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. 

Urban fingers in the rural pie

Planning by cliché

It’s been said – by people with some influence in these matters – that without drawing Auckland’s city’s boundaries to include much of the surrounding rural hinterland “we would have urban development from here to the horizon”.

Talk about planning by cliché!  For various reasons – like landforms, demand, and dollars – the proposition is nonsense.  Auckland’s hinterland is just too vast, too difficult to develop over much of it, and too remote. 

But as a result of recent reforms we have ended up with a metropolitan area that in spatial terms is predominantly rural.  The urban area covers just 10% of the newly configured city!  Where is the sense in that?  How do we prepare a spatial plan that will create better urban outcomes when 90% of that plan will cover rural areas.

Has urban planning helped Auckland’s countryside in the past?

And where does the presumption that urban planning (and planners) might better preserve the natural and productive values of the countryside come from?  Because it doesn’t reconcile with what has happened around Auckland.  In fact, planning for the region over recent decades has seen the spread of insidious low density settlement take over large areas beyond the urban boundary. 

Look below at some of the results of provisions made for rural living north of Auckland.  Is this extravagant rural sprawl the best that urban planners can deliver for the countryside?

When in doubt, leave it out

A more reasoned option in the reform of Auckland’s governance would have been to incorporate land required for urbanisation over the next fifty years within the city’s boundaries, and leave the rest out.  Generous allowance could be made for green space, town belts, city parks, and future growth within such boundaries. 

The result may have been a better physical environment within the city.  At least the urban planners would have had to confront the benefits and challenge of creating and managing extensive green areas within the urban boundaries, rather than relying on simply adding in more rural land on the distant edges.  

This approach – aligning city boundaries with current and future urban land needs – makes sense in terms of both governance and planning.  Uncertainty is removed.  Long-term plans for infrastructure and land use can be made.  There is no need to rely on arbitrary urban limits unrelated to governance and decision-making structures to manage urban growth. 

And, if the boundaries for the urban area were drawn to reflect urban needs and prospects rural communities and their representatives could get on with planning and managing rural areas. 

Drawing the rural line

There are some good reasons for this approach.  Urban and rural growth issues are quite different, even between neighbours.  Their contrasting production systems make different demands on resources.  Transport needs and behaviours differ.  Settlement forms differ.  Infrastructure needs differ.  Resource management issues differ.  Even planning methods might vary, with a history of collaboration in resource management in the countryside that is rarely matched in urban areas.

Perhaps more telling, the values and aspirations of urban and rural communities differ.  They may overlap, but the choice to live in the countryside or small towns usually distinguishes people there from those who choose to live in cities and suburbs. 

Admittedly, residential preferences cannot be satisfied on all occasions.  Some that would like to live in the city – or country -- cannot. 

Also, preferences change with shifts in lifecycle and lifestyle.  Marriage and child-raising are events, for example, that alter how and where people want to live.  When adult children move out, their parents may move on as well.  Or, retirement may modify housing choices and preferences.  Such changes see increasing numbers of city folk look to the country to meet their needs and aspirations. 

The pressure on rural environments will increase, especially close to cities.  Ways have to be found to accommodate this that reflect and enhance the character of the rural environment.  Rural councils will be better placed to do this than their urban counterparts with their particular views about the role and nature of the countryside and with their priorities firmly focused on urban matters.

Governing within bounds

Effective governance reflects and responds to diverse community values, occupations, and behaviours.  Ideally -- and democratically -- it will not unduly condition my choices simply to accommodate yours.  That’s why there is continuous tension in the quest for efficiency – defined in terms of resource use – and effectiveness – defined in terms of outcomes communities want. 

And this tension is particularly evident in the debate over where boundaries between jurisdictions should lie.  In Auckland, the recent reforms saw distinctive communities rolled together within a single city, and the metropolitan influence stretched arbitrarily over a large rural hinterland.  The functional grounds for this are as shaky as the presumption that urban planning will work in rural areas, or that without it our rural hinterlands will succumb to rampant urbanisation.

The Challenge

Is the decision to incorporate large rural tracts into Auckland City going to lead to more effective planning for rural communities or the natural environment?  Or is it simply a way of reducing the number of employees in local government ?  Has effectiveness been sacrificed in the interest of a one size fits all view of efficiency because the reformers did not trust rural councils to know their own communities, community aspirations, and local needs? 

And are Auckland's governors likely to be distracted by rural matters from the challenges of effective urban development?  Did the reformers lose sight of their aim for better metropolitan performance, something that needs more not less focused governance? 

I guess time will tell.  But there may be shifts in thinking required to minimise the fallout from digging the urban fingers into the rural pie.  More on that later.