning it deserved from the media and those who have been immersed in Auckland Regional planning for a long time. (You can see my first take on it here). And while Auckland Unleashed generally respects the Mayor's election vision of rail (Britomart Loop, Airport Link and North Shore Rail), I am of the view that the new Council (Councillors plus Mayor) are only partly responsible for what is actually in the document - with its emphasis on growth and economy and its relative silence on affordable housing, transport energy and Auckland's traditional planning failure to accommodate growth. So who is to blame and where is this huge emphasis on economic growth coming from? I attended the IPANZ event last year where Roger Blakely (General Manager Planning) presented preliminary thoughts about the spatial plan. His use of a definition of spatial planning that was almost 30 years old (from previous failed European regimes) did not augur well. Nor did his use of a map drawn from Metropolitan London's recent planning exercise. I spoke with Ree Anderson (Manager - Regional Planning Strategy) at this event and expressed concern. I challenged the assumptions and approach, and its emphasis on economic growth. She told me the plan needed to be "aspirational". There needed to be things in there that were "exciting". Man oh man. You can see for yourself her views expressed in her presentation to the NZ Planning Institute late last year. These are all about geography and maps and economic growth. No mention of growing pains and other major issues facing the region. I had previously advised Ree Anderson of my work at university on strategic spatial planning. It drew together the strands of Auckland Regional planning, critical assessments of its failures, and embraced modern European approaches. Later I was contacted by Auckland Council Planning staff and asked to produce an Executive Summary of that work and its recommendations for circulation to Councillors. I prepared this. You can see it here. It is highly critical of adopting a regional plan emphasising economic growth driven by Government funded infrastructure priorities. The paper summary was not circulated to Auckland Council. I have tried to find out why. No answer. My thoughts on Auckland Planning are neither here nor there in the big scheme of things - but I know I am not alone in these thoughts. Many others with long memories and long experience share my views, and have their own views in a similar vein. It is hard to escape the conclusion that these alternative views and inconvenient experience are being kept from councillors by senior Auckland Council staff. Or at the very least marginalised. More than one planner has advised me that the mantra in the new Auckland Council planning hierarchy appears to be: "...if the ARC had anything to do with it we won't touch it....". So what we appear to have is a bunch of planning newbies foisting their own ideas on Auckland, without due regard for its planning history, and actively filtering from the political process views which conflict with their own. We might not like Auckland's planning history. But if we don't learn from it we will almost certainly repeat it....

I took this picture of the slide put up at the Auckland Unleashed get-together. It is a summary of the "Auckland Future" workshops. Even without the filtration that I know went into preparing this slide, the emphasis of the day was one of community led development and neighbourhoods. There was a lot of talk about "self-contained" and "complete" communities. There are always the cheerleaders that argue for Auckland to be the "Lead City in the Asia Pacific". You only have to visit Sydney and Singapore to know that Auckland will never be that lead city. I was part of the infrastructure workshop, and if my memory serves me right a tiny minority there argued for Auckland to "internationally lead and shape rather than follow...". That view was certainly not held by the majority of those at that workshop by a long shot. So even the workshop reports are being manipulated. If you think I'm sounding grumpy - then you've read me correctly. Auckland's local government reorganisation may have led to integration and amalgamation, but it is at the cost of severe institutional fragmentation and memory loss, and where aspirational hopes that Auckland can somehow be like London and better than Singapore and Sydney are blinding Councillors to the reality that is Auckland.