Consolidating a Council - Does Bigger Simply Mean ... Bigger?

Reviewing the Auckland experiment
This is the fourth post reviewing the progress of Auckland Council following the amalgamation in 2010 of seven territorial and one regional authority and the reorganisation of transport and water delivery agencies. The aims included greater regulatory consistency across the region, the capacity to make adequate, coordinated provision for growth, and cost savings.  

The story so far

The previous posts looked at trends in Auckland Council from 2012 to 2018: employment up 17%; employment costs up 24% (in real terms); operating expenditure up 26%; total revenue up 51%. The leap in revenue reflects spending on property, plant and equipment, up 32% in 2018 compared with 2012, or NZ$11bn over the period. All this, while population grew by around 15%. 

Despite the jump in costs and funding, we can’t label the Auckland Experiment a failure on the evidence so far.  So this post adds to the analysis by looking briefly at performance, albeit in general terms. It looks at broad efficiency trends by comparing Auckland with New Zealand’s other regions. These include unitary councils (regional and local functions combined) and multi-council regions.

But first a couple of scene-setters.  What is the role of councils? And how might efficiencies arise from amalgamation and operating at a larger scale? 

Skip these two boxes if you just want to look at the numbers.

Scene Setter 1 - What councils do (or should do)

There are good arguments for local councils to oversee the provision of local public goods where the market won’t deliver or where there are natural monopolies. It is also appropriate for them to levy rates over property to do so, and to charge directly for the services they provide.

Obviously council roles will change as shifts in technology or behaviour create competition where none existed before (and they consequently pull out of infrastructure or service delivery) or where the public appetite for amenities changes (for example from passive to active reserves).

It is important, though, that property rates relate to the infrastructure provided, and that charges for services relate to the fair cost of their production.  It is also important that councils produce infrastructure and services efficiently. Unduly high costs penalise residents and businesses, reducing a city’s competitiveness and attraction. 

Councils also have an obligation to continuously review and evaluate what infrastructure and amenities should be provided, where, and when. In this they are required to reflect on constituents’ needs and preferences, engaging with the community through survey, consultation, submissions, and, ultimately, the ballot box. This is necessary to legitimise new activities and allow cross-subsidies between services, areas, or generations. 

Discretionary council decisions should also: be legal, reasonable (both matters that may be contested in the courts), and should not unduly lower efficiency.

  

Scene Setter 2        Potential efficiencies from reorganisation

There are the three ways by which efficiency might be improved through local government consolidation and reform:

Administrative gains: from lowering administrative, compliance, transaction, and regulatory costs.  Processes may be streamlined, duplication eliminated, best practices implemented, and economies of scale gained (increasing what is achieved by more than what it costs).

Technical gains through improved financial capacity to invest in new systems, processes, and plant to lift output, enhance outcomes, reduce service failures, and lower costs.

Allocative gains from delivering the most appropriate mix of goods and services, and making effective use of capital to best deploy people and plant to achieve desired outcomes.  

Measuring gains

In this post, I consider the efficiencies in Auckland Council that should come from administrative and technical advances using changes in two measures: the number of local government employees and operating expenditure per head of population.

Auckland Council numbers are compared with numbers for all New Zealand regions from 2000 to 2018. Following the logic justifying amalgamation, the creation of Auckland’s large unitary council in 2010 should have increased the residents served relative to council employment numbers and lowered costs to residents more than in regions with smaller, multiple councils.  And within Auckland we would expect council costs to decline relative to population.

The indicators used assume that the council output is a function of population. This is a high order assumption, over-riding differences in the mix and quality of amenities and services and differences in the physical environment of regions.  Equally, employee numbers is also only an approximate measure of inputs.

While these assumptions keep analysis simple, they also limit the conclusions that can be drawn.

Employment up, productivity down?
We know employment growth has been modest within the enlarged Auckland Council, confined to Council Controlled Organisations. However, the costs of council employment have risen significantly, in part through staff movement into higher-paid bands. 

To consider the bigger picture, the number of residents in each of the 16 regions was divided by the number of people employed in local government administration and in water supply, sewage and drainage servcies (sourced from Business Demography, Statistics NZ). The higher the figure, the more productive a region is (fewer employees relative to residents).  The line should rise if productivity is improving.

The results for Auckland and the median for all regions have been plotted in Figure 1. Auckland stands out as more productive than most regions, but contrary to expectations, more so before the 2010 reforms than after.  Other strong performers are smaller regions with unitary councils (Gisborne, Nelson, and especially Tasman).

Figure 1: Residents per Council Employee, 2000-2018 

The downward slope indicates more employees relative to population, suggesting falling productivity. Of course, this may indicate changes in the scope of council activities, but it is hard to envisage a shift that would lead to a 26% fall in 8 years (as in Auckland) or even a 14% fall (as in the national median). And if costs rise faster than output, regional (and national) productivity suffers.

While Auckland ranks well against other regions on this measure (see the bar graph and right-hand scale), its steep downward slope and convergence on the median across regions is inconsistent with expectations of economic gains from consolidation (despite the recovery in 2017).

Expenditure: more for less?

Operating expenses (sourced from Statistics NZ) have been summed for councils in each region from 2000 to 2017, converted to 2018 dollars and divided through by regional populations.  In theory, expenditure per head should fall as councils become more efficient, and should be lower in larger councils, Auckland being the obvious example (see the Scene Setter 2, above).

Well, neither expectation appears to hold. Operating costs per employee have been increasing.  In Auckland there was some moderation after 2012 but it is difficult to distinguish its performance from the median for all councils in Figure 2. 

Figure 2 also includes high and low performers.  The best performing regions fall below the lower quartile and the worst above the higher quartile.  The single best performer recently has been the Hawke's Bay with its population concentrated in the twin cities of Napier and Hastings. The worst has been the West Coast with its sparse population spread over a physically challenging area. 

The key observation, though, is that efficiency as measured here has not improved in Auckland which continues to sit around the middle of the pack. 

Figure 2: Council Expenditure per Resident, 2000-2017

What can we conclude?

On the measures used here, local government costs are moving ahead of population growth in most regions. Auckland is no exception. At best, te city has maintained efficiency in line with other regions. Consolidation of Auckland's councils has not been enough to reverse a decline. 

As noted, these measures of efficiency assume a similar mix and level of services delivered by the consolidated council as delivered under similar conditions by councils in other regions, and as delivered by the previous Auckland councils. At the level this analysis, our most robust conclusion is that the measures used provide no evidence that consolidation has lifted Auckland's game. To date, the costs of consolidation have not yielded obvous benefits.

Exploring why means looking into allocative efficiency: is the additional funding Auckland Council is receiving being allocated to investments that lift productivity as they deliver better services? In the absence of evidence of better performance the consolidated council does not hyet yet appear to be on the path to savings. And if Auckland is going to deliver on the promise of 2010, can we afford the spending evidently required to get there?  

→ An aside on allocative efficiency
Sound allocation decisions are  necessary to deliver operating gains: spending the right amount on the right things and getting the right people to put them in place. In Auckland Council resource allocation is driven in large part by Council Controlled Organisations. The quality of resource allocation decisions needs unravelling at that level. 

However, it is timely to note that a recent internal report regarding decision-making for cycleway investment by Auckland Transport identifies that spending was justified by over-estimating demand.  This is on top of major under-estimates of the cost of the Central Rail Link which was justified on the basis of a $2.3bn budget in 2011 (and a series of assumptions that were hardly grounded in reality). That budget  had (predictably) blown out to $3.4bn by  2016, and continues to climb, with no clarity on where it will end up. 

These examples confirm how large organisations are prone to resource misallocation; the larger the project the more likely it is to blow out, and the bigger any over-run will be. The impact of failures in resource allocation decisions in a large council can be further-reaching than similar failures by smaller organisations, given the increased funds at their disposal. And placing a substantial share of the increased funds in CCOs at arm's length from the political process may be no remedy.  Poor spending decisions by councillors or their agents and advisors can lead to uneconomic investment: over- or under-capacity, in the wrong place, badly timed, or over-priced.  The end result? A drag on city efficiency and productivity.

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 [1] There is a difference.  Efficiency refers to how well tasks are done, and specified outcomes       achieved.  Productivity requires that those outcomes are the correct ones.

Terms of Engagement: councils and their communities

Failures of local governance – the case of Canterbury

Christchurch City and Canterbury Region have suffered not just blows of nature.  They have also been suffering ruptures of governance. 

Recent protests against the Christchurch City Council, the appointment of a “minder” to oversee its activities, the establishments of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority by government to take over reconstruction of the city, and before that replacement of elected regional councillors by government-appointed commissioners all raise questions over the effectiveness of democratic governance.  

In the case of the city, the problem has been a seeming inability to respond effectively to the difficult but urgent issues of recovery and rebuilding after the earthquakes.  In the case of the region, the problem lay in an apparent inability to resolve contentious water resource management issues. 

Bigger as better: restructuring Auckland

An assumption of inadequate governance was also the cornerstone of the inquiry by a Royal Commission into how Auckland might better play a role as the economic driver of the nation.  The assumption was made that amalgamation - a structural response - would deliver governance and management improvements.

The  hoped-for administrative or technical efficiency gains pale against the prospect of better – or worse – decisions as a result of collapsing eight councils into one.  How much money might be saved on computer systems, for example, or consolidating staff is largely irrelevant if the quality of decisions about where, why and how public resources are allocated does not improve.

And it’s the quality of the big decisions that lies at the heart of good governance.  This underpins the significance of Auckland's proposed spatial plan (and why I am so worried about it).

Governance and democracy

Governance refers to the capacity to make decisions on behalf of an organisation.   The Oxford English Dictionary gets to the nub: governance is “ruling with authority”.  In democratic institutions that authority is conferred on their representatives by the citizens.   

Things go wrong when the governors forget that they are there to make decisions in the interests of the entire polity (or company, NGO, or agency in the case of corporate governance).  They are not there to push a particular viewpoint on the assumption that they know best because they got the most votes. 

That’s especially so in local government where multiple candidates and low voter turnout mean people frequently get elected by small numbers.  Despite the undue influence of minorities on electoral results, the mandate to govern locally still reflects a responsibility to act beyond the interests of any particular group. 

The alternatives – (1) governing by decree

Contrast this with dictatorships or monarchies, where authority to govern lies in military and subversive powers or arcane traditions, with governance typically benefiting only narrowly defined groups and unconstrained by popular accountabiity.

If elected politicians do privilege particular interest groups the quality of decisions is undermined (by a failure to reflect on all the options) along with the legitimacy of their authority.  (There may, of course, be a place in a constitution for regard to be had to the claims of particular groups.  In New Zealand the Treaty of Waitangi plays this role for Maori).

The alternatives – (2) governing by expertise

Good decision-making may be informed by the deliberations of experts.  But allowing technicians to prevail across decision-making is also the way of autocracy, dictatorship by another name.  The cult of the expert ultimately limits individual freedoms.  This appears to be a path that Italy and Greece have adopted after years of apparently deficient democratic governance, but it is a response to crisis, and unlikely to endure. 

In the long run playing to technical expertise to legitimate decisions contrary to community preferences limits democracy.  And it won't lead to good outcomes when implementation encounters community resistance.

The importance of transparency

Communities are hardly homogeneous.  Diversity and division, competition and complexity are attributes of society underplayed in both text books and rule books.  Resource allocation decisions almost invariably favour some groups over others.  That's why transparency is critical to good governance.  Understanding why decisions are made is a big step on the path to accepting their consequences.

People have the right to know the grounds on which decisions likely to affect claims on and access to public resources are made.  More than that they have the right to (seek to) influence them.  That’s where the terms of engagement between governors and governed come into play. 

Beyond the ballot box

There has been plenty written about how councils might engage with their communities.  I want to promote three principles here:

(1)    Engagement can take many forms, each with advantages and disadvantages.  Good engagement will draw across the full range.  Beyond the ballot box it is important not to be captured by any particular programme of consultation.  Politicians can engage with constituents informally and formally on a daily basis and in a number of ways.  Surveys and submissions, protests and petitions all play their part. 

(2)    Smaller structures are likely to be more open to engagement than large structures.  Fewer tiers of management mean that messages about delivery and performance, the feedback needed to inform decisions, have a better chance of getting onto the political agenda.  And smaller councils lift the presence and accessibility of decision-makers generally, keeping the channels open and boosting accountability.

(3)    Decentralised structures are likely to enhance engagement because they tap directly into the diversity of the community. 

Moderation by management

Information from the community is varied in content and credibility, especially in the age of the internet but, allowing for the occasional “idiot factor”, it cannot be taken lightly.  This is where council management has a role to play.  Too much or conflicting information just becomes noise, making it easy for politicians to shut it out and leading to decisions based on partial information at best and preconceived views at worst.  Or else they end up caught up in conflicting information currents, and go nowhere.

Management may moderate (not mediate) the flow of information to the governors.  So managers also need to be close to the community (another argument for moderation in the size of councils).  Their role is not to shape the information councillors receive, but to relate it to the issues at hand and, where necessary, to the interests of the wider community.

Community rules

There is clearly more to making the big decisions than simply listening to the community.  There are financial, managerial, and institutional limits on what councils can do.  And the views of experts about what’s possible and what’s feasible do need to be considered.  But management constraints and expert opinion are just two of the three legs of the decision-making stool.  Community engagement is the third. 

And as councils are beginning to discover, councils that become remote from their communities are on a hiding to nowhere.   Engagement is not just about going through the motions of listening.  If citizens are not heard even apparently logical decisions will come undone and, eventually, councils will come undone with them.

Are 20th Century Models Relevant to 21st Century Urbanisation?

Urbanisation and material progress

Analysis of the state of the world’s cities 2010/2011 by UN-Habitat focused on the narrowing urban divide, with 227 million people moving out of slum conditions over the preceding decade.  While acknowledging uncertainty over cause and effect, the report notes that:

urbanization ... is associated in some places with numerous, positive outcomes such as technological innovation, forms of creativity, economic progress, higher standards of living, enhanced democratic accountability and women’s empowerment. ... the report calls for policy-makers and planners to understand that urbanization can be a positive force for economic development, leading to desirable social and political outcomes.

The North Atlantic solution

The report acknowledges the diversity of urbanisation[1], making its authors' somewhat singular approach to managing it (more density) incongruous.  Their prescription is based on resisting urban sprawl, reflecting the experience of North America.  They also suggest that sprawl is a sign of “divided cities”, translating into

an increase in the cost of transport, public infrastructure and of residential and commercial development. Moreover, sprawling metropolitan areas require more energy, metal, concrete and asphalt than do compact cities because homes, offices and utilities are set farther apart.

The report denounces sprawl in suburban zones of high and middle income groups and in extensive slums on the city edge.  On the latter, they invoke issues of governance, saying it occurs because

authorities pay little attention to slums, land, services and transport. Authorities lack the ability to predict urban growth and, as a result, fail to provide land for the urbanizing poor.

Can one size fit all?

It is difficult to accept prescription predisposed to a particular view. Urbanisation is not a single condition. Differences in the stage of urbanisation, vastly different physical, cultural and economic settings of “urban” settlement, and different institutional arrangements belie the idea of a universal response or that any particular form is best for all cities. 

Apart from anything else, “western” cities [2] don’t really feature in 21^st century urbanism.  Consider the figures.  In 1950 western cities accounted for 43% of the world’s urban population.  This was down to 23% in 1990 and 18% in 2010. UN projections have the figure down to 15% in 2030, accounting for between just 3% and 4% of all urban growth between now and then.

What Size City?
This post looks at some more numbers that help illustrate the diversity of urbanisation – the size of urban settlements. 

According to UN figures,  8% of the world’s population lives in 53 cities housing over 5 million people; 12% in 388 cities of between 1 and 5 million; and 31% in cities of under 1 million. Any prescriptions for urban governance and urban form need to reflect quite extreme divergence between the few megacities and the many smaller settlements where the majority of urbanites live.

The Urban Growth Trajectory
Urbanisation experiences vary, also.  The different national experiences of the past 60 years can be illustrated using ten quite different countries (Chart 1).  By 2010, Brazil, US, UK, Mexico, and Iran were all heavily urbanised.  But the level of urbanisation changed little for the US and the UK over thelate 20th century, while it grew rapidly in the others.

In yet another trajectory, erstwhile rapid urbanisation in Russia stalled after the mid 1980s. 

Chart 1: Urbanisation Trends, Selected Nations, 1950-2010

Urbanisation is accelerating in China, but has flattened off in Indonesia.  It has been increasing steadily in Nigeria and slowly but still steadily in India.

Most people moving into smaller cities
Chart 2 shows shares of growth by city size groups over the last twenty years. (Russia is omitted because urbanisation actually declined by 5.5%.) 

Cities of under 1 million residents dominate gains, strongly favouring developing countries.  They accounted for 90% of urban growth in Indonesia, 71% in Nigeria and 66% in Iran. 

US experienced growth more or less across all size categories, although Chicago went from the 7m-8m to the 8m plus category, reducing down the former.

Chart 2: Where Populations Grew - Cities by Size Category, 1990-2010

Brazil, China, and Indonesia saw significant growth across the most size groups.  There appears to be a contrast within these countries between the centralising influence of few large cities and dispersed urbanisation in many much smaller settlements.

(The picture for the UK reflects a gain of around 1 million people in London -- to 8.6m -- shifting it between categories.  Smaller cities actually accounted for 82% of the net UK gain in urban population, suggesting a duality between the growth of the capital and decentralisation through growth in smaller settlement). 

So where are the big cities?
The US has five urban agglomerations with a population of more than 5m, centred on New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit (Chart 3).  Compare this with China, with twelve cities of over 5m, and five cities of more than 8 million people (Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou); or India, with eight over 5m and three over 8m (Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai).

At the same time, China has 90 cities of between 750,000 and 2m, India 44 and the US 66.  Mexico has 15, Russia 14 and Brazil 13. 

Chart 3: Number of Cities by Size Category, Ten Nations 2010

Primacy – a mixed picture
Single centres that dominate national populations are termed “primate”.  Their rise and fall may be symptomatic of national economic fortunes.  Excessive primacy may increase economic volatility because the contrast between a rich centre and poor periphery is politically destabilising. One centre dominating financial, human, and intellectual resources may also increase national vulnerability to structural decline.

The picture is mixed across our sample (Chart 4).  Mexico City and London stand out.  High levels of primacy are also evident in Iran and Indonesia, but have been easing, contrasting with Nigeria where it is increasing.  It is least pronounced in the countries with the largest urban populations – China and India -- suggesting a strong population pull from a number of state or provincial capitals, as well as a host of much smaller cities.

Chart 4: Population Share of Largest City, Ten Nations, 1990 and 2010

So what does all this mean?

The data confirms huge diversity in the sizes of cities people live in across and within nations.  It generates more questions than answers, though, the main one being whether it is relevant simply to transfer urban governance, management, or planning models from one place to another.  Apart from contrasts within and between nations, it is clear that the west is no longer the focus of urbanisation and is unlikely to hold many of the answers to today’s urban growth challenges.

The evidence also indicates a tendency for urbanisation to take place in small, dispersed settlements rather than mega-cities.  More modest scale makes different demands on infrastructure and institutions.  It may also help manage urbanisation and ensure that benefits can be better accessed by larger numbers of people.  Small cities, sub-centres in large cities, and districts of modest scale may be better suited to adaptable and innovative planning and management than large scale, extensive cities with their more centralised, remote, and inevitably bureaucratic political and administrative systems. 

Very large agglomerations do exist, even if they are not as dominant in the wider urban picture as their size and profiles might suggest.  The question they raise is whether they should continue to dominate national and international agenda for urban growth and management.  Dispersed urbanisation may better reflect the resources and capacities needed to support an exploding urban population in the 21^st century.

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[1]  The lowest level of urbanisation incorporated by the UN depends on the conventions of individual nations but may refer to settlements with as few as 2,000 people.

[2] Treated here as North America, Northern Western and Southern Europe, and Australasia

Recover, rebuild: Christchurch after the earthquake

Supporting Recovery in Christchurch

Lincoln University did a great job of assembling some leaders in the principles and practice of disaster recovery for its Resilient Futures workshop last week in support of recovery in Christchurch.  And in keeping with one of the themes – the importance of quality and timely communications --  the papers and summary are already posted on the web.

Without being there, it’s hard to judge the tone of discussion and the weight given to the lessons from experience overseas and in New Zealand.  But quick publication of the papers provides useful insights. 

My immediate thoughts follow – but I recommend anyone interested to read the summary and original papers.

Key themes

Some of the papers looked a bit academic, but there is correspondence between what the practitioners and academics have  to say.  It’s good to see theory and practice reinforce each other. 

Here are what I see as the most important threads:

(1)    The common sense but urgent approaches proposed for recovery, and the practicality of  some of the examples of what has been done elsewhere and what can be done in Christchurch;

(2)    The role of central government; there were differences in the detail among speakers, but by and large they see government adopting a leadership and motivational role, providing funding and oversight, especially in the recovery stage;

(3)    Local democracy is a key based on the role of local government and citizen participation, especially in the planning and rebuilding processes, and on the importance of involving local, even localised, communities (“clusters", "villages”).

(4)    The need for existing institutions to adapt to changed circumstances, streamlining decision-making while maintaining transparency;

(5)    The need to ensure that citizen, community, and other interest groups can participate and contribute by way of knowledge, resources, and time;

(6)    The need for speed, which nevertheless brings with it a risk of exacerbating pre-disaster imbalances and inequities between areas and groups; and the trade-off that may be required between speed and deliberation to deliver good long-term outcomes;

(7)    Recognising how easily the temporary can become permanent, and planning accordingly;

(8)    The window of opportunity that might be created for improving land uses and infrastructure in the course of replacement and rebuilding;

(9)    Finding the time to envision the future, to build consensus around architecture and planning options, and to achieve citizen buy-in to proposed solutions;

(10)The need for plans to address and reduce – and be seen to reduce – future risks;

(11)The significance of open space,  the importance of greenways and green-spaces, the likelihood that the city will have to expand, and the notion of an expanded city as an assembly of connected villages;

(It’s reassuring to see I’m not alone in advocating a new approach to spatial planning to limit the damage arising from extreme events, and to facilitate post-disaster recovery.  See my post of March 2 2011).

The challenges

There are potential contradictions in all this.  For example, speed is of the essence where infrastructure and shelter are laid waste, where jobs have evaporated, and communities have been torn apart. But haste should not create a city with parts which are forever temporary, where material gaps among groups widen, or where short-term expediency creates long-term risks. 

Nor should the importance of government leadership limit the capacity of the community at large to participate in rebuilding, to deliberate and debate, and help shape the new Christchurch.

The various speakers confirmed the importance of addressing multiple risks, something fundamental to planning for resilient cities.  If it can address multiple risks and provide outcomes that reduce them, then planning for the new Christchurch will enable “communities and local leaders to make best use of the opportunities the event has created”.

The experience of previous disasters confirmed that public engagement is central to achieving “political stability, community buy-in and support for new initiatives, the identification of workable solutions, and a generally positive recovery that promotes confidence in both the process and the likely end result”.

Differentiating recovery and rebuilding

Perhaps what we need to do if we are to use the wealth of material and insight provided by the Lincoln University initiative, and others like it,  and to work through the contradictions is distinguish between recovery and rebuilding.  Recovery is about restoring as quickly as practical safety, security and shelter, and the structures and infrastructure needed to ensure them.  It demands urgent attention, rapid deployment of resources, and  high level of expediency. 

Rebuilding is a little less urgent and maybe even more challenging.  It is about the way communities will live in the future, how people get on with their lives, their play, their work, and their recreation in a healthy and prosperous urban environment.  Rebuilding requires deliberation, identification of options, and working our way to consensus.  It cannot be rushed.  Nor should it be unnecessarily prolonged.  Ideally, rebuilding will start with community engagement rather than tagging it on through consultation later on, a strategy which risks energy- and morale-sapping disputes about objectives and outcomes.

Getting the governance right

It appears from the papers presented that we know what has to be done: it’s how we set about doing it that is critical to a successful rebuild.

Accelerating and sustaining recovery while laying solid foundations for rebuilding is perhaps the biggest challenge facing those in positions of authority and leadership.  Recognising the differences between them might be a good starting point.

If this challenge is to be met, it is important that the governance structures - who does what and under what authority – are appropriate at the outset.  The creation of a central agency, the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), looks like a good start, especially if it focuses on recovery and thereby gives Christchurch City Council the space and capacity it needs to provide leadership in the rebuilding process.  How these two agencies demarcate their roles and work alongside each other will have a major impact on the creation of a resilient and liveable Christchurch.

Here we go again ...

Too many committees?

Former Auckland City Councillor Aaron Bhatnagar complained in the New Zealand Herald today (23 March 2011) about the proliferation of committees in the new Auckland Council.  He said that this was slowing down decision-making.  This is quite the opposite of what was meant to happen when our eight councils were rolled into one super city.  And none of it is necessarily empowering local communities.

Sure, Mr Bhatnagar had a political point to make, blaming the Mayor and his use of the newly boosted mayoral executive powers for the proliferation of committees.  But it may just be that a city this large, with many issues and diverse communities, cannot easily carve its way through a morass of complicated decisions that impact differently on different communities and interests. Large cities elsewhere usually have state jurisdictions to share some of the responsibilities, or else very large, semi-autonomous departments (and that creates its own set of problems, which we might address another time).

Auckland did have a way of working before which, apart from disagreement between regional and local politicians about how different areas might develop and some natural rivalry among areas, worked pretty well.  After all, the city was seen by the Mercer survey as one of the most liveable in the world and, despite a lagging economy it remains the first port of call for a burgeoning New Zealand migrant community.

But this proliferation of committees is just what I expected from a misdirected view that bigger is better in local governance.  What Mr Bhatnagar didn’t mention is the load that committees place on managers and staff in a bureaucracy.  So much for carving out middle management.  The logic of bureaucracy is that equity and even handedness demand internal checks and balances.  Communications among the parts is critical to consistency.  Unfortunately, and inevitably, the bigger the bureaucracy, the more internal arrangements come to dominate its behaviour and the less resources it can devote to working with external constituents. 

And when complexity means councils cannot make the hard decisions, or simply makes silly ones, then government takes over by default.  (Of course, there is no guarantee that will lead to better decisions - the remoteness from communities of centralised bureaucracies might have just the opposite effect). 

That’s why the Auckland council had better take seriously the government’s latest foray into its patch by way of its expectations for Auckland’s spatial plan and look carefully at the quality of its own decisions

Another day, another road show

But there’s more.  When councils cannot see the wood for the trees, what better to do than ask the Foreign Expert for the solution or run another summit?  Or both.  So today we have another talk summit aimed at boosting the Auckland economy by kick-starting the Auckland Plan.  It is to be addressed by the Prime Minister as well as the Mayor, just in case Aucklanders forget that the city’s ultimate design rests with central government. Its also got the usual smattering of international experts, including Mr Greg “One Plan” Clark from London.  

Less Talk, More Action?

Elsewhere in today’s Herald columnist Fran O’Sullivan calls for a stop to the talking up and instead to get down to the economic fundamentals.  She asks how we might attract offshore investors, how we can make more out of our visitors (especially for the Rugby World Cup – another silver bullet?), and how we will fund and deliver our infrastructure (and by implication, reduce our dependence on central government).  She raises a string of the other well-aired challenges - clusters, creative industries, centres of excellence, the regulatory and entrepreneurial environment. 

Perhaps the summit will deliver on all this stuff or, as she suggests, at least “pull the major stakeholders together ... another step forward in Auckland’s success”, but having seen a few too many summits in the past, I doubt it.

Making sound decisions

I think the time is over for talking up or talking down.  What Auckland needs is a few firmly founded decisions on what we need and can afford by way of infrastructure, how it might be funded and delivered, what plans and policies we really need in today’s over-regulated environment; in short, how we might just get back to the basics of an affordable, well-connected, and progressive city, one that that is easy to live in and easy to invest in. 

If decisions are well-founded – and that means being economically justified, realistically priced, and acceptable to the wider community  – it should not take round after round of committee meetings and summits to progress them. 

Keep it Fuzzy

If Auckland wants to take control of its own destiny, it should not waste too much time on the detail of the spatial plan.  Sure, sketch a possible map of the future but keep the boundaries fuzzy because we really don’t know what the future will bring.  Sure, decide on what the environmental and social bottom lines are – what we definitely don’t want by way of development, and where – and set a few standards to protect and promote our physical and social environments.  (After all, that’s what the Resource Management Act promotes).  These things should help our decision-making, and where decisions are strongly contested or not definitive, well, we have processes for working those things through, too.  Better to do so than ignore real conflict, or confusion of means and ends, or accept ambiguous (or unexpected) outcomes just to be seeing as doing Something Big.

But no straitjackets, please.  Just a series of well informed, decisions in which the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.  Where we don’t know, maybe its best not to take a decision at all until we do.  Let’s rely less on rhetoric and catchphrases (and imitating overseas precedents) to deal with complexity, and concentrate on the realities of the here and now, on what we can realistically achieve. 

Can we do Londonism?

Londonism – leadership building a city's ideology

The Economist recently outlined how a strong mayoral office has helped transform London into a global city.  Although the reshaping of once desolate Docklands and Canary Wharf goes back over 20 years, the article sees their emergence as a centre of global commerce and recreation as an expression of “Londonism”.  This, it says, is “a distinct ideology” focused on the leadership provided by a strong mayoralty.  Two totally different mayors, it argues, have helped create a vibrant, open, progressive, and highly successful city even in the midst of Britain’s economic doldrums. 

In this posting I ask whether the creation of a stronger mayoral office might have done this for Auckland, and what sort of Auckland a visionary mayor might promote.

So, does Auckland governance deliver the right leadership?

Creating a stronger international presence so that Auckland can secure its place among the world’s wealthier centres was the aspiration behind the Royal Commission on Auckland’s Governance. 

The Commission received useful advice on how the necessary leadership might be achieved from international expert, Robin Hambleton.  Unfortunately, it watered down his recommendations and, like medicine, the watered down version may not deliver the cure. 

Processor Hambleton pointed to the benefits of a directly elected Mayor presiding over an authority making strategic decisions on (selected) matters of city-wide significance.  London provides the example of just such leadership delivering the vision needed to lift a city out of the ordinary. 

At the same time, community leadership continues to reside in London’s 32 boroughs and central London’s City Corporation.  The Royal Commission’s prescription for Auckland, though, downplayed community leadership by promoting the merger of existing councils and dramatically reducing both councillor numbers and their proximity to communities. 

However, it did retain the idea of a mayor elected at large with an executive office attached to the mayoralty, although with more limited executive powers than in London and a more traditional brief. 

In essence, the Commission’s prescription, and the government’s subsequent modifications, focused on changing structures to achieve gains in efficiencies and submerge parochialism, rather than on reshaping Auckland’s leadership. 

The government paid lip service to local democracy by retaining ward-based elections for councillors.  But this further compromises city-wide leadership by retaining an incipient parochialism in council, without really achieving local leadership.  Locally elected boards cannot do much, either, as they lack budgets and only have the powers delegated by the council. 

So we have a governance structure that compared with London compromises on leadership at all levels.  The question remains whether the civic leadership can still evolve, and be effective.

Making the most of what we’ve got

Fortunately, the mayoral contest turned into a two horse race.  And while it was between two tried and tested mayors from the old regime, they did offer voters a choice of politics and style.  With a solid win, community-focused Mayor Len Brown can assume a mandate to insert his values of inclusion into a long-term vision for Auckland, albeit one that needs to take the council with it.  Fortunately for him the council is weighted in his favour. 

Like former London mayor “red” Ken Livingstone in London, he is also prepared to back some of the infrastructure projects that business favours.  And, keen to make his mark quickly, Mayor Brown has embarked on a programme of 100 projects in 100 days.  Most of these are sensible, tidy-up initiatives, pulling together a range of outstanding issues.  But this is short-termism, much of it to do with matters that could have been handled locally; hardly visionary.  It implies that the new Mayor could get his fingers into all sorts of pies and be distracted from the big picture.

Can Auckland have its Canary Wharf?

On the other hand, the risk of consciously pursuing a big vision is that we try to emulate the big stories from overseas: waterfront master plans; convention centres, cruise ship terminals and the like.  This is the “me-too” version of vision – Auckland wanting to be one of the big boys.  And, incidentally, spending big money to do it.  Unfortunately times have changed.  The rebuiilding of Docklands coincided largely with boom times in one of the world's major metropolitan centres.  But this is Auckland emerging tentatively from the depths of a major global downturn.

Of course, this simply increases the challenge, and behoves us to find a different way.  And that may just be to blend Mayor Brown’s focus on community with how we assert our place in the world.

This is Auckland, Tamaki Maka Rau, with its own distinctive heritage – a Māori, Polynesian and Pacific heritage, a colonial past, a land of settlers, where cultures old and new meet and mix.  It is a city of seas, seafarers and travellers, a waypoint between east and west.  It’s an outdoor sort of place, a weathered place that can function well in rain or shine.  (Now there’s a challenge – one that Wellington, for example, has risen to in its streetscapes, byways, and public places).  . 

One Auckland, many Aucklands

As the Economist says about London, Auckland has its own geography and its own lifestyles.  It enjoys spectacular landscapes reaching from coast to coast and houses diverse and evolving communities, some steeped in the long history of the land and others fresh off the boat. 

Can we link these places and peoples, perhaps bring them together symbolically on the shores of the Waitemata and the city centre?  At the same time, can we ensure that their individuality is expressed in a series of well connected places and spaces – leafy suburbs, urban villages, rural settlements, and coastal communities -- of colour and character?

We do not have to reinvent Auckland so much as highlight and build on what we already have and who we already are.  Urban form, urban design, and civic projects will ideally bring out what’s best about our city, our citizens, and our landscapes, making Auckland open and accessible.  This is the challenge for our mayor and for mayors to come, a challenge of creating a singular vision globally recognised, one that encompasses our localism, diversity, and internationalism.

Crossing the urban-rural divide

The edge – always in transition

The urban-rural divide preoccupies planners and politicians.  It is where city and country meet.  It is where countervailing forces create an area in permanent transition.  It is not an area easily defined, but is marked by its distinctive mix of activities and a continuously  changing landscape . 

Here traditional investment in rural enterprise may decline in anticipation of future urbanisation.  Or, rural production is compromised by pressures from urban people and their needs, while the physical environment is reshaped by urban expectations. 

Conversely, the urban-rural edge may be where extensive farming gives way to intensive horticulture to satisfy city consumers.  Or urban capital dabbles in new forms of production, displacing the old.  Where urban refugees stimulate demand for services to replace those lost as a result of declining traditional activity.  And where rural conservation may be championed by urban interests.

The result of all this is not the new and brash dislodging the old and valuable, as the more conservative planners would have us believe.  It is more about the inevitably changing and often contested nature of rural activity in the shadow of the city.

Governing beyond the urban edge

While a city’s hinterland may have some characteristics considered urban, and while urban refugees boost rural population , the character of the divide is definitely not urban.  I have argued already that governance of urban and rural areas should differ to reflect their  different needs and values. 

It was illogical for the architects of Auckland’s new city to lump 14,680ha of rural land onto 1,630ha of urban land.  An extensive area of a mainly rural nature should not be governed by predominantly metropolitan politicians, managed by predominantly metropolitan managers, or planned by predominantly metropolitan planners.

In this posting I confront the argument that because the urban area depends on services delivered from the rural area they should be administered as one. 

Crossing the boundaries

The reliance of a metropolitan area on its hinterland for food, water, waste disposal, and recreation doesn’t justify governing them as one.  Cross-boundary issues – issues that affect parties on both sides of the divide – can be dealt with by means other than amalgamation. 

Rural hinterlands have always accommodated urban infrastructure.  And with corporatised services, there is even less need for producers to sit within the same administrative boundaries as users. 

Drawing water from the Waikato River, for example, does not mean that Auckland Council should have authority over local government in the Waikato region.  Similarly, waste disposal often takes place across boundaries. Catchment and drainage issues across jurisdictions can be readily handled by collaboration, especially as the technical capacity for monitoring and management improve. 

What about recreation?

City dwellers make use of the surrounding countryside for recreation.  But does this justify placing country and coast within the same administrative boundaries as a densely settled urban area?

Rural communities the world over cater for day visitors .  Hopefully, they take good care of the local environment and local community in doing so.  There is a good incentive .  The visitor industry provides income and employment that complements other rural business.  It supports commercial and community services that might not otherwise survive. 

Planning in these areas can ensure that their appeal is not undermined by a degraded environment.  There is no need for city boundaries to swallow our rural playgrounds to achieve that, though. 

Anyway, Aucklanders’ recreation impacts stretch well beyond even the new boundaries.  Was it considered that the holiday destinations of Coromandel or the Bay of Islands should be included in the city on these grounds?  Course not.  So the rural the playground argument does not justify Auckland’s exaggerated boundaries.

Are they really Auckland’s regional parks?

What about responsibility for regional parks?  Aucklanders have funded regional parks scattered widely across the rural hinterland, a legacy of the Auckland Regional Council.  Most are well removed from the urban area.  The Hunua and Waitakere ranges alone provide 34,600ha of reserve land (50km south and 25km west of the CBD respectively).  They include protected and restricted water catchments, significant bushland areas, and recreational facilities. 

If we place the water catchment reserves aside aside, rural areas still account for 79% of the balance of 4,900ha of regional parks.  Unfortunately, most are remote and hard to get to.  40% by area are north of the metropolitan edge.  The seven parks north of Orewa average 90-km from the CBD.

The parkland focused on the Firth of Thames (18% of the total), to the east, is not a lot more accessible, with five parks there an average of 70km from the CBD.

What were they thinking?

Despite a policy of containing urban development to reduce travel demand, the ARC invested heavily in remote, car-dependent parks.  Where is the consistency in that?

Look at the following diagram which compares visitor numbers in 2007 with the location of the 17 main parks.  Parks more than 50km away from the CBD tend to be much less patronised than the others, so may not be serving the purpose they were intended for. 

If they were intended for conservation  purposes, should the ARC should have been acquiring and running them at all?  The same goes if remote park locations were justified by an expectation that they would cater for users from outside Auckland. 

If the real priority is creating recreational and educational experiences for Aucklanders, then we need to think more seriously about developing truly urban parks and forget about acquiring large swathes of remote country and coast. 

Rethinking our countryside parks

Now that we have reformed Auckland’s governance – for better or worse – it may be time to rethink ownership and funding of non-urban parks.  In many countries national and state agencies take responsibility for major parks outside urban areas .  This can resolve issues around purpose, funding, and partisanship. 

Now that we don't have a regional council the Department of Conservation could perhaps take responsibility for acquiring significant parkland outside Auckland urban area (and elsewhere).  It would mean a reorientation of priorities and perhaps increased funding.  It recognises that the benefits of iconic parks are national rather than just regional. 

We could be even more creative.  Gary Taylor, long an advocate for coastal protection, has set up the New Zealand Coastal Trust, for example.  The aim is to provide for voluntary mechanisms and cooperation among agencies to acquire and protect significant coastal land, including areas long considered the holiday playgrounds of city dwellers.  The Karori Sanctuary Trust in Wellington is a great example of volunteerism restoring as well as preserving an important wildlife park close to the urban area, in this instance.  

Maybe we should think more about growing the involvement of civil society as a partner with government in conserving our favourite natural and recreational areas outside our cities.

The city council looking after its citizens

The reform of Auckland’s governance, even if the boundaries are flawed, provides an opportunity to rethink the governance, funding, and management of valued rural and coastal areas in the city's hinterlands.  A starting point might be clarification of the role and use of regional parks.  A finishing point might be a new agency taking over responsibility for running and expanding them.

Auckland Council can then concentrate on what needs to be done on the urban side of the divide.  This may even be an opportunity for developing a more extensive and accessible greenscape within metropolitan boundaries, rather than seeking simply to extend urban values into nearby rural areas.