What happens when there are not enough houses?

Closing CHRANZ
Yesterday the Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand (CHRANZ) closed. This public agency funded independent and contestable research into New Zealand’s housing markets.

The Centre commissioned some important research, developing tools for analysing housing markets; looking at housing supply and demand, and their impact on prices; identifying the needs of different groups; examining regional markets; and most importantly documenting changing trends in affordability, ownership, and the disturbing emergence of the intermediate housing market.

But this posting is not a wake for CHRANZ.  Fortunately it has created an important knowledge base that enables us to understand the challenges we face, and which will be relevant for some time to come.[1]

It’s ironic, though, that its closure takes place at a time when there are more questions over housing than ever, more challenges and more uncertainties.

Housing – the perfect storm?

Rebuilding Christchurch The earthquakes in Christchurch throw up huge questions over how and where many residents will be housed, and even more questions over just what will happen to the city’s population in the medium term, and its projected demand for housing.

Since writing the first version of this post I have been reminded of the leaky homes saga - a housing crisis all of its own.  The New Zealand Herald today reported that many owners of monolithic cladding homes which are not damaged or have been certified as watertight will be in for a shock when new valuations are received: the market is downgrading them on apperances alone. That in itself is enough to slow the market down as equity diminishes and the rungs in the housing ladder get just that much further apart for a large number of owners.

Much worse though is the continuing prospect of major repairs or even demolition for those that do have leaky homes.  The 2009 "consensus forecast" was 42,000 homes leaking then or that would do so in the future. (The figure could be a lot higher).  That's a lot of people stalled in the housing market, a significant number of whom presumaly need new homes.

Housing affordability has become a persistent problem, nowhere more than in Auckland. This is manifest in measures of housing stress, falling affordability, and a rapidly growing rental. [2]

Rapid growth in rental demand (up 56% between 1996 and 2006) is happening in a country with no strong culture of renting (except in social housing), with poorly defined tenant/landlord rights for long-term tenancies, and a weak supply sector.  Rentals used to be based on ageing detached housing stock.  In the past decade small apartments proliferated.  In both cases, though, landlords are mainly small scale investors, individuals, family trusts, and the like.  A string of failures among developers and financiers has now scared them away, highlighting a major institutional market gap.

The Intermediate Rental Market (households with at least one income earner that cannot afford to purchase housing even in the lower price quartile) has exploded. This group grew by two thirds and accounted for all national growth in rental demand from1996 to 2006:

Growth of the Rental Market and  the Emergence of the intermediate Market 1996-2006

Source: DTZ New Zealand (2008) The Intermediate housing Market in New Zealand CHRANZ, p7)

Falling home ownership raises social and economic uncertainties over: household consumption behaviour; family formation and fertility; marriage dissolution; household mobility; quality of schooling received; stability of labour markets; inter-generational equity; crowding and public health; the emigration of skilled people; and so forth.  The tight rental market  where stock is low and rents are high - in Auckland especially - exacerbates these issues.

Housing starts have fallen dramatically since 2006, shrinking supply and sustaining high prices. We can see this by comparing annual dwelling consents issued between 2001 and 2006 with those issued since. Nowhere is the fall more pronounced than in Auckland:

Annual Average Dwelling Consents Issued:

The most obvious consequence of this collapse in house building is that we cannot begin to meet demand for new housing called for by our population growth, with new houses falling well behind our projected needs.  The first column in  the diagram below shows the level of house building between 2001 and 2006.  The second column shows projected housing from 2006 to 2016 (most forecasts agree on these sorts of figures).  The third column shows what we got over the the last four years - already well behind the projections.

Actual and Projected Housing Demand, 2006-2010

Source: Building Research Association of New Zealand (2007), Changing Housing Need Report 183,

And help isn’t obviously on the way. Over the three years to March 2011 construction employment shrank by 15,800 nationally or 12% (Quarterly Labour Market Indicators, Statistics New Zealand), confirming that the sector is hollowing out. According to the Statistics New zealand Business Directory, Auckland lost 4,820 employees from construction over just two years ending February 2010, 13% shrinkage.

Recent migration offers no consolation. Among people coming and going who nominated their occupations, New Zealand only gained in the professional category in 2010.  It lost out on people in the trades, technical vocations, machinery operations, and labouring. It looks like we've got more people to think, plan, regulate, and litigate, and a few less doing things.

Occupational Composition of Net International Migration, 2010

Source: Statistics New Zealand

A quick intro to the agencies
CHRANZ' role was to help us understand these issues, and explore solutions.

Other agencies continue to be responsible for devising and delivering housing policy solutions. The Department of Building and Housing is responsible for the regulation and standards required to protect home buyers or renters. The Department also monitors the housing sector and the building industry, and undertakes monitoring and policy research.

Housing Corporation New Zealand is a crown entity responsible for social housing.  It manages 66,000 rental properties and also works with third sector providers. These are the community based organisations, such as the Cooperative Housing Centre of Aotearoa New Zealand, that work to get low income households into their own homes.

The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has also got involved, preparing a report on the price of housing in 2008, and continues to monitor things. Now the Productivity Commission is also looking closely at housing, showing that government is taking the current state of affairs seriously.

The Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ) represents the building industry and promotes good practice. Its research tends to focus on materials, building systems, standards, and the like, although it has delved into projecting future demand.

Of course, local councils have the most immediate impact on and prime responsibility for housing supply and affordability through their capacity to zone and release greenfield and brownfield sites, how they regulate it, the infrastructure services they provide, and the charges – including development levies – they apply to do so.

So how do we weather the storm?
How these agencies work together and adapt their programmes to focus on a real, pressing, and complex need is the outstanding question in today’s housing policy environment. Getting across multiple agencies and creating the conditions for them, the third sector, and the private housing suppliers to work towards the common aim of increased, affordable housing of an appropriate standard is a major challenge that the country faces.

The Canterbury earthquakes may be the game changer. They could demonstrate just how we might respond to a housing crisis through a statutory body set up to drive recovery (the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority) and a commitment to training the people required to resource rebuilding.

This is important because, while they may not be as spectacular, visible, or traumatic, there are housing crises elsewhere in New Zealand.

Moving forward
CHRANZ has set out the parameters of the housing problems facing us: now may be the time for those left standing to progress the solutions - with urgency. 

This will involve a range of parties working purposefully together to provide practical and realistic solutions.  Among other things, the private and public sector and central and local government may have to really collaborate towards a common end.  And councils need to think seriously about what the part have to play to avert the crisis.  It may just be time to shift their plans for housing to focus on people's needs and the constraints they face.

If they do not get on with it we may be left with just three possibilities.

One is that we will be landed with powerful housing authorities in different parts of the country tasked with circumventing existing barriers to solve the problem.  Crises may justify centralising power.

Another is that frustrated demand might just disappear, melting with the departure of growing numbers of young people (and others) from New Zealand, and fewer arrivals from elsewhere.  This does nothing for the economy as a whole and might further reduce the capacity to resource the housing supply sector.

The third? A deepening housing crisis, with all the personal, social, and economic dislocation that can bring.

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^[1]           I have to declare an interest here, having been involved in one of the last pieces of research commissioned by CHRANZ – but not yet published.

^[2]        DTZ New Zealand, 2007, The Role of Home Ownership and the Role of the Private Rental Market in the Auckland Region, CHRANZ, Pp81-91.

After the quake: old new town solution for new overspill problem

Post war London, England → 1970s Canterbury, New Zealand?
In 1974 central planners came up with the idea that development of the small rural service centre, Rolleston, 25km from the CBD, as a “new town” would help accommodate the growth of Christchurch City.  Not long living in the UK at the time, I had looked closely at the new towns north and east of London and argued that the initiative was unjustified.

The post-war new towns in South East England were intended to take up some of the growth pressures on London, containing its expansion and relieving the highly stressed housing situation in the capital.  The new towns were intended to cater for London's overspill, but to be as self-sufficient in employment terms as possible.  There was also a commitment to a “mixed social class”, a reaction against the social problems associated with large, undifferentiated working class housing estates in London.  [1]

The new towns were built around long-standing garden city principles, but to a young kiwi did not appear particularly attractive.  To my mind, it made little sense to transfer the concept to Christchurch, with its more modest growth and scale, different housing and lifestyles, wide open spaces, mountain vistas, and ready access to the coast.  

Rolleston Vistas
(Images, Steve Busson)

It was already committed through various planning documents to moderating growth on the edges.  In the Port Hills there is a natural green buffer to the south while the Waimakariri River flood plain forms a natural boundary to the north. 

Rolleston new town was a solution in search of a problem.  It did not go ahead. 

But that was then

It did not stop Rolleston growing in its own right, especially over the past fifteen years, nor the other rural towns of Canterbury.  Consequently the districts surrounding Christchurch City, Waimakariri and Selwyn, have been among the country’s fastest growing in recent times, a reflection of the attraction of their small towns for people seeking an affordable lifestyle, a sense of community, and the convenience of proximity to Christchurch City.

Perhaps now is the time to revisit the idea of coordinated growth focused on these small settlements close to Christchurch, or even in greenfield sites that offer better prospects of geological stability than the city’s ruptured and traumatised eastern suburbs.

Can east move west?
Any such solution cannot be simply mandated and imposed on the suffering communities east of the Christchurch CBD today: if people displaced by the earthquakes of the past nine months are to stay in and around the city, they need to have a say in where and what sort of community they might move to.  The sort of wholesale dislocation they face may require the powers and capacity of central government to initiate and facilitate solutions, but the community has to be central to any relocation exercise.  And perhaps whole community solutions are required, not sot hat they prevent individuals from taking their own measures, but which enable communities to work together to find solutions that they may share. 

What I am suggesting is the transfer of communities -- groups of households -- into the 21st century equivalent of the new town west of Christchurch.

The institutional framework may have be revamped for the purpose – the Earthquake Commission, the insurance companies, government agencies, even the banks working together to best discharge their individual and joint liabilities and responsibilities; while the people and professionals work together to shape the city of the future.  There may be an opportunity to work together to create an affordable and very liveable alternative.

The township alternative
I have already suggested that Christchurch’s best shot may be decentralised intensification, suburbs focused on human scale community centres, linked by wide avenues or boulevards.  Add to this mix subtly worked new towns or villages, not of the scale of a Crawley, Basildon, or Stevenage in southeast England, but something fitting the Canterbury landscape and Christchurch people. 

Such developments bring with them real lifestyle advantages in an attractive physical setting.   This is what the similarly attractive shire of Margaret River in Western Australia is doing with its town site and rural hamlet strategies; establishing a human scale, low impact alternative to extensive urbanisation in a popular growth area.  It is doing this, interestingly, with the help of Auckland-based Common Ground urban designers.

Tying it together the Curitiba way
We can add to this vision.  Away from the eastern suburbs the garden city survives around its avenues, as attractive as ever.  Its suburban and town centres are likely to play a bigger role, though, with employment and retailing potentially dispersed throughout the city even more in the future than in the past.

That is not to detract from the CBD.  Christchurch has a commitment to rebuilding its CBD as the heart of the region.  This may be in a moderate density, medium-rise manner (and let’s face it, high rise building in Christchurch has been the exception in the past, and will be a lot harder to justify in the future). 

What we will have to think about, though, is how to tie the CBD back to more self-sufficient neighbourhoods, and to growing satellite villages and townships.  Sam Coutts drew our attention to what Curitiba has achieved.  This is a sustainable city built around wide boulevards that provide green corridors and capacity for a variety of transport modes (the city relies heavily on bus transit), green spaces and extensive parks and gardens to manage and contain floods and cater for a population living in relatively high density housing, and efficiently networked services.  Even though Curitiba is bigger than Christchurch (with a population approaching 2,000,000), it offers ideas and inspiration about what can be achieved in a sustainable 21^st century city located  ina dynamic physical environment. 

This is now
I sometime wonder whether as it has grown, urban planning in places like New Zealand, with advanced urbanisation, maturing cities, modest growth, and reasonable levels of wealth and income, has had too little to do.  In seeking out problems to solve it has concentrated increasingly on process and minutiae (in the name of growth management, perhaps?) 

But today Christchurch has real problems, and they are big ones.  It is time to rise above the detail, to cut through undue process, and to act with a combination of vision and conviction.  Now the public and private sectors, citizens and their institutions need to put practical solutions in place.  There do not even appear to be many options to debate.  Going west, the 1974 solution, may just be the one Christchurch has to adopt in 2011.

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[1]               Heraud B (1966) “The New Towns and London’s Housing Problem” Urban Studies, 2, 8-22

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.  

Sustaining the Suburbs

Save our suburbs, save our cities
The proposition is simple, if not overwhelming.  If we want sustainable cities – however you define “sustainable” – we had better put some effort into the quality of suburban life.  We need to get over denigrating suburbs as sprawl.  That simply ducks the issue of where and how most people spend most of their time.  We need to moderate a preoccupation with promoting CBD and big centre lifestyles.  Those are places that people want visit, but not necessarily where they want to live.

Come back Jane, our suburbs need you
It’s fifty years now since Jane Jacobs’ landmark book about saving North American cities from themselves.  She argued against the prevailing push for urban renewal as displacing communities and destroying street life with motorways, car parks, and bland commercial development.  Jacobs’ writing and her activism inspired a resistance credited with saving inner city villages, helping retain the human character of large cities, and inspiring a generation of urban designers and planners. 

There is no doubt that the Jacobs message took hold in New Zealand.  It’s become compelling since the crash of ‘87 slowed down the razing of inner city blocks and marked the beginning of the end of the white collar CBD.  Hanging on to what we've got is one way to stop the hollowing out.

Unfortunately, today’s call for central city mega projects on which to stake a claim to an international presence and the push for large scale CBD residential development on which to stake a claim to environmental stewardship run the risk of reversing the gains to inner city life.  High rise apartments, tracts of high density housing, and grandiose civic plans risk undermining the essence of the central city in the same way as urban renewal and freeways once did.

But that’s not what this posting is about.  The reality is that the bulk of our populations live in the suburbs; the suburbs that are growing the most; and that’s where we need to promote the capacity for people to live fulfilling lives.  That’s where today we need to promote street life and be wary of the threats posed by the new urbanists and their grand plans for intensification.

Most people still live in the suburbs
Its obvious that most people still live a suburban life.  But that doesn't seem to be appreciated by the people who plan our cities today, even as the number of suburban residents keeps growing.

Look at the three metropolitan areas in New Zealand, not big by international standards, but nevertheless reflecting an entrenched trend in the developed world – a move to decentralise.  The numbers say it all. 

Over the last 14 years population growth has been totally dominated by the suburbs.  In Auckland, the inner city accounted for only 6% of a 326,000 person increase.  In other words, 305,000 opted to live in the suburbs and beyond, compared with 21,000 in the central city.  In Christchurch, the CBD accounted for just 1% of population growth and the rest of the inner city 2%.  Wellington, the capital city with a distinctively constrained setting did much better, but a revitalised CBD still accounted for just 10% of population growth. [1]

Population Growth in the Central City: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, 1996-2010

Source: Statistics New Zealand

And they still favour the outer suburbs

Let’s break this down a little further.  Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy Partners (http://www.greaterchristchurch.org.nz/) came up with a plan for consolidating the city.  This includes policies promoting central city living or living around established commercial centres and development contained largely within metropolitan limits.  Well, we can see the warning signs for this sort of thinking from the very small share of recent growth in the inner city.  It seems that the new plan is set to fly in the face of recent experience.   

And if we divide Christchurch's suburbs into three groups (inner, outer, and periphery) we find the decentralising tendency that it is set against is even stronger . [2]

Population Growth in Christchurch Suburbs, 1996-2010

The peripheral suburbs on the city fringes have led growth rates, while the outer suburbs have led absolute growth.  (That’s if we overlook the fact that the small towns in Christchurch’s hinterland left out of this analysis have grown at even faster rates, with the adjoining districts two of the fastest three growth areas in New Zealand).

Does it make sense to stem this pressure?  Not if we want the cities to continue to grow, because the majority of people clearly favour suburban living, and that’s where the greatest capacity for accommodating them lies. 

So while it’s exciting to record rapid growth rates of population gain in our inner cities, policy makers really need to make sure we are doing the right thing by our suburbs. 

Places to live ...
This may mean, for example, ensuring that we don’t sacrifice too many of the green spaces to high density housing: our suburbs also need to breathe.  If we want to lift densities, then terraced units and the occasional low rise apartment may be all we need.  They are probably the most easily achieved forms of intensification in areas where consolidating sites is notoriously difficult and where existing residents will fight to preserve existing character. 

Better still may be judicious development of greenfield sites, where we can boost densities by applying the principles of Smart Growth without destroying what people value about what went before, without overloading existing facilities and infrastructure, creating attractive public and private realms, and potentially enhancing rather than trashing biodiversity, water and air quality.

Places to work ...

We will also need to promote neighbourhood centres to ensure that they can accommodate diverse activities and services, that they are easy to get to and get around, well appointed and vibrant.  They may even become the focus of modest park and ride facilities, the framework around which flexible public transport within and beyond the neighbourhood can best be delivered. 

It may be timely to review what in our planning provisions force people to make regular cross-city journeys to work, and whether this can be changed through more decentralised employment. 

Places to play ...
While local centres are becoming the focus of community and neighbourhood commerce and culture, suburban parks and gardens will also have a role to play.  We need good spaces close to the majority of homes for sport and recreation, and safe local places for families and children to gather.   

We might more actively protect some of the informal spaces in our suburbs, and take a broad view of what constitutes heritage in doing so.  We may have to protect landscapes and structures because they are iconic in local areas, not because we believe they may have national or international significance.  Where they don’t exist, we may even have to create the landmarks, the parks and town belts, and the structures that reinforce local identity and culture.

Strong suburbs for a strong CBD
By allowing more things to happen in the suburbs without overloading them with bland residential development or tracts of mixed use that fall between urban design stools, we have an opportunity to advance the planners’ live-work-play mantra, and to enhance the sustainability of our cities. 

Ultimately, it is the quality of day-to-day life in a city and its capacity to attract and hold skilled and motivated people that will determine its prosperity.  And it is those people and that prosperity that will underwrite the health of the CBD.  Without strong suburbs, we cannot sustain a strong CBD.

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[1]            For this exercise, the following council areas were counted, Kapiti, Porirua, Upper and Lower Hutt, and Wellington City.

[2]           This classification omits the largely rural Banks Peninsula which is quite separate from the metropolitan area.

Why compact cities aren't so smart

More advocacy for a compact city

I was interested to read the views of Rick Boven of the New Zealand Institute about central and local government needing to resolve their differences about the future of Auckland.  Well, they have worked on that since the establishment of GUEDO in 2005 (now the Auckland Policy Office). 

But that’s not what the article was really about.  Under the pretext of calling for “new ways of working together” Rick promotes urban containment and greater train travel for Auckland’s future. Well, we’ve heard all that before.

What Rick may have noticed by way of differences is not a failure of cooperation, but growing realisation that the old prescription for a compact Auckland is not working.  And while it may pain me to say so, in this instance the centre may be looking ahead, while the city continues to look to the past.  Any differences, Rick, arise from diverging views, not from a failure to work together.

Fallacies and frailties

And in this case I’m on the side of the centre.

I’ve picked away at the frailties of urban consolidation planning previously.  I can’t put it all together in one blog. But consider the following propositions about the compact city:

• A focus on centralisation guarantees congestion;
• A focus on centralisation reduces green space and concentrates urban pollution;
• Consolidation prejudices old infrastructure, increasing overload and the risk of failure;
• A focus on rail transit escalates costs, reduces flexibility, and caters for only a minority of trips among even those (relatively few) households that have ready access to it;
• A focus on rail transit commits us to developing unattractive brownfield sites with high remediation costs if we intend to increase residential densities nearby;
• A commitment to centralisation and higher densities increases vulnerability to extreme climatic events, rising sea levels, and other natural disasters;
• Medium to high density living is socially flawed, as it is associated with transience, increased urban crime, diminished quality of life, and loss of a sense of community, especially for households in middle to lower income brackets (and, ultimately, razing of failed apartment blocks);
• The market does not favour medium to high density housing unless well located, well appointed, and therefore out of the price range of most households;
• Refurbishment and restoration of inner city suburbs for higher density living leads to gentrification that displaces lower income households;
• Mixed use developments reduce the amount and push up the price of land for business while lowering the quality of life of residents;
• Limiting new business land and expecting to take up new employment by increasing densities on existing sites forces up business costs, reducing the attractiveness of investment and competitiveness of business.

None of this makes compact city policies look very smart.

Pushing for alternatives

The current council vision is for Auckland to be the world’s most liveable city.  Well, we won’t achieve that by “me-too” urban consolidation.  Don’t forget, in the corporate world consolidation is a defensive strategy, associated with stagnation not growth, holding the line, not forging ahead.

A better answer may be to take advantage of our distinctive physical environment and make sure that our urban form complements and takes advantage of it as we move ahead.

Here are some very broad ideas.

Allow decentralisation to continue.  It’s happening, don’t fight it.  Provide for it.  That means ensuring that people can meet most of their needs close to where they live.  A sustainable city won’t work without sustainable suburbs.  These should be at the heart of our plans.  And some of them might just have to spill over the urban limits.  Now there’s a real opportunity to practice some innovative urban design.

Let the city breathe:   We want a CBD which stands out among cities.  Well, by promoting sustainable suburbs we can lay off simply playing with structures and instead seize the opportunity to restore a green (and blue) heart to our city.  A timid but worthy start was made to Queen Street with the (re)introduction of Nikau palms, but we can go a lot further than that.  Barry Lett had great idea for the radical conversion of mid-Queen Street and Myers Park into an urban garden.  What a great place to visit!

If we take the pressure off forcing housing into the CBD, among other things, we could do a lot more of that.  We could think seriously about creating a pedestrian precinct the length of Queen Street. I would also push for my hot spots to be green – and forge walkways and cycle ways among them.  We could better Integrate the CBD with the quality areas around it.  On the harbour front we need to find ways to cross Quay Street, for example, to merge water and land.  We might start by taking note of Lambton Harbour in Wellington, and how it blends hard and soft surfaces, restores the harbour edge, and creates a place for all people. 

Develop Smart Sub-Urbs:  Forget Jane Jacobs’ nostalgia for the lost American city.  Those images belong to another age and another place.  Our life, our cultures, and our communities are in the suburbs.  Let’s ensure that strong communities can develop and thrive around urban villages and suburban centres throughout Auckland. 

If we are serious about sustainability, the suburbs are where it must happen. Here we can deliver smart urban design, strengthen social relationships, and provide capacity for improving the quality of life at all levels.  It’s also at a sub-regional if not suburban level that labour markets operate most efficiently, and employment opportunities might best be promoted.

And while we’re at it, we need to make sure that the suburbs are well interconnected by generous arterial corridors. This call for some difficult retrofitting.  It may mean reviewing how we use motor-ways; thinking more creatively about buses and bus-ways; and getting over an all-consuming desire to focus everything on the CBD, turning it into a giant interchange instead of a great destination.

Launch the Satellites: Some of the best places to live in Auckland are beyond the bounds.  We seem so desperate to cling to urban limits that we ignore the fact that people like Auckland because of what lies beyond them. Let’s see if we can encourage smart growth in places like Warkworth, Bombay, Pokeno, Wellsford and Drury, Beachlands, Pukekohe, and others.  Let our rural villages prosper, too. These are all places where we could do some exciting planning and design.  And let’s make sure that we have wide, green corridors linking them, corridors that can cater for whatever modes of transport the future might throw at them – electric cars, light rail, and the like.

There’s more, but I’m over my word limit.  If nothing else, let’s lift the discourse so that our ideas begin to match our aspirations.  The last thing we need to do, Rick, is to get together to recycle the old stuff.

Where do the children play?

   Well you’ve cracked the sky, scrapers fill the air

                              But will you keep building higher, till there’s no room up there

Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry

                    Will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die?

Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam (1970)

Are compact cities healthy cities?

One argument for compact cities is that they are good for our health.  The New Zealand Public Health Advisory Committee in 2008, for example, cited four principles for healthy urban planning based on the density of development: urban regeneration; compact growth; focused decentralisation; and linear concentration.  The aim is less time in cars and more use of active transport.

One objective of Auckland’s Regional Growth Strategy, with its emphasis on CBD and centre-focused residential growth is “safe and healthy communities”.  But how far can that be achieved through residential intensification?  Does regulating for a compact city work for everyone?  Everywhere? 

Kids and consolidation
Research by Penelope Carroll and Karen Witten of Massey University, summarised here and in a recent article in The Aucklander, highlights the disadvantages for children in the inner city. 

Witten and Carroll suggest that traffic volumes, strangers on the street, and lack of outdoor play space mean that children in central city environments are likely to be confined indoors.  And that raises the disadvantages of high density dwellings: insufficient space, internal noise, lack of natural light, lack of privacy, inadequate parking, inadequate indoor play space, and the potentially hazardous nature of balconies.  Poor health outcomes is a major concern.

A key issue for children in compact parts of the compact city is lack of opportunity for outdoor activity.  Heavily trafficked streets are not good for bike riding, or even walking alone.  Auckland’s centre is devoid of segregated cycleways or play areas.  Getting to school or the park is a major mission, and may well need a car trip. 

Even the Auckland Domain, a splendid sprawling park on the CBD fringe, is surrounded by high intensity streets, remote from most central apartments, and is hardly child-friendly.  The much smaller Victoria Park is similarly difficult to access, isolated by major arterial roads.  Albert Park is about the only central green space of note, but this is a throughway between university and town, not an ideal area for children to play. 

Auckland CBD Green Space

Perhaps the well-being of children is not a major issue here, because only around 600 (aged under 15) lived in the CBD in 2006.  But it was up 130% over a decade.  And they do count.

Anyway, the limits of central city living for children – and families – flag more general issues:

• The need to think seriously about how we cater for families in higher density living generally, in the CBD, in other centres, and in suburbs targeted for intensification;
• How we provide safe, public green space, areas for play, and ease of movement in high density, mixed use environments; and
• Just how healthy is the inner city residential for living generally?

CBD living – not so healthy?
The factors potentially stressing children in the CBD impact on adults too.  Research for Auckland City in 2003 (CBD Metadata Analysis by No Doubt Research) suggested dissatisfaction with inner city apartment living came from a diminished sense of security and safety, noise nuisance, small units, absence of outdoor living spaces, and lack of a sense of community. 

In the absence of outdoor recreation space adult residents may get some exercise in the burgeoning gymnasium sector (for between $1,000 and $2,500 a year).  But for many recreational and social activities a car is a necessity.  Simply to take advantage of the key benefits cited for living in Auckland – access to outdoor recreation opportunities, organised sports, beaches, bush and countryside – residential Intensification around centres means more time- and fuel-consuming car trips.

On top of a lack of open useable space the latest State of the Region Report documents the heaviest concentration of air pollutants in and around central Auckland, hardly a healthy living environment.

 

Central Auckland Haze

 Source: Auckland Regional Council, State of the Region, 2010

Community in the central city
Research by Larry Murphy of the University of Auckland (“Third-wave gentrification in New Zealand: the case of Auckland” Urban Studies 2008, Volume 45) described different communities in the CBD: the well-to-do with their spacious harbour edge apartments (and quite possibly a second home – a beach cottage or lifestyle block – outside the city); the student-dominated quarter to the east; and the low income population to the west.  Families may end up in the latter area, in cramped apartments in featureless apartment blocks, simply for reasons of affordability.

These are transient populations, some 52% of residents in the Central East and Central West Census Area Units had been in their current dwellings for less than a year in 2006.  This compares with 23% in Auckland as a whole.  These particularly high residential mobility figures contradict any suggestion that high density living might create a strong sense of community cohesion.

Okay for some, for some of the time
The CBD works for some people.  The proliferation of downtown bars and entertainment caters particularly for the young and well-to-do.  Gentrification of the harbour-edge works for the professional couple, the wealthy, and out-of-towners.  But the central city is not right for middle or low income households, or families. 

Two key ingredients of a compact city strategy are increasing residential densities and boosting inner city living.  But these raise health and equity issues.  At the least, they call for investment in the quantity and quality of public space in areas targeted for intensification, making potentially big demands on the public purse given the value of land in the CBD and other commercial centres. 

We may just have to acknowledge the benefits of suburban living for some time to come.  And seek opportunities for sustainable development that don’t oblige less well-off families to dwell in small apartments and featureless blocks around busy commercial areas for lack of affordable alternatives.