Breaking Through and Moving on: Beginnings of a New Plan for Auckland

The Break Through
After years of pushing the compact city fallacy and ignoring the obvious approach to solving Auckland’s particular growth problems, the city and its planners have at last begun to water down their dearly held but doomed compact city plan.  The New Zealand Herald revealed that today “the council's planning committee will consider a report to allow for 120,000 new homes at six main locations in the north, north-west and south of the city.” A range of smaller rural settlements has also been identified for further development, spread over 130km from north to south. 

While only 30% of the assumed requirement for 400,000 dwellings is targeted for the “mini-cities”, the appetite for new greenfield, peri-urban settlement won’t stop there.  After all, there is only so much that can be crammed into the current urban area, especially in central Auckland. without destroying its appeal.  Apartments in the suburbs, the latest battlefield for entrenched urban planning, is least popular of all options.

We’re not there yet, but momentum is gathering for moving Auckland into a sustainable future. 

Breaking with the past makes sense
The ground has been giving for a while now.  The conceit of planning by projection is clear as migration figures deviate wildly from the analysts’ assumptions.  The estimates of housing supply underlying the Unitary Plan are demonstrably spurious.  The impacts of intensification on air and water quality and nature in the city are now coming to be realised.  And the impact on council finances as it aims to retrofit under-capacity infrastructure and pours money into transit threaten the City’s credit rating and the pockets of its citizens.

The advantages
I have been documenting the short comings of a compact city plan somewhat tediously since my report on the proposal to the Auckland Regional Council in 1999.  So, to change my tack, here are some advantages of the new direction towards satellite cities and settlements.  It provides:

·       The opportunity to develop attractive, affordable 21^st century settlements, with emphasis on diversity, mobility, mixed activity, and balance – all so much easier to achieve in green fields compared with retrofitting existing services, congesting the suburbs, and squeezing housing into compromised brownfield or mixed use sites;

·        Better access to nature, greenspace, clean air, cycleways and trails, and recreational amenities;

·        Consequently, better health – an antidote for the urban epidemic of obesity;

·        Greater opportunities for self-reliance (detached, terrace, and duplex houses provide safe play space for toddlers and food growing opportunities) and more time to enjoy it;

·        Pressure off traffic congestion in the urban area;

·        Protection and restoration of community life –an alternative to the transience and anomie of apartment living;

·        A chance to focus on quality development in existing suburbs and on sustaining what makes Auckland an attractive place to live in and visit; quiet streets, healthy treescapes, generous parks and play spaces, bungalows and gardens, ease of movement, local shops and services, and a sense of place.

·        Urban form better suited to limiting the impact of extremeevents (mainly associated with climate change, but there is an increase in fretting over Auckland’s volcanic field), reducing over-concentration of resources, people and infrastructure, and an improved capacity to recover from disasters with dispersed development.

The provisos
Will all these good things come to pass?  Here are four provisos we need to consider as we allow our “pearls on a string” to expand:

(1)  Ensure that the mini cities have adequate commercial and employment land and in doing so avoid applying 20^th century views of what should be where on that land, and how densely it should be occupied.  Just set some standards to manage conflicting uses, protect the environment, mandate minimum levels of amenity, and let the investment happen;

(2)  Ensure that mini-cities are well-connected, to each other, to the main urban area, and to key economic nodes (including port and airport).  Corridors need to be generous to allow for diverse traffic, transport modes, and growth;

(3)  Planners need to back off saying what should happen where and when, and instead say what is required before development can proceed.  This will allow demand to influence the timing of investment.  It will lower the speculative gains and land banking that coercive planning and orchestrating development sequences foster. 

(4)  Treat these as greenfield opportunities in the widest sense: encourage innovation in design, infrastructure, and investment to achieve more cost effective delivery, allow for new funding instruments, and reduce demands on public finances.

So what can the Council offer?
Many years of resistance to peri-urban growth suggest that planners are not necessarily the people to determine when this the proposed development might take place, or even to design it.  Instead, the Council needs the skills to negotiate delivery packages with investors and developers, and to provide oversight, and authority. 

And Wither Auckland Council?
Finally, while I find this development a justification for the many critical pieces I have written about Auckland’s planning in the past, I will indulge in one more observation.  Marry the mini-cities approach with the push for Urban DevelopmentAuthorities and we can begin to peel back the institutional onion that is Auckland Council.

So here’s a thought.  The mini-cities could be subject to development under an Urban Development Authority.  This should involve some community representation.  And when the development task is over, perhaps they could assume the managerial and regulatory role of a local authority.  

Sure, I was wrong when I gave the new, consolidated (or overweight) Auckland City just five years.  It’s still with us.  But maybe it’s time we acknowledged the short-comings and costs of a super city.  And if the region’s future does lie in Council Controlled Organisations and special purpose authorities to fulfil its functions, perhaps it’s time to at least shrink it down to fulfil basic funding, purchasing, high order spatial planning, and regulatory functions.

On the Same Track? The Auckland Transport Alignment Project

Governments getting together
It’s good to see that central government and Auckland Council seeking to align their thinking on the city’s future transport needs (New Zealand Herald,19 February 2015) with the joint objective of  “value for money”.
Here’s how the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) is pitched:

“The challenge for transport is to identify opportunities and proactively respond to the pressures arising from growth, to deliver economic, cultural, environmental and social benefits to Auckland and New Zealand as a whole. However, this outcome cannot be achieved at any cost. Wise investment will be required to maximise the value from every dollar spent. “Auckland Transport Alignment Project Foundation Report, February 2016, p.5)

I particularly like the bit about wise investment: this suggests that no investment will be made without a sound knowledge of the demand it is designed to meet. 

Understanding the Problem
The problem requiring alignment of transport objectives is responding to growth:

“The scale and location of the population and employment growth creates a challenging transport future.  Medium growth projections will see Auckland’s population increase by over 700,000 over the next 30 years (approximately half again from current levels) and the number of jobs increase by over 270,000. (ATAP, p.5)

So how sound is this as a representation of future demand? 

A Departure from the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan?

The Future Urban Land Supply Strategy (FULSS, Auckland Council, November 2015) sets out the expectations of the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan.  It projects Auckland’s population:

“to grow by one million people over the next 30 years.  This means around 400,000 new dwellings and 277,000 additional jobs will be needed” (FULSS, p.4)

These figures project a population gain 42% higher than the figure the ATAP is using, just three months later.  I would like to know why there is such a difference, and particularly whether alignment allows for changes to the PAUP.  It’s going to be difficult to achieve value for money if our transport investments do not align with our land use plans, even worse if those plans prove spurious. 

How many jobs?
The Auckland Plan certainly seems confused on the land use front. This has been obvious for a long time with respect to housing.
But what puzzles me now about the PAUP is that, according to the FULSS figures above, provisions for business land are based on a labour force participation rate of just 28% for the additional population, or 69 workers for every 100 new dwellings.  This compares with 41% actual participation across Auckland in 2013, and 114 workers per 100 dwellings.

Projecting a slump in participation makes no sense given that the population growth the PAUP projects depends heavily on immigration.  But without commensurate job growth, this will dry up.  Statistics New Zealand’s most recent medium projection is for 736,000 more residents.  Of this 38% are assumed to come directly from migration (52% in the first five years), and of course more come indirectly as migrants settle and raise their own families. 

Without the provision of land for their employment, though, don't expect even this much reduced population projection to be anywhere near the mark.

Underestimating labour force growth will lead to an undersupply of land for employment.  This is a major flaw in the PAUP. The results will be higher costs and fewer options for business establishment and expansion, lower investment, lower employment and, consequently, lower population growth. 

If the PAUP projections prevail but a more realistic participation rate is achieved (the ATAP figures suggests it will be 39%) then the PAUP is heading for 30% less land than needed for employment, a sure recipe for depressing growth, boosting congestion, undermining housing affordability, and making Auckland just that much less liveable.  That surely has to be corrected.

Where will employment be?
Here’s another thing: the PAUP persists in promoting the central city as the focus of employment.  The ATAP project picks up on this:

Employment growth is highly concentrated in a few locations, particularly the city centre, the airport and other regional metropolitan centres. Over a third of employment growth is projected to occur within 5km of the city centre. The growth in service sector jobs, which tend to locate in major centres to benefit from agglomeration, is a key factor behind the projected concentration of employment growth. (ATAP, p.8)

The evaluation of the current Auckland Transport Network Plan by ATAP indicates that this is a poor starting point. It shows that aligning transport plans will not be enough to correct for an inappropriate, over-centralised land use plan.

Current Prospects Grim
Looking out in ten year steps the ATAP review of the current Auckland Transport Network Plan points to deteriorating private vehicle accessibility to employment, widespread and increasing congestion, and a slowing and uneven rate of growth in public transport use.  This raises significant equity issues:

… the central (isthmus) area benefits the most while other parts of Auckland experience a much more mixed and patchy transport future. The west and south appear to face the greatest private vehicle access challenges into the future and are also the areas where public transport improvements appear most muted.

Deprivation will increase in large areas of Auckland which will be “partly excluded from the benefits of Auckland’s expanding employment base" (ATAP p.10).

Getting to Value for Money
None of this was unpredictable, of course, but it is useful to see the current package of transport proposals tested in this way.  Whether or not the ATAP can come up with an alternative package that will provide value for money and significantly improve efficiency and equity outcomes is yet to be seen. 

However, to avoid these negative outcomes and meet Auckland Council growth expectations will require a significant revision of the prevailing package of interventions.  Ultimately, this may mean abandoning the spatial plan that gave rise to the transport externalities that requires such a programme.  Only when we begin to plan for a more sustainable city might we move towards a more sustainable transport programme.

Aligning land use and transport
So the challenge is not simply to find a package of transport interventions that will get Auckland working.   The problem -- and the challenge -- goes deeper than that.  Even before the ATAP sets about the task of evaluating alternative interventions it has confirmed in its evaluation the flawed nature of the spatial plan. 

In a constrained geographic environment the Auckland Plan and PAUP put too many eggs in the CBD basket.  They promote a monocentric, centralised city on a narrow isthmus, and rely on the assumption that the inefficiencies this will generate can be resolved simply by spending ever increasing amounts on transport. 

The ATAP foundation document raises serious doubts over that.

The real task is to align transport investment with sensible land use plans.  Get the land use plan wrong and any analyses about value for transport investment will be meaningless. Only a fundamental review of the land use assumptions behind the PAUP -- particularly where people might live and work -- will deliver value for money, and avoid Auckland grinding to a fiscal as well as a physical halt. 

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The Question was never "whether?" Just "when?" The Unravelling of the Auckland Plan

Getting the housing equation wrong
The failure of the Auckland Plan to reflect the simple aspirations of Aucklanders for home ownership and predominantly low-rise suburban lifestyles and promote instead the lofty compact city vision held by its planners and policy-makers made its unravelling inevitable.  And now it’s started.

Rationing land to squeeze the city upward was always going to create problems.

Given the fundamental shift in aspirations, expectations, and behaviour that implementing the Auckland plan demands, the first problem is the need for an over-blown and over-complicated rule book - the draft unitary plan - to get citizens to comply with a transformation they didn’t ask for and don’t want.

The result is, predictably, growing alarm at the proposed transformation of communities and streets to achieve high densities in an area already constricted by its coastlines, its estuaries, and its ranges.

Regulatory Risk
Another problem: the draft unitary plan introduces unknown regulatory and fiscal risks.  Despite an avalanche of material advocating higher settlement density and centralisation, there is no accessible Section 32 analysis (which the Resource Management Act requires in support of policies) confirming that crowded is good and more crowded is better.  The lack of evidence in support of a compact city is particularly telling during the limited period allowed for public consultation on the plan. 

We don't know the cost of implementing the plan, its rules and regulations, so we don’t have figures that might be weighed against purported benefits, or on which to judge how effective it might be in achieving even its authors’ hopes, and how much it will cost the community to try.  

Rhetoric won’t carry the day.  We have no idea of whether the plan will be a drag on the Auckland economy, or a boon to it.   Creating a planning framework that looks set to promote unrealistic land use options to try to compel the majority of Aucklanders to change the way they live will create conflict, though, and inflate the cost of development – and living. 

This is over-regulation: a weighty, complicated legal document which probably exceeds the council’s capacity to implement it, which will impose significant costs on the community, and is bound to have unintended consequences.  And the means, the unitary plan, look set to undermine the ends, a more liveable city.

Loss of autonomy
Another problem with the plan as conceived was the prospect that ill-founded regulation would lead to central government stepping in.  That was predictable, and now it’s happened.  There is no point in decrying the loss of community input if the government has to champion the interests of people aspiring to own homes in Auckland because council plans and procrastination have made it that much harder for them.

When the council decided to go down a prescriptive path to assert a centralised city format – one that had already struggled to gain traction over the previous two decades – informed by principles and nostalgia rather than feelings and circumstance, it lost touch with the Auckland’s diverse peoples.  It confused a singular (and high risk) vision with unity of purpose, and pre-empted a simpler plan that might better cater to the vagaries of a growing city. 

The real irony is that central government has been brought into play as a result of a heavy-handed, over-centralised approach by the local council. 

Can an accord be imposed?

Having made clear its concern over the economic and social consequences of the plan, the government has required the council to work with it in an accord to free up land for housing.  By insisting that its way was best the council has ceded control of the cornerstone of its plan.   

Addressing the supply of land for housing is well overdue, but it would have been more satisfactory if the council had been a little less dogmatic and done so in the first place.  This would have protected its credibility and autonomy.  Instead, a streamlined consenting procedure has now been established virtually by decree, a procedure that may well downplay the environmental checks and balances that an autonomous, local planning process might employ.

A Change in Direction?

This shift is fundamental to the plan.  The Accord provides for a degree of decentralisation that the draft unitary plan is written to resist.  Multiple opportunities for expansion on or beyond the fringe may be pursued under the Accord, in a number of forms, including extending existing settlements, new settlements, villages, and suburbs. 

While no ad hoc solution is straightforward, the Accord does what the unitary plan doesn’t: it enables rather than limits development.  Hopefully, creativity, design skills, and market and commercial acumen can now be brought to bear in a variety of settings and solutions – operating within sensible and justifiable environmental limits. 

What else is needed?

While accelerating the release of land for housing is critical to solving the housing crisis, by itself it’s not enough.  Moreover, it fundamentally changes the tenor of the Auckland Plan and Draft Unitary Plan, built as they are around centralisation.  The promotion of the CBD ahead of suburban living, the heavy commitment of resources to a dubious increase in the capacity of rail serving the central city, the presumption that future employment will grow most Auckland central – all these assumptions need to be revisited and revised.

That’s the nature of an integrated plan – you cannot fundamentally alter one component without changing others.

Back to the drawing board

Promoting a doctrinaire and single-minded view of what Auckland should look like in the future, and a commitment to urban form out of touch with the City’s history, its residents, and its prospects was always a high risk project.  That risk has just been magnified.

If the unitary plan is to survive, there will need to be some radical responses to the current round of consultation – and from now on a careful ear to the ground on what the government as well as the community at large has to say about some of its other provisions.

 

When I get older losing my hair many years from now - recalibrating retirement (and urban form)

Recalibrating retirement

Retirement in the 21^st century retirement is a bit a fuzzy.  Is it a function of age?  Does it happen when we qualify for superannuation?  Does it depend on paying off the mortgage?  Is it something we decide on, or is it decided for us?  In New Zealand, even the official age of retirement – qualifying for the pension at 65 – is up for debate.

The tradition of an abrupt end to working life is changing, whether from necessity or choice.  For some people it’s about priorities, rebalancing rather than swapping lifestyles.  Some may need to work because of financial or family circumstance, others because it’s what they know and enjoy.  Casual work, mentoring or volunteering, working from home and part-time work are all viable alternatives to outright retirement today.

From rest home to retirement village

And the rest home, where one faded into the Sunset (often a name of choice for such homes) has given way to the retirement village, with connotations of an active community encompassing a range of lifestyles and interests.  Villages offer varied housing choices, too, from small detached and semi-detached dwellings, through terrace units and apartments, to dependent living facilities and nursing units.  Arrangements are flexible and adaptable – key words when thinking about our individual and collective futures in uncertain times.

Residents may still be working.  They may be totally mobile and independent, or they may choose to draw on shared transport services.  Transport needs are further reduced because villages typically offer gymnasia, bowls, swimming pools, other recreation amenities, and restaurant facilities on-site.  They offer security in generally pleasant grounds, sometimes with the capacity to develop gardens within private spaces.   All this adds up to why even people under 60 seek to move into them. It doesn’t necessarily make for demographic balance or social diversity, but it does cater to the varying needs of a growing group of people.

A pointer for urban design

Retirement villages also provide a physical model of how we might best achieve higher density living in urban areas.  In fact, as Mark pointed out, they could play a significant part in shaping Auckland (and other cities) over the coming decades.  Integrated villages offer the prospect of economical construction, higher residential densities, economies of scale in service delivery, and reduced transport demand. So they provide something of an exemplar when we think about where people might prefer to live in a resource-constrained future. 

Villages in the suburbs – the case of Auckland

The Retirement Village Association has 280 members throughout New Zealand.  I looked at the locations of its 61 Auckland-based members. 

First I mapped them using Google Earth.  This shows a wide distribution throughout the city and surrounds, from the town of Warkworth in the north (Totara Park Village) to Pukekohe (Palms) in the south.  The Hibiscus Coast (Maygrove, Red Beach, etc) with it coastal environment north of the metropolitan area is a popular locality. Overall, though, there is quite a wide spread across the urbanised area (Mayfair to Longford Park).

Location of Retirement Villages, Auckland

I also used Google Earth to plot the road distances to the CBD.  There is only one within the Inner City Ring (as described in my last blog, Ageing in the City), none within the CBD, and only two within 5km of it.  11 villages lie between 5 and 15km away, covering the Isthmus and immediate surrounds (lower north, inner west, and upper south), with the biggest group (19 villages) falling in the heart of the post-war suburbs, 15 to 20km distant, and 19 over 20km away. 

Distance of retirement Villages from Auckland CBD

This pattern of dispersal, together with the tendency for older people to favour living some distance from the CBD as described in the previous posting does not support the contention that the future of an ageing population lies in the CBD, even if there is a small minority who through preference or as a result of personal history will do so.

A sustainable choice

Retirement villages offer an insight into alternative ways of increasing the density of settlement and reducing society’s demands on resources.  And they do not rely on over-regulating land use to do so.  In fact, they most likely benefit from an approach that encourages innovation in development and design.

They also capture some the principles associated with increasing the attractiveness of medium density living, including privacy and personal space, security, and quality housing and fittings. These are attributes which compensate for smaller houses, and offer the added advantages of shared transport, accessible services, and local amenities, generally without requiring people to move away from the neighbourhoods within which they have their roots.

Knightsbridge Village, Mairangi Bay, Auckland

A cursory survey of the Auckland villages indicates that most are close to shopping centres, with their attendant restaurants and cafes, and personal, financial and medical services. So the day to day needs of residents are easily served near their homes, while the villages themselves have good access to trade and medical services.

The economics

Retirement Villages provide one physical solution to the economic challenges of developing and constructing medium density housing identified by Matt H.  Assuming that the costs of site acquisition are not excessive and development is straightforward, the village model can deliver affordable density in the suburban and city edge environments preferred by many of our ageing (retiring and not-so retiring) citizens.

Village dwellings are not necessarily cheap, although there are third sector examples which offer fewer frills for increased affordability.  The majority, though, are pitched at households with reasonable equity on hand, or who can structure funding to facilitate purchase through such devices as reverse mortgages.

One positive spin-off from the proliferation of retirement villages is the release of second hand housing to the market, enabling more young families to satisfy their aspirations for a detached home on its own site in the suburbs, and perhaps increasing opportunities for infill in the suburbs.  Consequently, successful multi-housing developments of this sort will create positive ripples throughout the housing market.

Making it work

By and large, the companies that have driven the retirement housing sector have done it well.  They have consequently been good financial performers.  They have created a product that has proven popular in the market.  They have integrated uses on sites, applied good design, and created density without losing the sense of space.  This is a sector that we can expect to grow.  It’s also a sector in which the private sector has shown the way ahead.

Perhaps the main weakness of the retirement village is a social one – the limits imposed by a homogeneous age and social structure, with the richness of diversity lost.  But that does not mean that integrated villages in the suburbs catering for more mixed communities would not work. Broadening the scope of such developments may well be a useful tool in the toolbox of planners seeking to cater for more people on less land.

The capacity to locate such villages on large enough sites in appropriate locations will be critical.  They may be located on brownfields, converted from other uses in good localities.  But most are likely to be away from the centre (and those that are close by are likely to be among the more expensive), with many close to the edge of the city where real economies can be achieved.  Wherever they are located, encouraging the development of retirement - and non-retirement – villages will be an important key to providing for a more sustainable city as it grows and ages.

It’s all about housing ... isn’t it?

What is planned for new houses in Auckland?

The discussion of housing in Auckland Unleashed, which sets the Council’s thinking for a spatial plan, follows a tried and tested formula.  It talks about the different sorts of houses we might use to achieve higher residential densities in the city. 

On housing and neighbourhoods it says that it is important that:

Auckland has a clear strategy concerning the way it wants development to proceed in our town centres, avenues and areas of intensification. Delivering new and appropriate house types requires a rethink in planning policy (specifically density rules and onsite parking requirements), a commitment to achieving design quality, new approaches to home ownership and land subdivision, and importantly, investment in the amenity of areas (streets and open spaces) in which they are proposed. (p143)

This sounds well and good, but it’s planning for a particular vision of how a city might work.  It falls short on how its residents might want to live.  Like all such strategies, it’s about housing as a land use and houses as design elements.  It’s not about households and their residents. 

It was the same in the old Auckland Regional Growth Strategy; notions of diversity and affordability emphasised structures for smaller dwellings, rather than what people might need.  And from what I have seen, it’s been the same in the planning documents for the Bay of Plenty, Hamilton, Christchurch, and Wellington. 

So what about the people who will live in them?

I looked elsewhere in Auckland Unleashed to see what it might say about people rather than buildings. There were some expectations outlined under the heading of Housing (page 42).  But they were hardly convincing.  Here are some responses to what I found there:

Auckland Unleashed says: Households with children will decline to one third of households by 2040. 
Really?  That’s not very helpful.  A quick look at Statistics NZ’s latest medium projection for the region (to 2031) does show a likely slow-down in the rate of growth.  But it also projects 71,000 more families with children in 2031 compared with 2006.  Sure, their share of the total will contract (from 52% of the total to 44% in this projection) but let’s not obscure the need to house many more families over the next two or three decades.    If migration is a key driver of growth, the figure will probably be higher.  How and where will we be housing our families? 

Auckland Unleashed says: There will be more divergent family structures –single person, multi-generational, and extended families.
Good.  So hopefully plans will encourage more big houses, especially given the significance of international immigration as a driver of Auckland’s growth.  That’s a big group of people, many of whom will want bigger houses - three, four, five or more bedrooms.  That’s part of Auckland’s appeal to some of them.  For others it’s simply a reasonable response to cultural expectations.

Look at the census data. While there are limits in its accuracy, a pretty clear picture emerges.  The number of one and two bedroom dwellings hardly increased from 1996 to 2006 (what growth did occur happened between 2001 and 2006).  Some 30% of the growth was in three bedroom dwellings, and high 59% in houses with four bedrooms or more.  

Interestingly, the number of small households grew much faster over the period than the number of small dwellings, measured in these terms.  Even smaller households, it seems, like larger houses:

Comparing Growth in Households and Dwellings by Size

If we want Auckland to continue to grow and not just age, there may have to be plenty of larger houses on the planning menu.

Auckland Unleashed says: Home ownership rates are in decline and possibly 40% of households will be in rental accommodation by 2050, not always by choice.
Now this is a worry.  New Zealand has a long-standing tradition of home ownership.  Much as over-investment has been implicated in the housing bubble, owning a home still plays a significant role in our society and economy. 

So we shouldn’t treat the emergence of the intermediate housing market as inevitable, or in the least bit desirable.  This comprises young households with significant income but not enough to become owner occupiers, or to step off the bottom rung of the housing ladder.  The rapid growth of this segment is the reason for the jump in the rental market. 

This has big implications for family formation and fertility, educational attainment, employment stability, and a sense of community and belonging.  Home ownership is still important to developing a personal asset base that can encourage entrepreneurship and investment in an economy where over-consumption may have been a barrier to long-term growth. 

I cannot see anything in Auckland Unleashed that might counter this decline in home ownership, and if the spatial plan it will inform persists in promoting land rationing through the way it applies the Metropolitan Urban Limit and by pushing inappropriate apartments as a solution to affordability, it will only make the problem worse.

In fact, Auckland Unleashed says to expect in excess of 300,000 households in rental units by 2050.
This is not something that people necessarily want, and not something we should simply accept. Between 1996 and 2006 an increase of 42,000 rental households brought the city’s total rentals to 145,000, 34% of all private dwellings.  This is one of the faces of our housing affordability crisis.

Auckland Unleashed talks about another 330,000 dwellings in total by 2040, and implies 155,000 rentals by 2050 (I’m not sure why two different end dates are used). 

Those that can may just go
But, then again, it may not happen. The inability to buy a home may simply push more young, skilled, and talented people offshore, and discourage the skilled and talented people we hope to attract from overseas to replace them.  If we don’t address the affordability or the suitability of housing for young families then we may as well scale back population projections.  But I don’t see such a slow growth strategy discussed in Auckland Unleashed, even though it is a likely outcome of an inappropriate housing policy.

And many of  those that can't will live in bigger households
There are other responses: one is to pack more people into existing structures.  This is already happening with more sub-letting of spare rooms and attics; more inter-generational multi-family households. 

There’s (indirect) evidence that this has been happening a while.  According to the Census, there was an average of 2.95 residents per (private) dwelling in Auckland in 2001.  The average size of additional households over the next five years was 3.22 (the equivalent figure in Manukau City was 4.03).  Consequently, any long-term fall in dwelling occupancy that might have been factored into housing projections can now be reversed.  That raises interesting questions over the housing mix we might be imposing through our plans.

With the slowdown in the housing market since 2006 the chances are that in many parts of Auckland household size is continuing to increase.  Unfortunately, that’s associated with increasing social inequity.  And I couldn’t find anything in Auckland Unleashed that addressed how to plan for increasing household sizes while promoting smaller dwellings, or for the possible impact on social disparities.

Time to introduce people to plans?
We are heading on to shaky ground with housing plans and policies that focus on structure and form rather than on the needs, preferences, and behaviour of households and residents.  Delivering a sustainable city may not be the same as delivering a sustainable community. 

Hopefully, the spatial plan when it is prepared will leave plenty of room for the middle ground to emerge, for housing to reflect what people want, rather than just planners' and designers' models of what they should be allowed.

An alternative to compacting Auckland

Envisioning an alternative

David Wilson (Director of the  Institute of Public Policy at the Auckland University of Technology, Dushko Bogunovich Associate Professor of Urban Design at Unitec Institute of Technology and I got together recently to make a submission of the Discussion Document outlining Auckland Council’s aspirations for its spatial plan.

The submission canvassed some common ground between our interests in economic development, urban design, urban form and land use.  It suggests an alternative to a prevailing vision constrained by commitment to a compact city. 

Our aim was not to provide another prescription, though, but to suggest what might happen if we start with Auckland's own geography and culture.  We wanted to create a vision that is distinctly Auckland in the 21^st century rather than an aspiration simply to do better here what has already been done elsewhere. 

It’s easy to criticise the mainstream – sadly it can be too easy sometimes.  It’s not so easy to articulate an alternative.  Here’s a shortened version of our attempt.

Our submission

There are limitations to developing a compact city because of Auckland’s geography.  If we want the world’s most liveable city we should exploit the green and blue spaces that penetrate and punctuate its distinctive form.  Rather than urban containment we favour development that recognises the linear nature of Auckland’s setting, its extensive rural hinterland, dramatic coastal and bush-clad edges, and the desire of some residents and businesses to locate ‘outside the city but not too far’.  A combination of low impact development and decentralised intensification allows growth while respecting the physical setting.

Green urban form could provide entrepreneurial and economic opportunities and make Auckland more attractive. Respecting geography and committing to a green city can lead to an indigenous urbanism not beholden to Europe.  Auckland’s design should be about space, sea and sky; weather and vegetation; and openness.  We don’t need the tight, stone-paved spaces of a Siena or Salzburg.

The CBD will only be distinctive if we create more green space, and highlight our indigenous, settler, and Pacific cultures.  Public investment and design should focus on spaces of merit and accessibility.  The amazing thing about the CBD is that wherever you are, nature is there - through views and proximity to volcanoes, harbours, beaches and parks, and in constantly changing weather.

Increased living in the CBD has been driven by built form that has subtracted from urban design and city character with featureless apartment blocks either on ridges or barricading the harbour edge.  We need a design response to halt and offset this partial privatisation of our best public spaces through innovative approaches to what we’ve got left.  A quality living environment might include green, people-focused corridors separated from vehicle focused streets; pockets of parks and play; and more opportunities for street life (markets, static and performing art).  Quality and liveability should permeate the entire CBD.

The Suburbs: Let’s apply really good urban design to where most people live already and will do so for the foreseeable future.  We need sustainable suburbs developed around town centres, urban villages, quality streets, public spaces and community amenities. 

The New Urban Spaces in the northwest and south need urban design that promotes local containment: coherent urban centres, village centres, quality common spaces, alternative local transport networks (cycleways, walkways), stream and stream edge restoration, gardens and bush plantings.  They also need good local links between where people live and where they might work.  And planning should ensure that they might have the opportunity to work locally, not a 60 or more minute commute to the CBD or, more often, to the other side of the city.

Beyond the Fringe: Natural linear form conforming to Auckland’s topography is readily achievable through the growth of towns and settlements like Wellsford and Warkworth, Helensville and Huapai, Pukekohe and Pokeno.  Some of these, and more, can be allowed to grow giving more people better access to our natural environment, while taking advantage of our main road and rail corridors.

The arterial transport network should be generous in dimensions and sufficiently flexible to accommodate future advances in, for example, electric vehicles, light rail, improved bus design and performance.  Wide corridors might accommodate low impact modes (walking, mobility vehicles, cycles), segregate heavy traffic, promote greenways, and provide generous separation from housing. 

The design of this arterial network should allow for the increased flows that will eventuate with a more integrated system of northern North Island production and settlement and the expansion of Hamilton, Tauranga, and Whangarei – and smaller settlements – as joint drivers of economic development.

Our vision

The long-term shape of Auckland could be a 100 km-long 'city'.  It would retain one clear major centre – a green CBD – but there could be a dozen secondary city centres. They would lie from north to south – like pearls on the chain – along a natural central spine.  They would be urban in appearance.  They would be separated by the greens of farmland, town belts, and parks, but well connected by private and public transport.

This alternative vision builds on reality: Aucklanders live on an isthmus and that shapes our choices.  (Some live on an isthmus within an isthmus).  The completion of the western ring motorway and planned investment in the rail – if it happens -- will only reinforce the north-south development of the city, its region, and its hinterland. It is hard to imagine planning policies that could force change on this natural geography without compounding congestion and costs.

We can have a future in which settlements of various sizes (towns, villages, kainga, hamlets) all contribute to Auckland's capacity and character.   Some could accommodate 20,000 people or more with a little smart design. This would also open up greenfield potential for business land close to major arterial routes and labour markets while allowing people to live closer to the natural environment which is the mark of Auckland’s character and the key to its liveability.  

Growing a productive urban economy

Density won’t do it

Suggestions that we can grow our economy by encouraging business into the CBD in the interests of innovation do not reflect the weight of experience.  Sure, higher order professions have tended to concentrate there, and become relatively more important as manufacturing, retailing, and distribution have decamped.  And in Auckland, at least, tertiary education has become a major player in the CBD.  University employment has boosted the scientific as well as education sector.

But much as introductions might be made and ideas swapped over coffee, the real capacity to bring innovation to fruition belongs in the workshops, laboratories, production lines, and sales office of real companies. 

Obvious as it may seem, we need more – and bigger – businesses to lead the way if Auckland is to grow through innovation and the resulting productivity gains.  This blog is about why this is so and how we might help.

Firm growth and local linkages

The argument reflects a long-standing interest in industry, but the principles also apply to things like financial services, software, and design. 

My most compelling experience is dated.  In the seventies I visited 120 firms in the emergent electronics industry in inner London (the heart of creativity according to the density gurus), outer London, and central Scotland.  What I learnt then still seems relevant today.

I wanted to know how businesses in different localities grow.  I examined where they made their purchases and where their markets were.  I was particularly interested in how much they depended on the local area to sustain their growth.[1]

The results were no surprise: the more successful firms depended least on their local area.  As higher value, higher growth firms expanded, though, they did strengthen reliance on their local workforce.  Critical local skills became embedded even as businesses became international in scope.  A commitment to and dependence on an established workforce became a key to maintaining the presence of innovative or high tech firms in an area.  This experience still rings true when we think about firms like Fisher and Paykel, Glidepath, and Rakon in Auckland today.

Growth firms are nevertheless highly likely to invest away from their home base.  By itself that’s no bad thing.  It may be the beginning of the end, though, if they cannot raise the finance locally.  As the weight of their equity shifts offshore, so their local presence becomes more tenuous.

The best outcome is probably when innovative and growing firms can be supported locally, generating local jobs, deepening local skills, and building local household and business income even as their business with the rest of the world grows.

And that’s where we seem to struggle in Auckland, despite some exceptions.  As firms succeed here they often cannot find the resources they need to grow and maintain their local roots. 

Relocating to grow

The companies I analysed all those years ago more or less sorted themselves out.  In Inner London there were still a few post-war innovators beavering away.  For the most part these had not grown much.  The real inner London success stories, the firms that had prospered, were largely gone.  They may have kept an office in the city but R & D, production, and distribution had moved elsewhere.

Elsewhere was outer London, or the new towns, villages, and cities in southeast England.  This included a world-leading electronics belt centred on Reading, an hour from the City of London. 

A key step in firm growth is the ability to relocate from small start-up premises.  Consequently, localities away from congested inner cities were where the real innovation was taking place.

The new firm nurseries

Where do new companies come from in the first instance?  It’s not coffee shops in the CBD and there aren’t too many enduring ideas sketched on beer coasters in inner city pubs.  Some – the exceptions – may be born of enthusiasts working in garages. 

Most new firms I found in the UK research were outside London.  Many had spun-off established companies.  This suggested one key to innovation: knowledgeable employees leaving firms to do it their way.  Often they spied opportunities in their former employment that the established business could not exploit – new processes or materials, new products or applications, or new markets. 

In some cases, existing businesses spun off their own new enterprises to exploit new opportunities outside existing operations. 

The rise of innovative, growth firms in low density areas outside London was hardly surprising.  Space was affordable, whether a start-up factory unit or land or premises for expansion.  Firms could attract staff because the living and commuting was easy.  Compared with London, costs were favourable .  And when they relocated, firms  tried to go where key staff could easily follow.

Later – in the late eighties -- I visited the Cambridge Technology Park some 90 minutes north of London.  This was a highly successful centre of innovation and investment.  A low density environment attracted innovative light industry to easily accessed sites on the fringes of a provincial city –itself a university centre – set in an attractive living environment. 

The dynamics behind Silicon Valley near San Francisco were similar.  Leading edge firms here have continued to spin off imitators and innovators in an area with room to expand and access to great living conditions.  Again, a key university, Stanford, is a contributor to ongoing success and business vitality.

The ingredients of a dynamic economy

This, then, is another key to a dynamic economy: the capacity of larger, older firms (and other institutions) to create the seed bed from which the new ones grow and expand in a continuous process of industry evolution - birth, growth, decline, and death. 

As a variation aside, the process of firm evolution today includes the take over and reconfiguration of the old and tired.  Under-performing businesses are acquired and their assets rationalised, potentially renewing creative energy.  Leaner businesses may result, with new capital, a new sense of direction, and more vigorous management. 

(Of course, a takeover may also be a financial play, with assets stripped, pumped, and packaged for a share market float, with precious little value added).

We need the places -- and space -- where old firms can operate without incurring endlessly increasing costs, growth firms can expand, and new firms come into being.  What we cannot expect to do is conjure new enterprise out of an entrepreneurial vacuum.  And we definitely shouldn’t seek to straitjacket new firms and old within an inner city environment.

What can we do?

One reason for Auckland’s under-performance may be that our planning has acted inadvertently against sustained business renewal and growth.  Plans have may have over-focused on the inner city.  Planners have concentrated on how and where we can live and failed to plan for where we might work.  We dragged our feet in the zoning of substantial areas of affordable business land.  as a result, we have pushed up the cost and pushed down the appeal of Auckland as a place for growing firms. 

One simple thing we could do is make sure that there is plenty of industrial land available.  This should be well connected, preferably removed from the congestion of inner Auckland.  There are a few good opportunities on the books of the council at the moment.  Large parcels at Silverdale, Massey North, Drury, and Pokeno are in various stages of planning, for example.  Bringing these plans to fruition will lift the prospect of Auckland participating in a productivity-led recovery.  Tying the areas together – and to the ports and airport – through the motorway system will provide the connections they need locally and internationally. 

There are other issues to be addressed.  We could do with a focus in education on the skills, culture, and aptitude to make things happen.  Our universities must continue to connect individually and jointly with diverse vocational needs across the business board.  And let’s continue to explore how to attract capital to invest in expanding firms within the region.

I am not assuming we can compete with the cheap land and labour of Asia, or match the host of engineers that Asian universities turn out each year.  But when people with the right skills and background do come along, let’s ensure that they encounter an environment that supports entrepreneurship and growth, and not leave them doodling and dreaming in inner city coffee shops.  And let’s do what we can to make sure that leaving town is no longer the mark of a successful firm.

[1]               Sure, it was a long time ago.  But the SAME issues keep turning up.  The results were published in 1982 by Cambridge University Press in McDermott P and Taylor M Industrial Organisation and Location. 

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