Unitary Plan: How to Engage

Interest is building in the shape form and function of the new Auckland Unitary Plan. I've been invited to talk about it to students and various community groups. There's more and more information about it on Council's website, including a useful Q and A here.

As a planner I am aware that the devil is in the detail when it comes to District Plans. District Plans regulate the way land is used, to enable development, and at the same time to control adverse environmental effects that might arise from the development. Many - including much of the development community - want to see the District Plan for Auckland simplified. As Auckland Council's Q and A says: "The Auckland Unitary Plan will provide greater consistency across Auckland, be easy to read and understand and simplify the planning processes...."

The reason there are rules and policies that restrict development is not just a greenie/environmental thing, as some argue. Sure there are rules about stormwater and stuff like that, but those are primarily to mitigate or avoid flood damage to private property downstream of a new development. The RMA has in fact been notoriously unhelpful in dealing with the cumulative effects to ecosystems of development. You only have to look at the state of New Zealand rivers for proof of that.

In fact most District Plan rules and policies are there to protect communities and neighbours from adjacent developments that could damage the living environment for people already there. They also shape the way urban settlement occurs, which is why, when you visit different parts of Auckland, you can see that the way houses and shops sit in the landscape is different.

For example, this is a slice of what we know as Manukau City - with its cul-de-sac streetscapes, and houses that take up much of the section area. Very little in the way of mature trees on the sites...

And this is a slice at similar scale of Mt Eden, old Auckland City. The section shapes, widths are quite different from Manukau - delivering a different streetscape and a different residential living environment.

I appreciate this is simplistic, and the form and shape and feel of different neighbourhoods and places across Auckland differ in other ways - not just street layout,section sizes, and the proportion of private lots that can be taken up with houses and driveways etc.

The designers of the Auckland Unitary Plan state that even though there will only be four residential zones for the whole of Auckland (instead of the many diverse residential zonings that exist today), there will be planning instruments called: Area Plans (provided by Local Boards), Precinct Plans, and things like Heritage Overlays.

This is where the detail will be found in the Unitary Plan. But these additions - the fine-grain if you like of Auckland planning - may not be ready when the plan is notified for public comment. They not have been finished. They may not be ready for public comment. But it is this detail that is most critical if Auckland is to preserve what is particular or special or unique about the different areas of Auckland.

Now it may be that you want to eliminate all of this diversity and difference. Inconvenient. Awkard to deal with. Might be your view.

Either way - these planning provisions must be retained (for good reason), or thrown out (for good reason). And it is up to the designers of Auckland's Unitary Plan to justify - in their S.32 analysis - their regulatory impact assessment - the reasons that existing provisions are kept, or not kept. And this analysis needs to be in sufficient detail for anyone who lives in any area of Auckland to understand how the planning framework for their area would change - if the proposed Unitary Plan provisions are adopted.

I have come to this view from an analysis of how I - as a typical layperson - might best respond to the enormity of a brand new Unitary Plan. How would I read it? How would I understand it? How could I usefully make submissions?

Thinking about this I came to a simple idea. I would need to know what it meant for where I lived. For the area I knew best. And the same will apply to most people - those who care about these things - across Auckland. We know where we live. Those of us who care about these things have a reasonable working knowledge of what is permitted and how the rules work where we live.

Take Devonport - where I have lived for the past 20 years.

A bit like Mt Eden Auckland. Same age, similar English Town Planning structure and history. But different in various subtle ways, which I didn't know about till I got elected to North Shore City Council and onto the Devonport Community Board. This was in 1998. North Shore City Council still had not adopted its proposed District Plan - which had been notified in 1993 or thereabouts - following the passage of the RMA in 1991.

It is worth remembering what happened then. North Shore was made up of several Borough Councils - each of which had its own Town Plan. North Shore City Council amalgamated them into a District Plan. But what happened was that several people in Devonport - who knew and understood how important the Devonport Town Plan was in shaping and keeping Devonport's urban layout and form became concerned that the baby was about to be thrown out with the bathwater. Barbara Cuthbert was one of those people. They explained carefully to the Devonport Community Board that Devonport's planning provisions (height to boundary, sunlight angles, sideyard widths - all those rules), should be simply incorporated into the North Shore District Plan - for Devonport.

And that's what happened.

If it was the right thing to do then, it's the right thing to do now.

So. Here's my suggestions to those of you who care, and want to protect the delicate planning framework that you have, where you live:

1)  Lobby Council to ensure that the s.32 or regulatory impact statement that is notified with the draft Unitary Plan, explains, for each local area, how the proposed plan will change or retain planning provisions that exist for that local area now.

2)  That you understand the planning provisions that exist for your area now, and be ready to defend and protect those planning provisions that you care about and value.

Otherwise Auckland is headed toward so much urban consistency and hamonisation that it won't matter where you live, it will all look the same.