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.

Cities in search of resilience

Resilience: the ability to recover quickly from setbacks (Encarta)

An age of extreme events?

Without debating whether an increase in the frequency of extreme events reflects climate warming , such events can be catastrophic when they impact on densely populated areas.  Natural disturbances, whether geophysical (tsunami, earthquakes, mudslides) or climatic (flooding, hurricane strength winds, tidal surges), become disasters if they strike heavily populated centres. 

So do human acts of aggression.  The tactic of terrorising civilian populations taken to new heights in the bombing raids of the Second World War and adopted by today’s extremists is most effective – and destructive - when directed at the heart of major cities.

 

 

Promoting preparedness

So how do we respond, especially given the expectation that we face an increase in such events?

We can prepare ourselves individually by sensible precautions. House design, construction, maintenance can help in high risk areas.  Having household plans and resources for escape, survival, and recovery is becoming more common.  As communities we can build our collective emergency response and recovery capacity.  We can also look to our hinterlands to ensure that land use practices -- clearances, monocultures, river straightening, irrigation, and dams -- do not precipitate major events such as dust storms or floods that impact on cities downwind and downstream.

The Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 increased the New Zealand government’s focus on risk reduction, hazard avoidance, and community readiness.  In particular, Part 1 (3) (d) requires:

local authorities to co-ordinate, through regional groups, planning, programmes, and activities related to civil defence emergency management across the areas of reduction, readiness, response, and recovery, and encourage co-operation and joint action within those regional groups;

The effects of climate change, presumably including the potential for violent storms and inundation, are matters to which people exercising powers under the Resource Management Act should have particular regard (Part 2 7 (i)).

Vulnerable by design

There is an imperative in legislation in New Zealand, then, for local and regional councils to consider hazard mitigation and risk avoidance in our urban planning and design.  This is so internationally.

It is not coincidence that many – if not most – major cities in the world are built on rivers or at the coast given their origins as nodal points, or  on fertile flood plains, in the lee of mountains, between mountains and sea, even on fault lines.  They are consequently built across unstable and vulnerable sites in many instances.  This is should be a fundamental consideration in our urban design, architecture, and engineering. [1]

So here are some reasons why we might seriously question the compact city paradigm which so influences planning and urban design today:

1. It relies on sophisticated, centralised interdependent systems of services.  This creates greater capacity for disruption when any one part fails.  Economies of scale in utilities may come with increased risk of failure under duress.  This applies to sewage treatment infrastructure, communications, water, energy distribution, and power supplies.  It also applies to public transport systems.
2. Poorly designed intensification reduces permeable surfaces, intensifying flood impacts.
3. Converting brownfield and even greenfield sites (such as undeveloped urban space) to housing or mixed use reduces the safety valve of open space and increases vulnerability associated with the concentration of buildings and populations.
4. Crowding more people into smaller spaces around constrained road capacity reduces prospects for rapid evacuation from the city or into safe structures and areas.
5. Lifting the density of buildings increases the consequential impacts of severe events by such things as the collapse of structures, the spread of fire, and the transmission of disease.
6. Mixing uses increases the risk of injury and destruction when people live close to premises where hazardous and flammable goods may be stored.  Gas, chemical cleaners, and fuel are obvious examples.
7. Reducing the space available reduces the capacity of people – households and communities – to fend for themselves, particularly if the consequences of a disruptive event are prolonged.

Looking over these issues, it is unsurprising that our past history of increasing prosperity was a history of reducing urban densities even as rural-urban migration pushed up city populations. What is surprising is that we seem to have given up the quest to make this same movement -- essentially a de facto public health programme -- work in a resource constrained environment.

Back to the future?

One of the drivers of early town and country planning was the desire to protect public health, with zones separating industry from where people lived.  A healthy workforce was a productive workforce, so it made sense to reduce the exposure of people to industrial pollution.  There were also public health benefits from getting families out of high density slums into something approximating a rural lifestyle with access to space, gardens, and parks.  The resulting residential areas – the suburbs -- came to be highly valued in the 20^th century.  Many people still value them, even in a post-industrial age.

But in today’s quest to preserve city edges, to support public transit, and curtail car use planners have moved to reinstate higher urban densities around existing city centres, denigrating suburban life as “sprawl”, and downplaying the new risks that revisiting the old ways raise.

Planning for resilience

We may have to rethink these revisionary ideals in the face of reality.  A better understanding of resource constraints and the need for diversity may mean that we shouldn't look at expanding our cities in the uncritical way we did in the past, providing large plots for small households.  But for many people, and perhaps for nature, high density, mixed use is not necessarily the best alternative. 

I’m not sure what form a move to resilience in urban design might favour.  Most probably it will – and should – vary from place to place.  Decentralisation will have a role to play.  Certainly smaller centres, within, on, or beyond the edges of large cities, with a full range of services and amenities and a high level of self sufficiency are likely to offer more resilience to communities than centralised, hierarchical and interdependent services stretched over the entire city.  

In some places, well constructed and spacious high rise apartments set in extensive green spaces might work.  In others, terraced housing, each dwelling with a small garden, interconnected by pathways and roads to nearby community and commercial centres will be appropriate.  Traditional suburbs, perhaps scaled down, will have their place, providing private and public spaces to nurture families and nature.  High density suburbs with extensive parks, green belts, and generous transport corridors are another option. 

Whatever the form, the risk of disasters in our cities being compounded by crowding and mean design calls for putting resilience into the urban design equation.  The possibility of marginal long-term savings in fuel consumption and vehicle emissions used to justify constricting our urban places (and lives) may otherwise come at too high a cost.

 

 

[1]               This is hardly an original observation.  It was argued for Wellington in 1981, for example, by A Cibirowski in “Urban design and physical planning tools to make cities safer in earthquake prone areas”, cited in McKay, B (2005) “Plan Tectonics", Planning Quarterly

 

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Integrated planning - it’s all about working together

Just another catch cry?

We hear a lot about integrated planning.  What is it?  I checked that out with the authority on everything, Wikipedia. 

the Integrated Planning System is a structured planning framework adapted from the US military's Joint Operational Planning and Execution System:. 

This isn’t particularly helpful. But it does remind us that modern planning has rigid, hierarchical military origins.

So I looked elsewhere.  In business defined integrated planning as

A joint planning exercise that ensures participation of all stakeholders and affected departments.  Its objective is to examine all economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits, in order to determine most appropriate option and to plan a suitable course of action.

This is better, introducing ideas of collaboration and cross-disciplinary analysis.

How do we see integrated planning in New Zealand? 

According to the NZ Transport Agency,

Integrated transport ...  takes account of and connects [transport systems, the form of urban development and how land is used] [and] helps ensure that development of the transportation network and land use is coordinated.  

Issues traditionally treated separately should be considered jointly.  The NZTA provides a toolkit for doing integrated planning, containing case studies and guidelines to help practitioners align transport and land use outcomes.

The New Zealand Planning Institute also offers a toolkit.  This rolls up spatial plans, asset manage-ment plans, planning balance sheets, financial plans, and the like.  Presumably integration happens when we get all our plans lined up, an exercise focused on procedure.  

Working together

It’s unlikely that integration can be delivered simply using a toolkit. It is more important to focus on outcomes rather than prescribe methods.  Case studies are helpful for lessons learnt.  But integrated outcomes cannot be defined simply by imitation or documentation. 

In fact, they rely on getting people who would not normally do so to collaborate. 

It’s a good idea to focus first on what objectives the relevant agencies and their personnel share.  Getting this to happen takes leadership.  In cities, shared objectives may relate to large projects, urban form, economic revival, community development, ecological restoration, and so forth.  

The challenge is not to make ever more complex plans, but to create the environment for collaboration through which hard-to-achieve objectives are met by working together.

Getting results through leadership and collaboration ...

This blog was sparked by a recent Listener story about Dame Judith Mayhew Jonas, an expat Kiwi who led a revamp in London’s West End.  She did this not by writing plans and spending public money – although there has to be some of that – but by working with a range of stakeholders “from retailers, to police to transport chiefs to the mayor”, getting them to agree on what needs to be done.  “The thing I love” she says “is getting public, private and voluntary to work together, taking the best of each sector and getting them to knit together”.

There are some interesting themes here.  Dame Judith got people out of their silos.  And she worked across three sectors, government, business, and civil society, the latter being individuals and organisations working voluntarily towards social ends.  

How often do we overlook the capacity of civil society?  Too often planners assume that community consultation covers off community interests.  Perhaps we should be thinking about civil society as a partner in the development of our communities, and a key element in our constitution.

Dame Judith also emphasised action – getting things done, not just talking about them.  If that means working with voluntary associations or community groups, so much the better.

Getting past adversarial planning

There is overlap between this and CityScope’s recommended approach to integrated planning for large urban projects.  Our review of experience in large urban projects suggested that leadership and governance to enable different stakeholders to pursue shared goals was the key to success.   

Currently we rely too much on process and adversarial conflict resolution in planning, and on regulating for what cannot be done.  This may be necessary if we have widely different objectives.  But it would be far better to focus on plans that can be agreed upon, achieving and acting on consensus outcomes, while resolving details of difference through mediation and even compromise.

People may have to agree to differ on smaller issues so they can deal with the big ones.  They may have to work outside their professional institutions, to work across departments and organisations, and in doing so back off institutionalised values and ideological clichés.

Can we restructure our way to collaboration?

Perhaps that is what restructuring Auckland local government was about: merging eight councils to create more a collaborative, less professionally or geographically hide-bound body? 

But is that enough if people’s old values and professional affiliations persist in the new structure?  A new organisation needs a new culture, and a sense of a common purpose that goes beyond feel-good documents.  Otherwise, the old inefficiencies and prejudices persist. 

Integration and culture

So how do we achieve the organisational culture necessary for integrated plans and outcomes? 

Well, another New Zealander has had some quiet success at this.  Gregg Innes has developed a business bringing about cultural shifts in US local governments.  Councils there have much wider responsibilities.  They have to work against the inefficiencies created by departmental silos and professional patch protection. 

Greg has successfully developed and applied techniques to counter this, techniques that help shift cultures so they are more responsive to wider organisational objectives and work together despite different backgrounds.  But that’s another story.

It’s important at this stage simply to acknowledge that today’s urban areas and issues are complex and conflicted.  Change is not linear – things don’t proceed smoothly down a clearly marked path.  But let’s not push complicated processes under the guise of integrated planning when commitment and cooperation are most needed.

Rather than lock ourselves into over-complex planning methods we should perhaps consider how professions, organisations, and people can simply be encouraged to work together across local government and civil society.  It’s not a matter of scale.  Bigger units of government will not be more effective.  Restructuring alone won’t do the trick.  Overlapping plans won’t carry the day.  It’s fundamentally a matter of sustaining the leadership and culture required to get the cooperation necessary to deal with the big projects and big issues.

A less conventional take on convention centres

Bad for business
I came across a blog the other day in praise of convention centres.  Its a few months old now, but it  backed the competitive bid by the Edge  (which already runs a centre that can host 2,250 people) to provide a large one for Auckland. 

It was followed by a comment that suggested convention centres don’t actually contribute to city well-being .  The author of the blog, Sydney, said he had not seen the research behind this claim. 

Well, try this 2002 article in the Economic Development Quarterly.   Heywood Sanders assessed evidence from 36 feasibility and market studies in the United States.   The results were pretty conclusive.  Large downtown convention centres, once built, rarely deliver.  One reason is  the static or declining market for trade shows, conventions and conferences.  Another is the tendency for consultants to substantially over-estimate attendance, and optimistic forecasts of occupancy to be accepted without question.

Monuments to bad decisions
A convention centre is being promoted as something of an anchor project for an internationalised CBD in Auckland.  I put some ideas for how we might remake Auckland’s CBD into a recent blog.  A new convention centre has no  part in any prescription I could come up with. 

Monumentalism – building (hopefully) iconic, large structures with ratepayers’ money (and future ratepayers' money ) – is a high risk business.  And convention centres, alongside large sports stadia, are among the least likely to deliver.   

Take the North Harbour Stadium, for example.  As stadia go, it certainly looks good.  It’s beautifully designed, and sits well in an attractive location.  Is it often used?  No.  Is it ever full?  No.  Has it contributed to the economic well-being of North Shore or Auckland?  No.  Has it cost the ratepayers? Yes, big time.  The lesson?  Something more modest would have delivered the sporting and entertainment benefits at a lot less cost.  Big and iconic is not always beautiful.

Why not?
So what’s wrong with a big, bold convention centre for central Auckland?  It’s not the same as a sports stadium on the outskirts. Is it?

Well here are my reasons for dismissing it and moving on.

First, convention centres are so 1990s.  There is evidence that the market has been in  decline for some time as conference and convention  budgets are cut back.  Why invest public money in a mature or declining market, especially when you already have low risk private investment in it?

Second, New Zealand is remote.  Remoteness may be a strength on some counts, but in the case of conventions its a weakness.  Don’t expect large numbers to travel for two, three. or four days just  to sit in a glorified hall for two or three days more, no matter how good the audio visual systems and morning teas.  Not many will.  And today fewer organisations are willing to pay for them to do so.

Even conventions focused on Asian markets experience a drop in the number of delegates once they come down here.  Big conferences in Singapore or Hong Kong become small conferences in Auckland.  Organisers and sponsors don’t like that.  They may encourage localities to build centres because the additional competition is good for them, if not for centre owners.  But their focus on attendance means that they locate conventions with a view to how easy it is to get people there.

And getting European and North American conventioneers to travel more than a day or two is even harder work. 

This point was made by the international panel invited in 2006 to review the Metropolitan Auckland Project.  They counselled caution based on the northern hemisphere experience.  Our city politicians would do well to heed the warning contained in the panel's Final Report (pages 30 and 31). 

Third, convention centres like sports stadia become significantly more expensive to build and run the bigger they get.  Those extra  500-1,000 spaces needed to take the capacity to, say, 4,000 or 5,000 delegates happen to be the least used but may cost the most to build.  Quite simply, the marginal costs of super-sizing exceed the marginal benefits.  Bad economics.

Globally large conventions are a very small part of the convention and conference market.  And, because lots of places have been sucked into building big centres competition for them is keen: too much capacity fighting for too little demand.  Bad strategy.

We can cater for the majority of conventions likely to come this way using facilities here now.  Let’s make sure they are continuously full before we build something that will be mainly empty. 

Fourth, convention centres tend to be imposed on prime central sites.  They are highly visible and cast big shadows.  They create dead areas around them  They are bulky and functional; and often ugly as result.  They privatise potentially good public space.  Barren concourses and echoing corridors may be the only concession to the local community.  Bad urban design.

Fifth, convention centres rely on keeping the public out.  They are built for business people, academics, and professionals. They may occasionally cater for concert goers.  But by definition they are largely for people from somewhere else.  Then they enclose those people for most of the day, isolated from the city around them.  True, a few locals may be able to walk the ramparts, or attend the occasional meeting.  But they are essentially exclusionary. Bad community development.

Sixth, if we did succeed in scoring one of the few really big conventions (say, more than 3,000 or 4,000 delegates) one effect would be to congest the accommodation sector.  Delegates are in for two to three nights, then gone.  This means a short peak in accommodation demand, potentially disrupting the flow of real tourists who come to stay, explore, and spend.  Bad tourism investment.

Would any of the current bidders want to build a large centre from scratch without a taxpayer handout?  No, they want the taxpayers – or ratepayers – to pay for them.  Even the advisors who make a living pushing these things onto governments are unlikely to invest their or their clients’ dollars.  But they will suggest we spend our taxes on them (and some of our children’s taxes as well).  Bad business.  

Ah, but what about the multiplier effect?
The difficulty of justifying convention centres in conventional terms is why we rely on abstract multiplier analysesto demonstrate that dispensing large lumps of public money on uneconomic projects might just be justified by private spin-offs.  Multiplier analyses rely on a host of arbitrary assumptions to generate the numbers, though, and they generally presume we could not do something better with the funds (like leaving them in local pockets).  They are too abstract by themselves to justify big spending plans.  And the absence of follow-up reviews to see if what they predict is what happens is a worrying if they are used to justify fiscal foolhardiness.

Building a large convention centre is deadweight spending, giving new meaning to the idea of an anchor project.  So, if I might mix metaphors , let's treat this one like the downtown rugby stadium, and kick it into touch.  If we cannot justify a large new convention centre through a realistic, market-based business case, let’s move on.

How about a cultural centre instead? 
If we must try to manufacture an iconic place of assembly in the CBD, can we be a little more lateral?

Here's my idea.  This is Auckland; Tamaki Maka Rau, not the Gold Coast, or Vancouver, or Singapore.  If we want to invest (not too much!) on making Auckland’s mark on the world let’s do it on something meaningful to Aucklanders, something that we can share with our visitors. 

 An iconic cultural centre, perhaps?  It could reflect our roots, our reality, our people, and still explore our future.  Something unique and distinctive, on a site and of a scale, cost, and form that befits our city and setting.  Better to have a cultural centre for Auckland and of Auckland that welcomes visitors (and may even strengthen the city's appeal for modest conventions); a centre continuously busy, where what you hear is the beat of the city’s heart and not the whistle of the wind around empty halls.

Subsidiarity: putting civil society in its place

Communities doing their own thing

An article in today’s New Zealand Herald reported on the progress being made by a voluntary association of residents of the Matakana area developing local walkways.  Businesses, residents, and donors have pitched in to work with council support to create off-highway links between the rural settlements of Matakana Village, Point Wells, and Omaha Beach.  This is a modest local initiative.  It is a sign, though, of increasing community interest in the quality and accessibility of the physical environment outside our cities.  The Tawharanui Open Sanctuary Society is in the same vein (and locality).  Here, a local community voluntary initiative has been encouraged and supported by local government (the regional council) to achieve conservation outcomes. 

This is a sign that working together communities can deliver projects with a public benefit.  They do not need simply to join the queues contesting government delivery of taxpayer funded projects.

Volunteering, the foundation of civil society

Of course, community focused voluntarism has been with us for a long time, especially in urban areas.  The Māori Warden Association is an excellent example we are all familiar with in New Zealand.  The NZ Federation of Voluntary Welfare Organisations includes around 130 member organisations, which among them employ 11,000 paid staff and represent 41,500 volunteers. The Federation is committed to building strong and equitable communities.

Volunteering New Zealand is an organisation that provides resources and support to organisations in emergency services, health, welfare, education, culture, faith based services, community support, ethnic interests, sport and recreation, conservation, special interests, advocacy and international volunteering.  It provides a strong framework of volunteering centres throughout the country. It  estimates that around 34% of the population aged over ten years is involved in volunteering. 

A high rate of volunteering is confirmed by recent research by Massey University and the Ministry of Social Development.  This puts New Zealand number seven among nations when measured as the share of the economically active population in the not-for-profit workforce.

This is all evidence that New Zealand enjoys a strong civil society, made up of the range of organisations and associations of individuals (and businesses) that contribute freely to the effective functioning of communities without relying on the strictures of the state to do so. 

Civil society, the state, and the market

Civil society has long played a role in getting underprivileged communities moving in developing nations.  For them it may be the main means of group survival, and a force against anarchy.  Often non-government organisations arise from the ground up and become important organising agencies for infrastructure and services in poor communities which depend more on social capital than state direction and resources.  

Now, it seems, civil society may have a more visible role to play as developed nations move into a new, fiscally challenged phase of slow growth and development.

An active civil society can underpin social progress and build stronger communities, ideally supported by the state.  Even better, civil society, the state, and commercial organisations (those regulated by the market) can come together to achieve beneficial social and economic outcomes.  

It’s interesting that a growing awareness of the potential of civil society has triggered some rethinking even in conservative quarters.  Think Tank Res Publica with its emphasis on a more inclusive form of democracy has informed the British government’s thinking about new ways of advancing the social programme, ways less dependent on welfare and more on capacity building. 

There is a risk that moving more towards a society based on voluntarism is no more than a means of running down central government, undoing hard-fought for welfare programmes.  Some equate it with inserting the market where the state has traditionally operated. But this thinking risks confusing the elevation of civil society with corporatisation of services that no longer fit comfortably into the state’s mandate. 

Sure, the relationship between state, civil society and the market needs to be debated.  But that should not prevent us exploring what is potentially a much more effective and balanced form of government (and governance) in which communities, business, and governments act in partnership.

Subsidiarity – a better form of governance?

I have recently been involved in a project looking at subsidiarity in Lombardy (population 9.9m ) in northern Italy.  Subsidiarity is the principle that responsibilities for governing should be allocated from central to decentralised agencies wherever practical.  This is the vertical subsidiarity that features in much of the literature about democracy and governance.  The rationale is that decisions are best taken as close as possible to where they will have most effect.  This arrangement helps communities relate to different tiers of government while providing for more effective governance.

In Lombardy the related principle of horizontal subsidiarity is also important.  This sees functions allocated to the agencies most suited to implementing them.  These may be voluntary or commercial organisations.  Functions that have traditionally been the role of government might move out under these circumstances.  It goes without saying that if the government does allocate responsibility to an outside agency it needs to be accompanied by public funding and monitoring to ensure the best return on the taxpayer investment.  The point is, though, that government need not take direct responsibility for delivery  to get the best outcome.

A suggestion: endorsing subsidiarity in the constitution

Built on our strong and growing civil society, an established and transparent market place, and sound agencies of government, the forthcoming review of the New Zealand constitution might consider vertical and horizontal subsidiarity as potential governing principles, and in doing so acknowledge and endorse the growing importance of community-based organisations in future New Zealand governments.

The constitution of local government

Another constitutional review

Constitutional arrangements in New Zealand are up for review again, just over five years since the last inquiry was published.  The terms of reference this time appear more focused - on electoral matters, Crown-Māori relationships, bill of rights issues, and the matter of a written constitution.

This blog considers where local government falls in New Zealand’s constitution.  It’s an issue that I think needs to be brought squarely into the mix, not just as a detail when considering Māori representation.

Report of the Constitutional Arrangements Committee, 2005

The last review decided that New Zealand’s constitution is one of “pragmatic evolution”.  It is based, the panel said, on New Zealanders’ instinct to fix things when they need fixing, when they can fix them, without necessarily relating them to any grand philosophical scheme. 

Lack of an underlying philosophy or consideration of the relationship between constitutional and democratic principles is a bit worrying.  Pragmatism can be ad hocery by another name.  It hardly makes for consistency or good government. 

Some of the concerns raised by the panel in the last review are also a bit of a worry:

“ Minor repairs here and there may alter the overall balance between the branches of government in a way that is not necessarily foreseen or intended. We are concerned that this has happened recently.

“Committee members offer different examples. Among them are

• the conferring of powers of general competence on local government

• the postulation of “principles of the Treaty of Waitangi” in legislation and the judges’ role in   elucidating them in the course of interpreting the phrase in the context of the particular statute

• the question whether state education is required to be secular” (P12)

A philosophical grounding – perhaps laid out in a written constitution – should avoid such concerns. 

Focusing just on the first concern: there is clearly discomfort that the Local Government Act 2002 broadened the powers of local councils.  Why?  Is the constitution just about protecting the power of one group over another?  Does local government not exist in its own right, but only at the pleasure of central government?  Is this constitutionally sensible? 

Federalism puts local first

Consider the experience of the former colonial states most like New Zealand.  Australia, Canada, and the United States all have written constitutions.  They were drawn up by federations of erstwhile separate provinces or states – former colonies.  Through federation they created and formally conferred selected powers on a central government.  These powers related to functions best performed in a united way at the centre.  They included defence, trade, property rights, and currency, for example. 

The point is that the central – federal – governments were created by the provincial governments.  The centre’s powers were conferred by the people through a written constitution.

Consequently, state or provincial governments in these countries empower local government, mainly to undertake functions best performed “on the ground”. 

In the United States local powers are defined widely.  Municipalities are typically involved in local infrastructure, parks, reserves and recreation, police, fire services, emergency management and services, urban planning, economic promotion, housing, transportation, court activity.  Given these local responsibilities local government is an important focus of democracy, and drives the character and quality of local life.

Creation of a centralised state in New Zealand

New Zealand is different.  We have a gap where provinces once existed, and local government remains subject to central edict.  The reasons lie in our constitutional history.

We could consider the Treaty of Waitangi as being parallel to the written constitution of those other post-colonial states.  The difference is that through the Treaty Māori ceded certain powers best implemented centrally to the British Crown rather than to an agency of their own making. 

Consequently, New Zealand’s arrangements for government were designed by the British Parliament.  In particular, the 1852 New Zealand Constitution Act created six provincial councils, a legislature, a central House of Representatives, and defined relations among them.  

Land wars and the demands of development in sparsely settled areas mean that the provinces struggled financially.  In the end, bickering among them and the emergence of separatist movements in the South Island led to their abolition in 1876.  Since then, local government has operated at the behest of central government. 

Consequently, the power of people and their communities depends on the goodwill of nationally elected representatives and a highly centralised bureaucracy.

Shifting the balance

Historical circumstances, small scale communities, and a unique if contested contractual place for Māori may justify New Zealand’s singular form of democracy. 

But the fact that conferring the power of general competence on local government disturbed central politicians in the 2005 review does raise questions around how rights are protected -- or evolve -- in an unwritten constitution.  Federal arrangements elsewhere certainly spell out the relationship between central and local (state or provincial) government more clearly on the basis that power is ceded by the people to their representatives, not the other way round. 

As it turns out the central politicians responsible for the last review need not have worried about what they might have away.  Any concession of authority was more form than substance.  It certainly did not stop central government from stepping in and reshaping Auckland. 

Maybe the centre has a case.  Local government does not always get things right.  But, then, nor does central government. 

Distrust of local by central government is a form of distrust in citizens and their communities.  That’s too bad in a democracy.  And perhaps it’s a state of affairs that the forthcoming constitutional review should confront.

Consider the possibility that communities might play a bigger rather than smaller role in democracy.  That building capacity in communities is one way of reducing the excesses of central government.  That civil society and voluntarism could contribute more to shaping New Zealand, and central government less. 

These propositions might require some radical rethinking about constitutional matters.  But through them we might just put the demos – the people in their territories – back into our democracy.

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.