Chinese Lantern Festival

"Be enchanted - as the sun goes down and the lanterns light up, immerse yourself in the magic of the Auckland Lantern Festival.

Celebrating its 15th year in 2014, the Auckland Lantern Festival is one of our city’s favourite cultural events...."

So reads the Auckland Council webpage promoting this event. And what a beautiful evening it was. A few photos.... 

Click on them to get the full picture...

Keep Auckland Weird

This isn't Auckland.

It's Austin, Texas. Population much the same as Auckland. Not one of the 25 cities that Greg Clark listed in his recent Auckland Conversations talk about making Auckland "more business friendly...."

Austin's current official slogan promotes Austin as "The Live Music Capital of the World", a reference to the many musicians and live music venues within the area.... In recent years, some Austinites have also adopted the unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird". This interpretation of the classic, "Texas-style" sense of independence refers to: the traditional and proudly eclectic, liberal lifestyles of many Austin residents; a desire to protect small, unique, local businesses from being overrun by large corporations; and as a reaction to the perceived rise of conservative influences within the community. In the late 1800s, Austin also became known as the City of the "Violet Crown" for the wintertime violet glow of color across the hills just after sunset. Even today, many Austin businesses use the term "violet crown" in their name. Austin is known as a "clean air city" for the city's stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars.

I wrote here about the recent Lorde concert at Silo Park, and quoted from the last part of Greg Clark's talk, which you won't find in his slide presentation. In that post I quoted Greg Clark along these lines:

He told us that Auckland rated high for quality of life, outstanding natural environment, highly effective governance institutions. BUT that Auckland has "patchy global appeal", ranks weak in "presence" and is weak in "liveliness". In fact he used the word "anonymous" to describe Auckland. He advised that Auckland needed to find its DNA, to expose its soul, to discover its inbuilt pattern, and work with that - not against it.....

 Greg Clark went on to advise that part of Auckland's DNA was its maori and polynesian culture. What are we doing about making Maori culture centre-stage in Auckland? There's been some talk, and we're certainly big on vision statements, but I wonder whether the words: "World Class" and "Most Liveable City"  (most liveable for who? - as I asked in this posting), are running counter to Auckland's DNA?

This artwork was designed by New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai, and is (maybe was) housed in Te Papa, Wellington. Michael has apparently been involved in designing a piece of artwork to go on the end of Queens Wharf. A plan whose lack of consultation was appropriately criticised by Rudman last week.

As I understand it, the sculpture proposed was to look like a state house - but scaled down a bit in size - with a large chandelier  hanging within. I read somewhere that the idea was an image about "keeping the home fires burning". This could have been about the number of servicemen who left for the war by ship from Queens Wharf, and it could be about the number of immigrants and settlers who came into Auckland by ship, and set foot in New Zealand on or around Queens Wharf.

What this proposed sculpture again highlights is the emphasis on European culture, on the colonial experience, on the history of colonisation of New Zealand. I would argue that most - if not all - of Auckland's CBD built environment, and its artworks and sculptures reflect and embody European culture - not the pacifica polynesian culture we write about, and talk about, and envision, and which is big part of Auckland's DNA, but - apart from a few recent signifiers - remains invisible. This artwork by the way shows "New Wharf" - which morphed into Queens Wharf. The two waka reflect the trading role of Maori. You can see the pair of colonial soldiers. Those sitting on the ground are likely to be Maori traders and family groups. The street turning left is Shortland Street. The picture shows where the reclaimed edge of Auckland CBD was in the 1850's.

I wonder whether live music - which is a very big part of polynesian culture - you only have to look at NZ's Got Talent to see that - might be a way of livening up Auckland ("lively up yourself"). We can still be the City of Sails,  but adding another cultural layer would be interesting.

Here's what they say about Austin's live music scene.... "First-time visitors might be surprised to find themselves being entertained with live music as they walk through the terminal at Austin's airport after deplaning. But they shouldn't be. Live music, and music in many other forms, is everywhere in Austin. Musicians play in everything from grocery stores (Central Market, Whole Foods) to city council meetings. They play outdoors at the Blues on the Green series and at festivals: Austin City Limits and South by Southwest you've likely heard of, but there's also Pachanga Latino Musical Festival, Urban Music Festival, Fun, Fun, Fun Fest, Chaos in Tejas and many more worth checking out. Mostly, you'll find Austin musicians at clubs, coffeehouses, bars, taquerias, auditoriums and concert halls - and with more than 250 live music venues, it can be intimidating knowing where to start.....

250 live music venues. City the size of Auckland. Interesting.... 

Sea Level Rise = Situation Normal

This is the "world class" image of Takapuna Beach, North Shore. Only the odd seagull, kilometres of uninterrupted sand...

This picture of is from The Sands medium density housing development at the north end of Takapuna Beach. Still not so many walkers. In fact it's a very popular beach for locals and walkers alike...

I took most of the pictures that follow on Sunday 2nd February. Around 10:00am that day there was a king tide. The Sunday was the mid-point in a 3 day sequence of king tides....

The heightened sea level occupied the whole beach for an hour or so. People could still walk their dogs around the built edge of Takapuna Beach...

...walk their kids and buggies...

What needs to be noted is that if a low pressure weather pattern had coincided with this King Tide, and stronger easterly winds, the high tide level could have been more than 30 cms higher (deeper). Like 3 years ago.

....but it was quite a sight. Most people didn't know it was coming, so were surprised. People I spoke to told me they'd been coming for thirty years or more - to sunbathe and walk - and hadn't seen anything like it...

...like this guy, slightly disbelieving, what the f' ... canute-like....

...perplexed.  I was bit perplexed too. Got some outstanding questions. Yesterday I checked my favourite website for Auckland tides (marineweather) and it had indicated there would be a 2.6 metre height difference between low tide and high tide. Being a recreational fisher, I know that is the sign of a reasonably small tidal change. Certainly not a king tide.....

....a 2.6 metre tide wouldn't look quite like this, but a lot of beach would be free of sea. Not sure what was going on with those charts....apparently king tides are predictable. For reasonably definitive tide charts check out these tables. You can see there that for Sunday, 2nd Feb, the low tide height at Auckland was predicted at 0.09 metres, and the high tide level was predicted to be 3.64 metres at 10:08 am Sunday morning. This is equivalent to a tidal throw of 3.55 metres (sea level height difference between low and high tide sea levels). 

When I was hunting around for tidal information I came across this website.Specially organised around Auckland King Tides. Sponsors and supporters include Auckland Council, NIWA, Civil Defence and Emergency, Auckland War Memorial etc. They planned to be present at the Takapuna Boat Ramp. For the big event....

And sure enough.  There they were.  Apparently the high tide level for the king tide is about what predictions show will be normal for high tides in 2064 because of climate change. When most people who were looking would no longer be on this earth I guess.... The US EPA's fact sheet asks:   

WHY OBSERVE KING TIDES?
King tides provide a glimpse of future everyday water levels, and
they are a way to communicate local sea level rise impacts over
long time periods. Low-lying shoreline development is at increased risk of flooding because of rising seas, and public investments in infrastructure, housing, and habitat restoration projects are often expected to last for decades. Highlighting king tides in a community can raise awareness of potential sea level rise impacts and identify flood-prone locations. The increased understanding of how sea level rise will impact local resources is valuable information for community decisionmakers.

People were interested. But I wondered what the aim of the King Tide communications and campaign was. A couple of weeks ago, the cover story in the 16th January 2014 Listener Magazine, reported the research of American Psychologist Daniel Goleman. It was entitled: "Centre of Attention", and was about how modern day distractions affect our ability to focus and concentrate. (About his latest book: Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence.) Well into the story we learn that Goleman's own focus is on climate change, and human psychology. He argues that human brains are not built to cope with threats that evolve slowly - like climate change. Our "fight or flight" responses don't kick in. That climate change is happening slowly enough for our brains to "normalise" it. He is researching ways that human intuitive response might be got round - by education and such like - but it's hard to escape the truth of his finding.

We act like frogs in slowly heating water. We don't jump out. Or do anything about it.
And when it's hot enough to kill us, we're past being able to do anything about it.

So I did wonder what the "KingTide" campaign was all about. Is the plan to help communities adjust to climate change, a type of social adaptation strategy, by normalising a king tide and thereby encourage people to accept it?
Coming to a place near you soon. Not much that can be done, nothing that you can do.

Get used to it.
An interesting moral challenge. 

Auckland's Indigenous Music Culture Opportunity

Accompanied my daughter to the Lorde concert at Silo Park last night. Very relaxing and relaxed venue....

Went and listened to Greg Clark, Auckland Conversations beforehand.  He was talking about "business friendly cities..." competition between cities for investment... sort of thing.... but he did make some interesting comments about Auckland....

Lots of places at Silo Park to sit and chat, get something to eat.... We had a beer and a litre of wedges at Jack Tars on North Wharf. So we didn't need anything more.

The startup acts were underway at the stage, but a lot of the crowd just enjoyed sitting and chatting. It was a glorious evening.

The place looks great.

Plenty of food choices....

The six pack silos make a great background...

Greg Clark told us that people in a lot of other cities don't even know that Auckland is a city. he started his chat by saying he reckoned Auckland needed to discover its own authentic, indigenous, identity, and that - once he'd dealt with the whole thing about being business friendly - he'd come back with a couple of suggestions for Auckland....

The grittiness of Wynyard Quarter is the background of most of the pictures...it's good... it's what the plans have been calling for....

There is the flash of ASB in the background here....

Place is full of people out for a good night...

And again...

Managed to squeeze in a bit of silo, harbour bridge and the James Bond boat being maintained. Seagulls enjoyed the scraps...

Back to Greg Clark.  He told us that Auckland rated high for quality of life, outstanding natural environment, highly effective governance institutions. BUT that Auckland has "patchy global appeal", ranks weak in "presence" and is weak in "liveliness". In fact he used the word "anonymous" to describe Auckland. He advised that Auckland needed to find its DNA, to expose its soul, to discover its inbuilt pattern, and work with that - not against it.....

Gradually the crowd gathers round the stage. Lorde was due at 9:00 but kept us waiting for 20 minutes or so. Vomiting apparently.  Standing room only....

Very good natured though...

And then with a bang we were into it. An extraordinary 17 year old in her school shoes....

Blue light sticks were free. There was a cunning plan for them to all get lit up for Royals, but the crowd couldn't wait....

Here's how NZ Herald reported the concert. 

"....A Laneway make-up show on a Wednesday night in little old Auckland must feel like a blip when more than 28 million people watched you perform at the Grammys.
But Lorde, who had only walked off the plane from Los Angeles the morning of the show, had plenty of surprises in store for the nearly sold out crowd of 10,000 at Auckland's Silo Park...."

It was fun - though for me - wanted to hear her singing more than I needed to feel the bass line - but then I'm an oldie...

And everyone went wild with the blue light sticks. (Click on the pic to see it enlarged....)

Quite a splash.....

Greg Clark came back to his theme at the end of his talk. What IS Auckland. Is it volcanoes, islands, boats and water?  Is it about openness, diversity, human relations?  Or how about the nexus between sport, food, nutition and health...?

But he ended by suggesting this:  Your indigenous population is Maori, that is what really strikes me. Think about  what Martin Luther King means in and to Atlanta...   The new constitution in South Africa and how this is a big thing now to and for Johanesburg....  Auckland's "offer" can be the way it rebuilds its relationships with its indigenous people...."

This is all from Greg Clark.....

And so here we all are coming back across Te Whero bridge from Silo Park. Happy throng. Buzzing with it all. Some of us headed for the Devonport Ferry, some for bus, some to Britomart.  I know the feeling is similar when there's a concert at Vector Arena. 
Remember how Auckland was during the Rugby World Cup - when Samoa and Tonga had their teams here - when Auckland built - temporarily - a relationship with its polynesian population? Scroll through this posting and remember.

Maybe Auckland's buzz can be built around music. Sort of New Orleans of the South Pacific. There sure seems to be a lot of good stuff coming out of schools and music clubs and groups across the region. How about bringing NZ's Got Talent as well into Auckland Central. This expression does not need to be confined to TV and internet ITunes. Through music, performance, rehearsal spaces, performance places, it can become part of Auckland's urban night life - and rebuild that relationship within and between peoples.

Debunking Demographia House Price Survey

It's about time NZ Herald and Auckland Council refrained from giving the Demographia Housing Affordability survey such an easy ride - especially given there are more useful and more credible surveys available internationally. And even more reason is that the matter of housing affordability requires reasoned discussion in Auckland.

In this posting I will quote criticism of the Demographia survey that has been published in Australia where stories similar to what we see in New Zealand about "unaffordability" are pedalled by Demographia. I will also refer readers to other surveys which are held in higher regard by the Economist - for example.

And at the end of this post I summarise the more useful findings and research of Numbeo - a very interesting and emerging crowd-sourced database including cost of living comparisons.

DEBUNKING DEMOGRAPHIA

But first, here's what the Australian Property Forum had to say a couple of years ago about the Demographia work:

The infamous Demographia survey is updated and released every year, and every year the property bears of Australia use the survey to claim that Australian houses are the most expensive in the world, the most unaffordable on the planet, the greatest real estate bubble in history.

But almost half a million families and individuals bought homes in Australia last year. So while housing may be unaffordable to some (has it ever been otherwise?) plenty of people do seem to be able to afford to buy houses. So how come so many people are buying houses in a country that Demographia claims to be completely unaffordable?

Obviously there must be many flaws in the Demographia survey, some of which I will outline here.....

For a start, the Demographia survey uses a very simplistic measure of affordability - the median house price to median gross household income ratio. Using gross household income is an inappropriate way to determine household spending power, because the spending power of a household is based on the amount of gross income remaining after costs are deducted for essentials such as taxes, food, transport, clothing etc. Differences in tax rates and cost of living pressures across various countries make a comparison of spending power based on gross income meaningless. Furthermore, there is no reason why a family on median wage income should feel entitled to be able to afford a median house, because houses are not purchased using wage income alone. Houses are purchased using wealth. A better measure of a household's ability to afford property would be to consider household discretionary income and total wealth. This would include non-wage income (such as income from interest, shares or other investments), and wealth stored in other assets (such as shares or equity in existing property) that may be liquidated or borrowed against in order to fund a new property purchase. A family with median wealth should feel entitled to a median dwelling, but an FHB on median wages (with no other wealth) should not....

The survey also fails to consider dwelling size. Houses in Australia are, on average, the largest in the world, so when comparing median houses it is important to note that a median dwelling in Australia is much larger than a median dwelling in the other countries. Why would Australians build the largest houses in the world if our houses are supposedly unaffordable? Wouldn't we build smaller less expensive ones if that was the case? The truth is that Australians have high incomes, Australia is a prosperous country, and as a nation we choose to spend a large portion of our disposable income on nice large well appointed houses. Clearly we can afford to do that.

Another major failing with the Demographia survey is its measure of median house price. The official median house price figures that Demographia use for Australia are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. However these ABS figures only include freestanding houses. They don't include units or townhouses, meaning that Demographia are overstating median house prices in Australia compared to the other countries assessed in their survey (countries where units and townhouses are included when calculating the median house price).

So, the Demographia survey compares median house price to income ratios across various countries, but clearly there is no reason why those house price to income ratios should be consistent across each country, because there are substantially different factors impacting the housing markets in each country. The Demographia survey fails to consider the following important factors:

- Disposable/discretionary income
- Wealth (including wage income, non-wage income, and assets)
- Employment rate
- General cost of living (affects spending power)
- Interest rates
- Credit availability
- Rental yield
- Availability of public housing
- Marginal tax rates
- Mortgage default rates
- Tax incentives such as negative gearing, FHOG, CGT reductions
- Land/block size
- Dwelling size and quality
- Proximity to transport and infrastructure
- Currency exchange rates
- Economic and political stability
- Average persons per dwelling
- Home ownership rates
- Urbanisation
- Population growth rate
- Demographics (it is ironic that a survey called Demographia ignores basic demographics!)

Of course, no survey is perfect and no survey can possibly hope to account for all these factors. The best we can do is try to look at as many different surveys as possible, each of which address a few of these factors, and this will give an better general impression of comparative affordability in each country, rather than looking at just one survey (I have linked to twelve alternative surveys below).....

In my view, the best way to determine whether homes in Australia are affordable or not is to employ a little common sense.

1 - Would we choose to build the largest homes in the world if homes were unaffordable?
2 - Would half a million families and individuals (approximately) be buying homes every year if they couldn't afford those homes?
3 - Would we have one of the lowest mortgage default rates in the western world if people couldn't afford their homes?

I believe the answer to each of those questions is 'no'.

Can every first home-buyer in Australia afford the home they desire right away? Of course not... they never could. But any family willing to work hard can afford a home of some description, and as they progress through life, increasing their income and wealth, over time they will be able to afford comparatively better houses. Once they have achieved median wealth then the average family can afford a median dwelling, and later in life an average family who continues to build their wealth can afford increasingly higher quality dwellings. This is the way it has always been.

Here are some alternative studies...

World's Top 10 Priciest Cities To Own A Home
Sydney - not in the top 10

Numbeo: House Price to Household Disposable Income Ratio
London 15x, Singapore 14x, Tokyo 12x, New York 8x, Dublin 8x, Sydney 7x

GlobalProperty Most Expensive Cities 2009 (apartment price per sqm):
Sydney - Number 28: US$4,994 per sqm

CityMayors Expensive Cities
Sydney - Number 38

Knight Frank Survey (prime residential property)
Sydney - Number 8: EU$13,100 per sqm

Overseas Property Mall Survey
Average home values for select 2,200 square foot single-family dwellings with four bedrooms...
Tokyo $786K, Sydney $683K

The Economist: Worldwide Cost of Living Survey
Australia - Not shown in the top 10

Mercer Most Expensive Cities (cost of living, including housing)
Sydney - Number 24

Xpatulator Global Cost of Living Ranks
Sydney - Number 22

Aneki (most expensive countries to live in)
Australia - Not shown in the top 20

Most expensive countries in the world
Australia - Not in the list

Most expensive rental markets
Australia - Not in the list

NUMBEO

The study that I have looked at closely and which seems to me far more useful when looking at what is happening in Auckland is the NUMBEO study, which is now one the largest and most data rich sources of cost of living and housing price data in the world.

The survey data quoted by NUMBEO is described on its website like this. I have highlighted in bold aspects of the approach of note:

.... there is no standard formula to calculate property price indices. Our formulas differs from Case-Shiller Index, UK Housing Price Index, etc.

Price to Income Ratio is the basic measure for apartment purchase affordability. It is the ratio of median apartment prices to median familial disposable income, expressed as years of income.

Our formula assumes and uses:

• net disposable family income, as defined as 1.5 * the average net salary
• that the average apartment has 90 square meters
• its price per square meter is the average price of square meter in city center and outside of city center

The statistics that are reported, by country, include:

• Mortgage as Percentage of Income is a the ratio of the actual monthly cost of the mortgage to take-home family income.
• Average monthly salary is used to estimate family income.
• It assumes 100% mortgage is taken on 20 years for the house (or apartment) of 90 square meters where the price per square meter is the average of price in city center and outside of city center.
• Loan Affordability Index is an inverse of mortgage as percentage of income. Used formula is : (100 / mortgage as percentage of income).

So there you go. In some ways this survey is like Demographia's - ie that it calculates a ratio of median prices to median family incomes. However when analysing affordable homes (as opposed to all homes), then it is more useful to survey the types of homes that are generally purchased by young families and couples starting out on the housing ladder. And for most cities in the world, the starting point is NOT a freehold 200 square metre floor area, three bedroom house on 400 square metres of land. The starting point is an apartment. The NUMBEO survey reports affordability of 90 square metre apartments.

You can see the NUMBEO survey for 2013 here for 103 countries. Note you can list the data in any ascending or descending order - by clicking the arrow keys.

In 2013, New Zealand ranked 21 (Price to Income Ratio of 6.40), while the USA was 1 (Price to Income Ratio of 2.16), Germany, Canada and Ireland ranked 8, 9 and 10 respectively. Australia ranked 32. And so on.

Then you can also look at the affordability index which considers the cost of a loan (assuming it is taken on for a 20 year period) and which uses interest data from each country and such like. New Zealand ranks 24th in affordability (with 1 - the USA - being most affordable), and places like Belarus and Ghana being least affordable and ranking 100 or more. It should be noted that in this survey countries like Sweden, Australia, Italy, Egypt rank as less affordable than New Zealand.

In Auckland we need to be measuring and comparing data that helps us focus on change and on policies that will make a difference, rather than using discredited surveys that only exist to reinforce a particular party line that is all about removing development costs and improving conditions for developers so they can be effectively subsidised to build relatively expensive and large homes.

We know that the average NZ home has been increasing in floor area for the past 20 years or more, and that the number of occupants/home has been decreasing on average. This is inconsistent with the policy objective of increasing the supply of affordable homes, because internationally, affordable homes in urban environments are apartments.

Understanding Urine - Stop Taking the Piss

NZ Herald and NZ Listener Magazine have run - with increasing frequency and force - articles criticising the growth and expansion in NZ's diary industry. Much of this media reporting has been triggered and informed by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Environment's recent report on land use change and water pollution which shows a clear link between expanding dairy farming and increasing stress on water quality.

This article, by NZ Herald's writer on the NZ economy, was unusually to the point, and did not pull any punches.

My own research interest in this matter goes back a long way - being a South Islander (my rivers were the Oamaru Creek, the Kakanui River and the Waitaki River) - and over the past two decades thinking about water demand and raw water quality (Waikato River as drinking water source for Auckland).

Because of the issue of nitrate pollution I have recently been educating myself to better understand where the nitrogen actually comes from. To begin with, I had thought the main source of nitrogen contamination from pastureland in dry, relatively unfertile areas (such as North Otago and South Canterbury, was the zealous use of fertiliser. (This also being a source of phosphorous). I thought that nitrogen rich fertiliser was dissolving in surface water and then running off into rivers and into groundwaters.

That is happening, but the nitrogen cycle is more complex than that. Reading this Listener article (which you have to subscribe to see in entirety) alerted me to the fact that cow piss contains lots of nitrogen, and that cow urine is the main source of nitrogen contamination in natural waters (not nitrogen from fertilisers).

This was interesting. Good to have a new fact get in the way of my opinion.

So I did some research, and found this briefing from Environment Waikato, which says this, I have added emphasis:

Nitrogen is one of the most important major nutrients
in the New Zealand farming system. It enters the
system either by clover root nodules taking the
nitrogen from the air and fixing it in a form the
clover can use. It also enters as bought-in feed or
as nitrogenous fertiliser. Plants take up the nitrogen
returned to the soil in the form of urine, dung and
leaf litter. A small proportion of this nitrogen is
converted to milk, meat and wool.

What I take from this is something new about where the nitrogen that gets in the urine is coming from. It is taken from the atmosphere (air contains 78% nitrogen) during the growth of certain forms of pasture plants - especially clover. Cows eat the pasture which contains nitrogen taken up from fertiliser AND ALSO from the atmosphere. Hardly any of the nitrogen consumed by the cow is converted into milk or meat. It is disposed of as urine.


What has not been made crystal clear in the science that I have read in popular press is that much of the nitrogen in cow urine comes from the atmosphere.

We know that cows eat grass and convert organic matter into milk.

But it's not that simple.

As they grow, clover and other pastureland plants convert atmospheric nitrogen into digestable chemicals which are also consumed by the cow (along with the organic materials in the leaves and stalks), and nitrogen rich left-overs are mostly separated in the cow's stomach and then passed out as ammonia in urine. (And yes, plants also absorb nitrogen from fertiliser).

The more cows on an area of land eating natural pasture, the more nitrogen from the air is being transformed into ammonia on the ground (urine) where it is converted into nitrates by bacterial action. Nitrates can be used by plants, but if there’s too much it leaches past the roots, into the ground, and into groundwater reservoirs, where it slowly accumulates.

Scientists call these urine patches nitrogen hot spots.

This is a tragedy of the commons like global warming in reverse.

Instead of atmospheric carbon dioxide increasing through fossil fuel burning, it’s atmospheric nitrogen conversion into groundwater nitrate contamination as a by-product of dairy herd factory production of milk from pasture. Intensive dairy-farming is a machine sucking inert nitrogen from the atmosphere and pouring chemically active nitrate contaminants into natural water resources.

Asking farmers to clean up their factories is a bit like asking car owners to drive less and slow climate change.

 The question: “Can the conflict between the dairy farming economic boom and polluted water be resolved?” is a good one to ask, but it begs another: “by whom?” When Government sacked Environment Canterbury’s elected councillors and appointed commissioners to oversee difficult water allocation problems, it cited political advice that “ECan was science led, but that it should be science informed”.

You can't have it both ways guys. Now we have elected councillors and water scientists not being trusted by government. It's reminiscent of another time when government decided it couldn't trust local government with climate change. Took it into the Minister's office. Looks like that's where cow piss is headed too. But isn't it time to stop pissing about...?

Who is the Liveable City For?

This posting is the start of a critique I will be developing this year about the fundamentals of planning and governance in Auckland. This one considers the powers of our elected local government representatives, and, using a critique of planning in Barcelona, suggests that the driving force for Auckland planning has little to do with the what Auckland councillors, board members, and ratepayers might think or want.

Local Government Powers....

We sometimes kid ourselves that we are free, and that we live in a free society.

Auckland Councillors and Local Board members might easily convince themselves they are free to debate and discuss Auckland City, develop a vision freely, and make plans that will be implemented enhancing citizen abilities to make the most of their own freedom, as they live their lives, working and playing in Auckland.

But a moment's thought should dispel that. For example:

• Local boards have no power. They are "an unincorporated body" and are not "a local authority, a community board, or a committee of the governing body" and "must undertake any responsibilities or duties that are delegated to it by the governing body (Council) or Auckland Transport". 
• Auckland Transport decisions are actually driven by Central Government's Policy on Land Transport
• The Auckland Council cannot perform any function or exercise any power that the Local Government Act has conferred upon Auckland Transport (and there's a lot of these)
• .... and the list goes on....

These are obvious restrictions and limitations written in law on the powers of Auckland Council and Local Boards and their members. Others are less obvious, but reflect and impose the will of central government. For example, take a look at s.10 of the Local Government Act:

10. Purpose of local government

(1) The purpose of local government is—
(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and
(b) to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses.

(2) In this Act, good-quality, in relation to local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions, means infrastructure, services, and performance that are—
(a) efficient; and
(b) effective; and
(c) appropriate to present and anticipated future circumstances.

Gone is the language and comprehensiveness of sustainable development for local government with economic, social, environmental and cultural objectives. Instead the emphasis is on efficient, effective and appropriate infrastructure, services and regulatory functions.These words are there to control councillors, board members and council staff. Stick to the basics. Austerity and discipline. Which is not all bad, but discipline can be directed in ways that might not be so obvious.

Central Government Policy for Local Government

Probably the best place to look for the underlying political drivers and desires that are fundamental to understanding Central Government local government reform is National Party policy on local government.

It's local government policy in 2011 is headlined:

“Building a Stronger Economy....

National will encourage regional
economic growth by working with councils across regions to eliminate barriers for firms and businesses to grow and expand..."

No mention of communities and ratepayers in this local government policy text. Emphasis is clear. The small print explains further:

Building local growth
Good, effective local government is important. It contributes to our plan to build a brighter future, grow a stronger economy, and create real jobs with higher incomes. It provides the essential local infrastructure our businesses and communities need to prosper. National is encouraging an efficient local government sector that supports a growing economy and brings benefits to taxpayers, ratepayers, and communities....

 NB, this is National's local government policy. You can see that it is all about economic growth and economic efficiency. It notes that "National" is: encouraging an efficient local government sector that supports a growing economy...

So how is it "encouraging" that sector? One mechanism is through further Local Government reorganisation carried out by the Local Government Commission. And this is much more explicit about the rationale for restructuring local government in New Zealand.

Legislation requires, that "in considering possible changes to local government:

.....the Commission must be satisfied that its preferred option....
will facilitate, in the affected area, improved economic performance, which may (without limitation) include—
(i) efficiencies and cost savings; and
(ii) productivity improvements, both within the local authorities and for the businesses and households that interact with those local authorities; and
(iii) simplified planning processes within and across the affected area through, for example, the integration of statutory plans or a reduction in the number of plans to be prepared or approved by a local authority...."

From this we readily deduce that these are the outcomes from local government that are preferred, desired, and required by central government, which is seeking by hook or by crook to discipline, direct and control the functioning and priorities of New Zealand councils. Of which Auckland Council is the biggest.

Economic restructuring and city governance

Now I'm going to introduce neoliberal politics. But don't groan. New Zealand has been experimenting and adopting neoliberal economic ideas since Rogernomics in the late 1980's. To ignore this influence on your country and the way it affects the running and governance of cities would be silly. Surely.

I quote from research work by Matthew Jacobson entitled: "Producing Neoliberal cities and citizens". While it is partly based on urban development and governance changes in Barcelona, it talks about urbanisation changes in cities around the world over the past 30 - 40 years. It analyses how those urban changes have been influenced by neoliberal economic ideas - which can be used to discipline, shape and control political and planning decisions. I think it is useful to share some of this thinking here, because it helps us all understand and anticipate shifts and changes that might be just around the corner - or here already - in Auckland. How can you sensibly govern or manage a city if you don't take the time to understand the major influences that are acting upon it.

The key ideas for Auckland in the quoted text are contained in the three lists - which you will see if you quickly scroll down. I suggest you read the lists (which are about changes in Barcelona) and note the similarities with what is happening - on your watch - in Auckland. But it does help to put the lists in context:

The shift .... to neoliberal economic logic in the last 30-40 years in a majority of the Western countries of the world has meant there have been significant shifts in how urbanization in the cities has developed. These shifts have brought about changes in the forms of politics and governance in which the city (promotes or encourages) capital accumulation strategies. In other words, neoliberalizing the city also has involved neoliberalizing the citizen. To move forward, neoliberal urban restructuring has meant changes in the ways in which city governments have had to convince and legitimize as well as control city populations....

Neoliberalism (is described) by critical geographers as having gone through an initial phase in the 70´s and 80´s under the leadership of Thatcher and Reagan and then a new phase in the 1990´s in which it became much more interventionist in the sense that in contrast to the early model of reducing government restrictions on trade, the new form is much more directly involved in restructuring and controlling various forms of relations and particularly directions for the development....

Brenner and Theodore summarize that “the overarching goal of such neoliberal policy experiments is to mobilize city space as an area both for market-oriented economic growth and for elite consumption practices”.....

...urbanization is not only a material process but involves attempts to (promote and encourage) certain ways of thinking ... which marginalize others. Examining these ....  is important to grasp how power relations themselves are actually being (re)produced.

How to create a neoliberal city?

Create a system of interrelated and associated administrative hierarchies, laws, popular and intellectual discourses, and histories which work to:

1. Convince popular culture that globalization (in the form of the increasing domination and power of multinational corporations ...) is inevitable, outside of the control of nations, cities, and city populations and that there are only two options: be successful or fail in terms of competing in the ‘free market’.
2. Promote the illusion to the population that the ‘free market’ means they are ‘freer’. Like good magicians give them lots of choices which actually forward your interests (usually profit interests) that you selected for them and they will think they are ‘free to choose’ and never consider who decides what the options are or that they are supporting your accumulation of wealth.
3. Create the popular belief that a central aspect of being successful and having a good quality of life for the residents is creating city spaces which attract large scale foreign investments in the form of built environment, multinational corporation headquarter and operation centers, and tourism.
4. Create histories about the city which make neoliberal colonial/capitalism the natural evolution of advanced societies as the most progressive and well adapted form of social relations in terms of all areas of society including; the protection of the environment and management of resources; technological development which improves the quality of life for all; education, health, and social welfare.
5. Make poverty illegal in the city and a result of poor immigrants who want to take advantage of the rich countries success and steal and cheat to do so. Make colonialism a historical event which was an unpleasant but necessary by-product of European civilizations advancement and success. Make the domination and exploitation of multinational corporations in the ‘former’ colonized parts of the world, a simple matter of capitalism's Darwinian rationalization called ‘survival of the fittest’, and then create ‘aid’ organizations funded by the same multinationals to show that they are part of the ‘solution’ rather than the problem.
6. Promote the city government as democratic, based in popular support, and has as its central priority the improvement of the quality of life for all residents above all other concerns or interests.
7. Give the impression that the public and private sector actually share the same interests and that profits motives and public welfare actually can work together harmoniously to create the ‘best’ city for those that live there. Then create powerful public/private ‘development’ corporations ... and take over poorer historical areas to turn them into privatized ‘chic’ business areas or living areas for the employees. Carefully designate a small proportion of these areas to newly constructed block social housing managed by private property developers with a large percentage of public funds.
8. Take over and manage the renovations that are open in the city with a few goals in mind:

a. Call them ‘public space’ and give the impression that the city and police are the best managers to ensure these spaces are attractive, useful, clean, and ‘peaceful’. Under no conditions let the residents of these areas gain the impression they have the right, ability, or capacity to decide and manage what happens in the open areas or plazas where they live.
b. Make sure that residents learn to deal with all social problems by calling the city police or complain to city officials rather than form their own associations and get the impression they can form communities where their problems can be discussed and dealt with through relationships.
c. Target poorer historical areas of the central city and make them into theme attractions for tourists.
d. Make plazas and other open areas places which are controlled and regulated under newly establish civic norms where you make illegal a series of behaviours that a lot of residents don’t like to live around (peeing and prostitution) which then lets you police and regulate the spaces to keep them happy places for tourism to pass and spend money.
e. Build large cement areas where there are no places for gardens or play areas such as basketball or soccer.
f. Create areas where you can have large scale private functions such as ‘merchandise’ sales, small booths filled with tourist items, artist performances which are regulated and controlled by the city with no political content.
g. Decrease as much as possible spontaneous socializing, play, or most importantly political encounters.

So that's what you might do if your objective is to neoliberalise a city and its citizens, so they are more ready to play ball when the big investors and developers come to Auckland with their proposals. This is a set of suggestions for conditioning Aucklanders and training them.

More explicit urban development policy objectives are also summarised in the Jacobson text:

Neoliberal transurban tendencies towards reflexive and entrepreneurial city governance (Peck and Tickel, 2002):
1. The normalization of a ‘growth first’ approach to urban development, reconstituting social –welfarist arrangements as anticompetitive costs and rendering issues of redistribution and social investment as antagonistic to the overriding objectives of economic development.
2. The pervasive naturalization of market logics, justifying on the grounds of efficiency and even ‘fairness’ their installation, as the dominant metrics of policy evaluation.
3. Through a combination of competitive regimes of resource allocation, skewed municipal-lending policies, and outright political pressure undermines or forecloses alternative paths of urban development based for example, on social redistribution, economic rights, or public investment. This produces a neoliberal ‘lock-in’ of public sector austerity and growth-chasing economic development.
4. Putting the cities in positions where they are pressured to actively-and-responsively-scan the horizon for investment and promotion opportunities, monitoring ‘competitors’, and emulating ‘best practices’, lest they be left behind in this intensifying competitive struggle for the kinds of resources (public and private) that neoliberalism has helped make (more) mobile.
5. Narrowing urban policy repertoire based on capital subsidies, place promotion, supply-side intervention, central-city makeovers, and local boosterism.
6. Creates a situation where national and transnational governments funds increasingly flow to cities on the basis of economic potential and governance capacity rather than manifest social need.
7. Regressive welfare reforms and labor-market polarization, for example, are leading to the (re)urbanization of (working and non-working) poverty, positioning cities at the bleeding edge of processes of punitive institution building, social surveillance, and authoritarian governance. 

You will recognise some of these "tendencies" in Auckland Council and Central Government local government policies now. More are likely to come to New Zealand as the incorporation of, and tacit acceptance of these ideas consolidates.

So: Who is the Liveable City really For?

While the rhetoric of Council and Mayor and Auckland Plan might be interpreted as meaning that the liveable city is for its citizens, most of the initiatives that are being taken are to make Auckland a safe and attractive place for investment (for foreign and local investors and for central government infrastructure investment), to promote and stimulate economic growth. That is fundamentally what the Liveable City is for. And then it is assumed that there will be local benefits from this investment. That's the 'trickle down' effect.

You might disagree with a lot of what these academic researchers have written, but it might make you think differently, and you might consciously make decisions about these matters, rather than just being another disciplined and well-behaved cog in the growth machine.

Kia kaha

(Useful references:
Read more of Jacobson's work.
Peck, Jamie and Tickell, Adam (2002) ‘Neoliberalizing Space’. Antipode. Volume 34, Issue 3, pages 380–404.
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik (2002) Cities and the geography of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’. Antipode. Blackwell publish: MA, USA
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik (2002) Spaces of Neoliberalism: urban restructuring in North America and Western Europe. Antipode: UK.)