This posting contains a few snippets of what happened, and some thoughts after the event.
Introduction
The meeting to deal with the Unitary Plan proper began on the 28th of August. Penny Pirrit kicked off the meeting with a presentation about the process that had been followed, summary of key debates, issues to resolve, and her introduction to officer recommendations. She was at pains to point out that normally the kinds of debates that would occur prior to District Plan notification would be held in confidential. That has certainly been my experience. The main reason for this is that the value of land can change markedly when land use zonings change. In other words that private property rights are changed and influenced by District Plan changes, and that it is appropriate for such considerations to be conducted without undue influence of those seeking to maximise personal gain - in some cases at the expense of others.
But I think the fact that this process is much more open to the public gaze than normally did not appear to be appreciated by councillors. But I digress - will come back to this below....
One of the items she brought to Council's attention was a review conducted by Dr Ann McAfee, who is apparently the retired co-director of planning for Vancouver, Canada. She was asked to independently review the "enhanced engagement" process used to "support the draft Auckland Unitary Plan". This is a reference to the process the council has undertaken whereby submissions and engagement have been sought from Auckland public, prior to the formal notification process which the RMA requires.
Dr McAfee does state: "within a short time frame Auckland has done an exceptional job reaching out to a broad range of stakeholders..." and: "the conclusion of this review is that the Auckland process represents an example of best international practice".... These are the quotes which receive most attention from Auckland Council.
But there are other things stated by Dr McAfee. For example, in her advice about how Auckland's process could be transferred to other cities, she says:
1... An Enhanced Engagement Process will only work if elected and appointed officials embrace the process with a genuine conviction that public engagement improves plans and plan implementation.
2. Future use of enhanced engagement should preferably be undertaken early in a council's term. This minimises the likelihood of electioneering confounding the plan making process....
Ms Pirrit's introduction also provided information about the process that will unfold, once Council decides to notify the draft unitary plan. This is a process that comes with considerable risk for Auckland. Normally the Council that will be implementing a District Plan (Unitary Plan) would appoint commissioners - in the recent past these would have included elected councillors. But for Auckland's Unitary Plan it will be Central Government that appoints the commissioners to hear submissions and to make recommendations on how the draft plan should be changed.
These are recommendations. It will be up to Auckland Council to accept or reject those recommendations. But the pattern has been set that - generally - a Council will feel compelled to accept commissioner recommendations "because they heard all the submissions and they considered them all when making their integrated recommendations...".
But it's more challenging even than that because Central Government is in the midst of making major changes to the Resource Management Act itself which are criticised by many because they threaten to turn the RMA into a National Development Act, a key tool in what is perceived as Central Government's focus on growth at all costs.
So the prospect for Auckland is that no matter what is in the draft Unitary Plan that Auckland Council decides to notify, its final fates rests in the hands of Government appointed commissioners, who will be measuring it against legislation that is only now being finalised, and whose purpose will be very different from the sustainable management of resources that has underpinned environmental law for the past 20 years.
Opening Debate
This is not a comprehensive account. Just a few highlighted and indicative comments....
Cllr Coney got the ball rolling by criticising the Unitary Plan Regional Policy sections as "thin". She was backed noisily by Cllr Lee on this.
Cllr Fletcher as concerned that the workshop meetings that had been held were being interpreted as "decisions" by officers. She was worried that the whole thing was being "officer led" rather than "politically led".
Cllr Morrisson talked of a USB stick being circulated to all councillors over the weekend. Apparently this included various case studies, and tests of various land development scenarios against the Unitary Plan. He suggested that those tests would have detected any gaps in Regional Policy provisions. (I wondered how many councillors would have had the time or capacity to go through an entire USB stick of information ahead of a council meeting....)
Cllr Brewer then moved an unusual amendment to the main motion whose effect was to shift the date for notification out to November - to give the incoming council opportunity to consider the draft. This move got little support and was lost 15 votes to 6.
Mixed Housing Zone Debate
This has always been the most controversial zone. How wide-spread would intensification be. How high would it be. What sort of controls would be in place. And so on. I cannot possibly do justice to all of what was going on in the room for this discussion.
The guts of this part of the meeting was kicked off by John Duiguid - a highly competent senior planner who I remember worked at North Shore City Council when I was there. We heard from Deputy Mayor Hulse that he had been chosen to front the officer side of this part of the meeting because of his style and clarity.
His presentation tackled the main issues of contention. Including heights, outlook controls, height to boundary controls, street frontage controls, site coverage, "design-based" assessment, landscaping requirements, tree sizes....
It was all familiar stuff to me. Reminiscent of the kinds of matters you are expected to deal with as a commissioner when considering a development application in a typical - say - Takapuna or East Coast Bays residential neighbourhood. I make this comment because I want to say that there was a level of technical detail in John Duiguid's presentation that takes someone who is to act as a commissioner some time and practical experience to fully appreciate.
I recall when I worked as a commissioner, the first few months you were led by an commissioner who knew the plan well, and could explain the implications of the various rules, what they were there for, what they were designed to protect, and so on. These are not simple and straightforward.
I also recall when North Shore City Council (NSCC) developed the District Scheme (Structure Plan) for Long Bay. This was - in effect - the Unitary Plan for Long Bay. It was developed from scratch - a bit like Auckland's Unitary Plan - and it took NSCC several years of detailed work to finalise. And I have to say that I don't think that process could have been cut much shorter. Councillors involved in the decision-making, alongside skilled planners, made the decisions. All of the councillors had performed as resource consent commissioners and understood the whys and wherefores of what they were doing.
The same cannot be said for Auckland Councillors.
The comments made by some councillors about "height to boundary" controls, and other detailed but important controls, made me cringe. But they pale into insignificance alongside comments made supporting an amendment to the Unitary Plan moved from the floor. Someone actually moved that every dwelling in the mixed housing zone should have 80 square metres of outdoor open space.
The idea being that every dwelling in a mixed housing development - could be a terrace of buildings with apartments to 4 floors, could be a cluster of town houses to 3 or 4 floors, could even be a medium rise apartment tower building on an appropriate site - would have its own private 8 metre by 10 metre (say) lawn or garden. I heard Councillors saying that it was a kiwi right to play cricket at home, that it was a birthright to be able to kick a ball around....
Man oh man.
No-one is arguing that kiwi families want those things, and that homes should be available with a nice big lawn. But such comments reveal poor understanding of the fact that in Auckland there are thousands of people who don't want - anymore - a lawn to mow, they don't want a garden to look after. Instead they want a safe lock up and leave, or get home late and get up early sort of apartment. A home they can wear and use - rather than one to tend and develop and worry about. As someone said to me: "housing is a verb, as well as a noun....".
That is why it was completely inappropriate to force every dwelling to have an 80 square metre lawn.
Thankfully that amendment was lost.
Conclusions
I don't want to use this posting to be mean about Auckland councillors. The problem with the Unitary Plan is not the councillors. The problems Auckland is having are the direct result of the legislation setting up Auckland Council which forced it into preparing a spatial plan followed by a unitary plan in such a short time, driven by Central Government economic growth and development priorities.
There is a sense of inevitability about local communities fighting back against the threat of essentially unregulated development over the fence. That is what various versions of the mixed use zone would have permitted.
Under a totally free-market regime, anyone would be able to redevelop any residential property in Auckland to the maximum extent without any regard for neighbours. That would be a free market. It would also be a free for all. It would be anarchy.
Government would like to unleash market forces in Auckland. Cut the red tape and all that.
But there is an inbuilt contradiction. There are already people here, living happily in Auckland, with their own ideas and plans about their futures, and they are behaving entirely rationally when they defend their homelands against invasion by developers in Toyotas and bullldozers.
Appropriate land use planning and regulation is an essential component of city development and city stability. Investors - be they home owners or property developers - all rely on certainty. The balance has not been struck in the draft unitary plan provisions for the mixed housing zone, and that is its fundamental flaw.
The last ditch Council decisions to drop intensification provisions is the democratic expression of Council's failure to resolve the flaw. It won't be until there are effective Precinct and Area plans that will allow neighbourhood and community planning, that this conflict will be resolved in Auckland.
9 comments:
One important comment you failed to include is that much of what happened was also politically motivated. It is election time in a few weeks. High Rise Hartley being a typical example. She publicly praised the intensification and high rise all through the process, got booed severely at a very large meeting for her views, knowing many other candidates especially one in particular that was very close to her last election, have lead the charge against intensification because they listen to the public. BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY WE THE PUBLIC KNOW THAT THIS IS ALL BEING DRIVEN BY BUISINESS WHO WANT MORE PEOPLE IN AUCKLAND. How many of us have friends and family that are living in other parts of the country or overseas. Therefore the notion that we need to provide homes for our children and grandchildren etc, is rubbish. People will find homes like they always do.
Thanks for the summary Joel. I just have one question:
"The balance has not been struck in the draft unitary plan provisions for the mixed housing zone, and that is its fundamental flaw."
I don't understand what you mean by saying the balance has not been struck. Are you saying there should be even more restrictions on what can be developed in this zone in order to protect existing residents from change? To me this zone already seems overly restrictive if we are to accommodate growth and provide additional housing.
Frank McRae
International best practice engagement? This seems to set the bar pretty low, many provisions have been completely reshaped/ rewritten at the last minute by Councillors against the recommendations of officers and in direct contradiction to submissions from the public. For the most part, the public engagement processes only benefit is that it will provide the text for Council to use in their s32 report as they were too lazy to do it prior to formalisiing the plan in the first place.
A response to Frank McRae's comment/question....
There is an inherent contradiction in the idea that market forces is the way to drive intensification on the one hand, and the need to regulate those same forces so that existing private property owners don't have their value(s) threatened or reduced.
Because this contradiction exists, then it needs to be provided for in the planning regime - and it isn't. That is the fundamental flaw I am referring to.
This has forced Councillors into a reductionist approach. Nobody really wins. The outcome is a plan that falls between two stools. I agree with you that the densification provisions have been weakened. But it was inevitable that would happen in the absence of implementation provisions (area plans, precinct plans, community processes) that would protect local values.
Joel, thanks very much for this report.
I agree with you that:
‘The balance has not been struck… and that is [the] fundamental flaw’.
but I have a different ‘balance’ in mind and a different idea of ‘fundamental’ in this case.
The balance that has not been struck is the one at the beginning of the whole process, almost 3 years ago. From the outset the council planning team came with this idea of ‘RUBs’ (as if cities have physical boundaries any more, especially in the 21st century) and the 70/30 % split of all future growth in favour of inside the existing city. An utterly unrealistic and unnecessary extremism, which was bound to rub heaps of people the wrong way and which even if enacted would make Auckland only a worse city, not better. I have explained elsewhere BOTH why a ‘compact city’ Auckland is unworkable and why it is not necessary (desirable) in the first place, so I will not do it here. But let me repeat here that a ‘balanced’ plan would have been one that would have proposed four categories of land - urban, suburban, periurban, exurban – instead of only two (urban, rural), and a roughly equal share among them in receiveing the future growth – about 25% each.
But my point is – the political mess that the Unitary Plan is now becoming, and the even worse mess it will become when the new RMA comes to the party, could have been avoided. If only the big egos in the planning department and a space-deaf mayor would give a proper hearing to a few dissenting voices back in 2011….
I cannot but agree with your forecast that in the end the central government will enter the scene and further subvert the original chief intent of the Plan. That will be the final end of the ‘compact city’ fantasy. I predicted that 2 years ago. In fact I repeatedly warned the council planning team that their exaggerated intensification objective is a death wish and will be crushed politically BOTH from the below (the local community) and from the above (central govt).
I also warned them that, once their unrealistic plan gets subverted by the ‘realities’ of implementation, the actual physical outcome of all this fighting will be exactly wanted they wanted to prevent – more sprawl.
(Dushko Bogunovich)
Dushko
"But let me repeat here that a ‘balanced’ plan would have been one that would have proposed four categories of land - urban, suburban, periurban, exurban – instead of only two (urban, rural), and a roughly equal share among them in receiveing the future growth – about 25% each."
It doesn't sound like you have looked at the Unitary Plan. It has a range of zones not just rural and urban. How are your peri-urban and exurban zones different from the countryside living, large lot, and rural settlement zones in the Unitary Plan? And 25% for each of your zones sounds rather arbitrary. What is that based on?
Frank McRae
"There is an inherent contradiction in the idea that market forces is the way to drive intensification on the one hand, and the need to regulate those same forces so that existing private property owners don't have their value(s) threatened or reduced."
Joel - How is that a contradiction? Nearly all regulation is an attempt to place some limits on free market forces in order to avoid an undesirable outcome.
And why should "the community" (usually the most vocal and self interested) be protected from anything in their neighbourhood ever changing? Just because someone owns a property does not mean they own the whole neighbourhood.
You write of community processes for implementation. I think in practice this would amount to 'the community' stopping any development in their neighbourhood. If every community blocks development on their patch, applied across the city this would mean no intensification. The effect being more sprawl, and an even more exclusive city.
Blocking development in a neighbourhood serves existing homeowners well. It pushes houses prices higher, and prevents the comfortable from having to deal with change. But this comes at the expense of those who do not have their place in the city secured. If it leads to more sprawl it is also detrimental to the environment.
What implementation provisions could possibly allow intensification to occur better than market forces controlled by regulation?
Frank McRae
Joal - thanks for this. I enjoy reading your commentary and getting a feel for what is happening in Auckland. Keep it up.
Regards
Ann Prendergast
Frank McRae left an excellent posting, which calls for a response. Here's his comment - with my responses in brackets....
"There is an inherent contradiction in the idea that market forces is the way to drive intensification on the one hand, and the need to regulate those same forces so that existing private property owners don't have their value(s) threatened or reduced."
Joel - How is that a contradiction? Nearly all regulation is an attempt to place some limits on free market forces in order to avoid an undesirable outcome.
(I agree with you that regulation or public intervention or legislation are intended to control and manage the undesirable or unwanted side-effects of an unrestrained free market. I use the word "contradiction" to distinguish between free market reality and ideology. Idealists argue simply that the free market is the most efficient allocator of resources and should therefore be unrestrained. Realists recognise the side-effects and realise that the free-market cannot be unrestrained.)
And why should "the community" (usually the most vocal and self interested) be protected from anything in their neighbourhood ever changing? Just because someone owns a property does not mean they own the whole neighbourhood.
(I agree with you. Individuals don't "own" their neighbourhood, but they have an interest in it. Some changes to a neighbourhood are perceived by individuals as being "in their interest", and others not. These perceptions are real and felt by individuals, and cannot be wished away, and nor can they be bull-dozed out of the way. Especially in a democracy. Private concerns about community matters and values are real, and need to be constructively engaged with in planning change.)
You write of community processes for implementation. I think in practice this would amount to 'the community' stopping any development in their neighbourhood. If every community blocks development on their patch, applied across the city this would mean no intensification. The effect being more sprawl, and an even more exclusive city.
(Essentially I agree. Community resistance can stop intensification and lead to more sprawl. Which would be bad outcome I think. That means that private concerns about communities and neighbourhoods and property values need to be expected and engaged with as part of the planning process.)
Blocking development in a neighbourhood serves existing homeowners well. It pushes houses prices higher, and prevents the comfortable from having to deal with change. But this comes at the expense of those who do not have their place in the city secured. If it leads to more sprawl it is also detrimental to the environment.
(I agree with you. However the benefits of properly planned and implemented intensification can be shown to outweigh the costs of change. These benefits include that young people can afford resulting apartments, active retired have local options, local retail and cafes become available because they are more economic, and existing properties increase in value. In addition economic incentives can be applied to motivate support for change. For example Council can buy land, let development contracts, and rebuild suitable blocks of urban Auckland.)
What implementation provisions could possibly allow intensification to occur better than market forces controlled by regulation?
(What is missing from the current Unitary Plan rules and provisions [which, with the Housing Accord, permit development alongside controls to 'avoid adverse effects'] is a pro-active implementation plan which properly addresses the community gap in free market land use planning.
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