More land, more jobs more incomes – addressing the other side of the affordability equation

Boosting residential land supply is a start

In my last blog I argued that boosting residential land is necessary but not sufficient to achieve affordable housing.  Industrial, institutional and investment issues also play a part, but massaging demand without freeing up supply won’t solve anything.  

In this post I look at the other side of the affordability equation: how do we increase our incomes to match our housing aspirations and needs?  Once more,my focus is on Auckland - but the point made, I think, is relevant elsewhere. 

Delivering land for employment needed to lift incomes
I address just one issue,the supply – or rather the scarcity - of business land.  This is one investment barrier that planning can influence, and needs to if the council is serious about delivering a truly liveable city.  Because most people will want to live where they can make a decent wage.

If business land is in short supply or expensive to develop, establishment costs go up, deterring investment.  If it is in the wrong place labour and transport costs go up, deterring investment.   And without continuing investment in new and existing business, jobs and incomes suffer.  And if incomes stall, housing affordability diminishes.

And we don’t have it yet
Put simply, the message about business land is that there is not enough of it in Auckland and that hurts employment and incomes.  What we do have has often been the wrong sort in the wrong place. Consequently, where good land exists it is highly priced.  Like the prevailing approach to residential planning, this approach rations land rather than utilising it to best effect. 

Planning for Business in the compact city
A key component of the compact city doctrine behind Auckland’s unitary plan has been an expectation – or requirement –that the city can cater for an expanding workforce by encouraging firms to intensify their development – to “do more with less”. To this end, the Auckland Regional Council spent a lot of time estimating how many employees could be squeezed into existing zoned areas (by increasing building height, site coverage, and the like) and how much of the residual vacant land in the region could be absorbed before having to zone the larger parcels that the market was interested in and perhaps create a large enough pool of sites to keep prices in check.

Unfortunately the business land market does not work like that.  Businesses grow and decline.  They invest in expansion, they relocate, or they enter new markets.  And in each case they have particular requirements of the sites they invest in.  If available zoned land doesn’t tick the boxes, they won’t use it. 

More numbers, growing gap
Regular reports quantifying “the gap” between estimated demand and estimated supply have not been especially helpful.  They overlooked the development and access difficulties of the “vacant” sites that they managed to identify, their small size, and the fact that many were simply unavailable. 

They also failed to recognise the mismatch between where any vacant land was compared with where it was wanted.  And by failing to address the needs of sub-regional labour catchments and dispersed investment opportunities, they perpetuated the costly cross-regional commuting and associated congestion necessary for many Aucklanders to meet both work and housing needs. 

A focus in the draft unitary plan and underlying spatial plan on consolidating employment in and around the CBD and focusing transport investment on the central city will make matters worse, given the much more rapid population growth and greater residential capacity of suburban Auckland.

Rationing land to get some sort of numerical match with projected employment growth meant that what little quality industrial land that was ready to go – where it actually existed -- was (and remains) highly priced. Rather than encouraging higher densities (and, by some obtuse logic, higher productivity) this approach is more likely to discourage investment and suppress employment growth because no suitable land is available, because the costs of entry are too high for new investors, or because under such a regime land banking becomes an attractive option for existing owners. 

How much industrial land is available?
In 2011 we estimated around 1,460ha of zoned vacant industrial land in Auckland, but only 550 ha “ready to go”, with perhaps 70% of that (400ha) suitable for development.  And that’s probably generous. 

Recently, retail analysts at CBRE in March 2012 said that:

Currently zoned industrial land classified as vacant amounts to 1,148 hectares although this headline figure is largely meaningless in a real world context. The land market is highly fragmented which means that a wide range of development barriers exist that, at any given time, prevents the take up of a significant portion of land classified as vacant. Options also reduce significantly at higher parcel size thresholds especially for heavy industrial land uses.

So what’s happening today?
A shortage of suitable industrial land was seen as one issue that the new Auckland Council might tackle.

It’s not clear that it has done so.  The Unitary Plan talks about possibilities and the need for more planning.  It suggests that there is 510 ha, of brownfields land for redevelopment, 430ha in the planning pipeline and a 1,400 target for greenfield land., and that together these sources will  provide “109ha/per year for 30 years”.  But this is subject to the “ongoing audit process” depicted in the following table:



Source: Auckland Unitary Plan Implementation Addendum

It’s not clear whether this is a ten or twenty year timetable, but it does suggest that we still don’t know a lot about what we have got at the moment, and what we might expect in the foreseeable future.  Instead, it simply specifies a planning mechanism to manage a pipeline comprising five, ten, and twenty year targets.  It seems to assume we can predict when, where, and how much land will be required.  Such an assumption ignores our past inability to forecast demand and supply with any credibility, and appears to overlook the protracted timeframe between conception and delivery.

And if this approach continues to impede a well-functioning commercial land market, the opportunities for businesses expansion, new investment, and the income growth necessary to increase access to housing will be curtailed

But there are more direct ways of addressing the problem of scarce, expensive, or overpriced business land.  Here are a couple of current success stories.

Success Story 1: Highbrook Industrial Park
Highbrook Industrial Park comprises 107ha of developable land and 40ha of parkland 18 km southeast of Auckland CBD.  This got underway in 2005, four years after approval, with over 530,000 sqm in floorspace capacity.  Just seven years after development, almost half of that capacity has been absorbed (261,000sqm) –t hat’s around 7ha a year in just this one locality during difficult economic times. 

Development continues and a 25,000sqm retail and service centre will open later this year. 

 

Highbrook Industrial Park - Industrial Infill in the Urban Area

Some lessons from Highbrook:

1. The planning and development timetable was protracted, although progress since has been rapid. We need to be aware of the time from concept to delivery and do what we can to ensure we have plenty of land in the pipeline to cope with this (and do what we can to speed up the planning and development process). 
2. Allowing for parkland, site coverage is relatively low at 35% (but 50% of developable land). We need to recognise that modern industry and commerce is not necessarily going to be attracted to high density, high cost sites, and need to reflect preferences for space and amenity in our plans.
3. There is a real mix of occupants – from industrial, though logistics, to retail, services, and offices.  In planned and well integrated environment these work well together.   It is hard, though, to predict the future form and function of the businesses and business complexes we need to provide for.  Better to plan business estates to meet environmental (and community) performance standards, rather than prescribing what activities are allowed to locate in them. 
4. A large scale site with large individual lots diversifies the range of organisations that can locate there and creates opportunities for lowering impacts on surrounding communities and the environment, while delivering amenity that will attract investment, even in adverse times, and employment.  We need to be generous in our land allocation to achieve satisfactory land use outcomes. 
5. Highbrook is located close to a growing residential suburb.   If we are serious about cutting transport costs and congestion and consequently lowering the costs of employment without lowering incomes we need to ensure that we provide adequate business land close to the suburbs where the majority of the workforce dwells and to those places where we plan to locate new housing

Given the quality of the Highbrook land and scarcity of competition, occupation costs are not particularly low.  But demand has been and continues to be strong.  This shows how much demand there is for land of the right quality, scale, and right location.

Success story 2: Pokeno Village Estate
The Pokeno Village estate is a new 400ha integrated development of relatively low cost residential and business land.  It is in a rural location less than an hour from the Auckland and Hamilton CBDs to the north and south, and two hours from New Zealand’s principle export port at Tauranga.  It is on the rail system and a minute or two from State Highway 1. 

And it is getting set to grow – with the recent announcement that Chinese company Yashili International Holdings has recently got approval to invest in a $212m infant formula factory there. 



Pokeno Structure Plan - Integrated Urbanism in  a Rural Environment

Some lessons from Pokeno:

1. It is possible to create well-planned urban areas outside the metropolitan area that can provide complementary residential and business opportunities at a single location;
2. Location remains important – good connections to key nodes and markets can be achieved without being in the centre of any one of them;
3. A quality residential environment and the public domain will add to the attraction of the locale;
4. And a village environment in the right locality gives residents easy access to the rural, natural, and coastal environments that lie at the heart of Auckland’s appeal.

The Big Lesson?

We need to address the questions of where people will live and where they will work jointly. 

Let’s hope that the Mayor’s and Minister’s bureaucrats take a note of this when they get together to mull over how to solve Auckland’s housing crisis.

New opportunities for business investment can be created around Auckland, but not necessarily within the contiguous urbanised area. 

But they can allow for generous, integrated planning that will enable Aucklanders’ aspirations for housing work, living, and lifestyle to be met.  They do not mean sacrificing rural output, urban productivity, or environmental quality.  But they will require a more creative, generous and responsive approach to the needs of the city’s people and businesses than has been evident in our planning for the last 15 years.

And bit by bit we can expect such initiatives to help rationalise the markets for both business and residential land.

The Great Housing Debate Plods Along

Another day, another working party

The government and Auckland Council are working on the terms of reference for a working party to look further into Auckland’s housing crisis and how to resolve it.  Enough already.

A passage of reports, going nowhere
There has been a host of reports on Auckland’s housing needs, not many of them useful (otherwise the problem should have been solved).  Past attempts to reconcile statistical projections of demand with rose-tinted views of supply failed to stir the councils into doing something about a problem we have known about for 15 years.   

When we diagnosed it then, we argued (and the Auckland’s Regional Growth Forum agreed) that the Growth Strategy (the genesis of the Auckland Plan and its bloated progeny, the 7,000 page Unitary Plan) was too mechanistic in its approach to housing. 

The solution lay in more, not less, flexibility.

Matching residential capacity estimates with projections of household numbers is done at too coarse a level ...  Given diverse demand and ... differences in components of supply, capacity for some types of land is likely to be exhausted earlier than projected… The likelihood is that property prices will escalate if greater flexibility is not introduced… This raises the prospect of adverse equity impacts associated with housing affordability from a strategy that over-emphasises containment …”

Auckland Regional Growth Strategy Review, McDermott Fairgray for Auckland Regional Growth Forum, ARC 1998

Unfortunately, the interim has seen falling supply, rising prices, and perversely intransigent planning.

Deliberating and debating
The Productivity Commission’s was the latest, most wide-ranging and the most thoroughly grounded report into the issue.  It set out the parameters of the problem in a full and systematic manner. 

But that was a year ago now, and its urgency has been diluted in the war of words between central and local government.   And the prospect of a debate over a draft regulatory document the Unitary Plan - and when it might come into force as Auckland’s latest (and most constrictive) statutory planning document promises further procrastination.

I would set aside the Draft Housing Strategic Action Plan Stage 1, Working Draft Version 14 (yes, that’s right, 14!) put out by the Auckland Plan Committee, as yet another report from inside the bunker.  This one contains seven objectives, 12 Priority Areas, and 32 Actions.  Like all the others before it, this plan acknowledges the complexity of the problem.  Unfortunately, it seems to compound this with the complexity of “the solution”.  

The choices we face
As I think the Minister of Housing, Dr Nick Smith, was trying to get across in his recent exchange with the Auckland Mayor, we are running out of time.

We have three choices for dealing with the housing crisis (or not, as the case may be).

First,   can continue to convene working parties, write reports, and debate the detail.

Second, we can save paper, and do nothing, ignoring the problem on the grounds that it may go away. 

And it will, in due course, with a large (younger) chunk of demand heading offshore and another (older) chunk heading for provincial and small town New Zealand. Demand will wither.  And that will bring forward the day that the bubble bursts.  Given so many eggs in the Auckland basket that will be a disaster for the country as a whole.

Incidentally, waiting for the bubble to burst should also bring plenty of newly bank-owned properties onto the market at fire sale prices – a somewhat perverse correction to a problem created by a shortage.  The problem then will be that not too many people will be able to afford them, certainly not the people who need them.

Unfortunately, inaction points the way to economic decline in the long-term (and, it seems, xenophobia in the short term).

(Thinking about it, Option 1 is just a variant on option 2, but it might let our politicians and report writers feel a bit better about it).

Third, We take action now.

The action option and political palatability
How?  Well the Productivity Commission demonstrated that this is a multi-faceted problem.  And if it was easily and painlessly fixed, it would have been.  It needs a multi-faceted solution that not everyone will like.  There will be short-term losers, including people affronted by a loss in property value. Some of us may have to accept that selling our houses will not necessarily fund retirement in the style we had hoped for.

Sometimes, though, political popularity has to give way to strong leadership.

The obvious starting point – land supply
The Commission emphasised the role of land scarcity.  So let’s start there. There is an urgent need to line up capacity for perhaps 60,000 houses in and around Auckland.  

If we are to have a land shock, though, let’s moderate its impact on infrastructure, environment, and transport by spreading it across multiple sites (brownfield, infill, the greenfield edge, and satellite towns).  This should also ensure the diversity of new stock and limit downward pressure on existing prices and equity within sub-regional markets.

Supported by sensible regulation
We also need to avoid clumsy heritage rules in the city’s proposed plan that will stymie quality urban renewal and prevent modest gains in density in existing suburbs by restricting demolition of any old houses (pre 1940s).  Better by far to preserve with some sensitivity those structures (and perhaps streets) of true character and enduring merit and let the others go if this serves housing demand better.  This approach will make increasing densities in long-established suburbs easier, and the results more attractive.

In fact, let’s streamline all regulation of land use change that does not relate directly to protecting environmental quality and capacity, so that our decisions reflect better how critical good housing is to Auckland’s social and economic wellbeing, and its liveability

And balance
We will also need to provide adequate land for the growth of local employment opportunities at the same time.  Failing to prioritise this is another black mark against the Auckland Growth Strategy and successive planning documents that underlie today’s congestion.

The notion of balanced decision making needs to be carried over into infrastructure.  Let’s get over the myths that bigger is better and that more spending now saves costs later.  It doesn’t, because excessive infrastructure imposes costs today that limit our capacity to implement better solutions tomorrow.  A little more fine tuning of infrastructure design, funding, and delivery is critical to efficient land use in the long run.

For this issue, it’s worth changing the law
It might be hard to countenance, but freeing up land supply for housing around Auckland requires legislative action so that it doesn’t get bogged down in the procedures and strictures around Auckland’s Draft Unitary Plan. And we cannot afford to wait and do it indirectly through the clumsy process of ongoing reforms to the Resource Management Act. 

A development corporation
If Minister Smith and Mayor Brown want to collaborate, perhaps they could create between them a corporation capable of assembling the necessary parcels of land.  Once this is done substantial parcels already approved for development can be released to the market for development through a variety of transparent and competitive methods. 

There are plenty of successful precedents and we have the examples of Council Controlled Organisations (including Auckland Property) that should be capable of breaking through bureaucratic logjams.  Surely the government and council can get this jam-breaker sorted quickly.

Beyond fixing land supply
Of course, adequate land supply is only one condition –albeit the most critical - necessary to re-establish an effective housing market. We also need changes in the institutional, industrial, and commercial environments.  We need to lower infrastructure costs.  We might also expect changes in the social environment as households and communities adapt to a new housing reality, because whatever we achieve, it is unlikely to be the same as what we had in the past.

I will address possible changes in these matters another posting. 

The time is now
For the moment, the message is that a new approach to land supply is urgent. We know enough to stop debating and pondering and to begin the job.  Without action on land, any other initiatives will come to nought and we may as well just carry on wringing our hands and writing reports.

Upping the Ante - Where can we Afford to Live?

Auckland fiddles, Sydney makes its move

The Auckland Council has released a Housing Action Plan that will be an addendum to its encyclopaedic Draft Unitary Plan.  It contains seven objectives, 12 priority areas, and 32 actions.  The Housing Action Plan will now be subject to the submissions and appeal process  associated with the Unitary Plan, whatever form it takes, and presumably also subject to the red tape associated with trying to implement it.

Compare this non-action with what is happening in Sydney, where the State government has just announced the   planned release of greenfield and brownfield land for up to  171,000 new homes across 31 new and existing suburbs. Alongside that will be land for new jobs, shops, schools, and transport. 

By moving on a variety of sites and promoting real volume construction, and by providing for diverse housing types the State is hoping to make housing affordable once more with a mix of multi-unit and detached housing.

Which city will be more liveable?

In Auckland, we are not sure if we have even 2,000 sites ready to build and maybe 15,000 in the pipeline.  And by the time we get the grab-bag of policies in the Housing Action Plan sorted and refined into something workable, it's not clear that we will have many more.

Certainly the Sydney plan will take some time to get traction, but with this announcement it is underway.  And that may create even more grounds for New Zealanders who cannot afford a house in Auckland to head west to Sydney and beyond.  Abstract notions of liveability - and comparisons of liveability rankings - may be irrelevant if you cannot buy the house you want in one city but can in another.

The Auckland challenge 

The New Zealand Productivity Commission and the Government have challenged Auckland to cut the red tape and introduce substantial new capacity to the market as a means of increasing the affordability of housing.  The Council is resisting. It has, after all,  produced many documents on the issue - but not much else.

The time is over-ripe for bold action in Auckland.  Allowing this issue to get caught up in the red tape surrounding the Draft Unitary Plan means going backwards. We knew at the time of the original Auckland Regional Growth Strategy in 1998 that we were facing a significant shortage of housing capacity. Yet we wasted the following decade writing reports that estimated theoretical capacity, projected theoretical demand, and  proposed impractical responses. 

Going by the increasing press and social media comment, people are finally realising that we are now faced with a housing (ownership and rental) crisis and that this will have significant long-term economic and social consequences.

Let's not waste another decade

Here are some simple if challenging  actions:

• Identify sufficient land in green and brown sites for, say, 60,000 new dwellings immediately. This is not so difficult.
• Some of that land will be available in and around satellite centres including but not confined to existing  rural centres and townships. Plan today for the necessary transport corridors. 
• Some of the land might be developed by pushing out the urban limits on the edge of the city, but this somewhat conventional response promotes sprawl, diminishing the quality of the metropolitan environment. 
• And some of it will be brownfield sites around town centres, some close to the harbours and Gulf, and some close to -- but not right on -- transport corridors.  The secret is to have multiple sites on the go at a time to create diversity and to avoid disrupting any one sector of the market.
• If necessary create a community controlled organisation (or expand the mandate of and resources of the council controlled Auckland  Council Property Ltd) to consolidate ownership in land parcels large enough to sustain efficient development.  Such an agency would work with the private sector and central government to achieve packages and put to tender such sites or the right to build on them .
• Streamline the regulatory processes through which the quality of development can be managed and maintained.
• Ensure that adequate provision is made for community amenities and services, including medical centres, education , retailing and commerce, recreation areas and green space.
• Zone and develop accessible and well-connected employment centres in association with new housing areas.
• Ensure that we are realistic  in our infrastructure prescriptions, that we do not over-specify, overbuild, or overcharge.

Moving ahead

Developing new capacity need not destroy Auckland's green and blue image.  In fact, done right it will enhance it and enable more people to enjoy it. 

The figures show that the expansion of Auckland in the past has not devastated the output of the rural sector in the way many people seem to think.  Nor need it do so in the future.  Indeed, the figures suggest that it may even increase rural productivity.  In any case, efficient urban form is important to sustain economic development. In contrast, inefficient, ad hoc, incremental development that offers too little too late may add more costs than benefits,
 
We need to move quickly, with due sensitivity to Auckland's diverse living environments, and provide flexibility if the city is to grow in the way this Council thinks it will, or should. This does not mean development at any cost.  But it does mean moving away from the piecemeal and ponderous approach to the City's future that is constricting housing at the moment.

 A bold vision is needed to replace the report-ridden,  incremental, abstract, and partial policies developed to date if we want to protect the quality of the Auckland environment and develop the housing that enables more Aucklanders to enjoy it.

 

Flat Out - Reflections on Apartment Living

The writing on the walls
The debate about intensification is hotting up just as Auckland Council is about to unveil its Unitary Plan. The New Zealand Herald has just run four articles together, two advocating a high density city and two pointing to its flaws.

The Deputy Mayor suggests that the Unitary Plan will give us good urban design, “through the mix of apartment living, terrace houses and some land release and development around the edges of Auckland”.  She makes the point that “a lot of young people and a lot of retired people want to live where they can give up their car, live close to public transport, and live in town.” 

Of course, there are a lot more people in the city who are not young or retired and cannot afford to reduce their mobility.  If we fail to cater for their needs and respond to their aspirations for where they might live, then there may be fewer of them in the future as they fuel the exodus to Australia.  And as they tend to be in the young family cohorts the population predictions on which the plan is based will be even less likely to come to fruition.

Can we mandate good design?
The Deputy Mayor’s assertion that the plan will enshrine “good urban design” is a worry.  Good urban design for whom?  And by whom?   Because the recent rejection by the community and planning commissioners of an apartment above the Milford shopping mall in one of Auckland’s coastal suburbs suggests once more that the planned lift in density may not be seen as good design by the communities affected.  And simply rejecting their concerns as nimbyism is a failure to engage in the issues. 

Anyway, how do we enshrine such a subjective, time-bound notion as good design in a statutory city plan?  Urban design reflects setting, culture, and circumstance. How can all that be locked down in a rule book?  That seems to be the antithesis of good design.

Getting personal
The impending plan and the emotions it is raising led me to reflect on my own experience of apartment living, which most recently covers Sydney and Singapore – each time at a point of transition in my own life.

The Ups and Downs of City Living
When moving to Sydney in 1999 I spent a couple of months in the West Tower of The Forum development at St Leonards, above the North Shore Line and 10 minutes by train from the CBD.  I was on the 15th of 38 floors, in one of 440 apartments. 

The Forum, St Leonards, North Sydney

The apartment had a great (but narrow) view.  With only one external wall façade it didn’t see a lot of sun. Consequently, natural air flow and temperature regulation didn’t work so well, meaning comfort depended on running air-conditioning for prolonged periods.

You could turn the aircon off and open the sliding door onto the small balcony if you did want fresh air.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t that fresh.   If you hung washing on the deck it would come back dusted with the grime of busy city streets. 

Fortunately, there was a clothes dryer in the cupboard by the kitchen.

Unfortunately, the kitchen was central to the apartment.  The clothes dryer had to compete with the air conditioning.  Still, the rumble of the dryer was generally preferable to the rumble, squealing brakes, and sirens of busy city streets.

Of course, cooking smells lingered long in the small apartment with the window closed.  Fortunately, there was a selection of fast food places in the foyer between the escalator from the station and the lifts to the apartment.  Great for the waistline.

The complex had a pool for exercise.   Unfortunately, it was usually crowded with young people who I think also lived in the complex.  Fortunately I had television as an alternative. 

I tried to maintain my jogging routine but heavily trafficked main roads and pedestrian barriers on one side and the broken down paving of the ageing suburban streets in the shadow of the towers on the other were discouraging. 

So I got my routine established – toast in the apartment in the morning, lift down to the foyer, coffee to go, train to the city, lift up to the office, work, lift down and two  minute walk back to the station, train home, fast food in the foyer, lift up to the apartment, washing in the dryer, television, bed.  

(Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately - I did not know people to hang out with in nearby pubs and cafes, the other obvious form of recreation for city apartment living).

Fortunately, family joined me so we moved on to a 20 storey block close to the harbour and further from the CBD, and three months later a nine storey block, and 12 months later a six apartment block, each one more liveable than the one before it. 

Another Singapore Success
And then there was time spent living in  high rise Regent Heights apartments in Singapore for several months, three towers with 645 apartments.  This worked well, perhaps because in Singapore there are few choices.  There is a pride in design, and a willingness to allow it to flourish, and a solidity in construction all-too-often absent in some of the apartments in central Auckland.  In Singapore apartments built in the last twenty years or so are also generous in grounds, gardens and amenities.


Region Heights Apartments, Bukit Batok, Singapore

Regent Heights had a driving range and putting greens, tennis courts, its own gym, swimming pools, restaurant, and barbecues.  And I was assured that this level of design and appointment was not unusual.  Slightly older complexes nearby had open food courts at their base - important community meeting places -- gardens and children’s’ play areas.

Regent Heights - Ground Level

 Apartments are not built as add-ons to old town centres or to exploit airspace above commercial premises.  They are central to achieving the high levels of open space and greenery which is a mark of the confined and crowded city-state, providing areas of ambience and respite from commercial activity.  They are not imposed on an existing, low rise fabric, or part of a plan that see open space as houses in waiting, or “mixed” with non-residential uses. 

Quality not quantity
We don't need to copy Singapore, but the experience suggests that apartment living can be done well – provided it’s not a matter of retrofitting and sacrificing the quality of existing city spaces.  And providing some freedom is given to design apartments that add to the quality of life.  So far in Auckland our experience has been decidedly mixed.  Let’s hope that the Unitary Plan pushes us towards the quality rather than quantity end of the medium density spectrum.

 

Apartment Living, Hobson St, Auckland

 

Out Might Just be Better than Up - the Housing Density Debate is Not Over

The fall-back position – let’s not be LA

New Minister of Housing Dr Nick Smith is determined to “smash the city limits”, so that Auckland grows out, as well as up.  The Mayor of Auckland responded with the claim that allowing the city to expand outward is tantamount to advocating a “flawed Los Angeles model of suburban sprawl and unbridled land availability", and that it would be a throwback to the 1940s and 1950s.

That rather simplifies an argument that has to be had. 

Los Angeles works

For a start, the comparison with Los Angeles is misleading.  Greater Los Angeles has close to 13million people in an area of 4,230 sq.km.  Auckland has 1.4m in 560sqkm.  Los Angeles occupies a broad basin with generally benign topography. Auckland occupies a fragmented isthmus with significant physical constraints.  Los Angeles is reportedly the highest density urban area in the US at 2,730 people per square kilometre, and it works well because it has multiple city centres.

 Melbourne lags

The Mayor suggests that we look to Melbourne, Hong Kong, and London as exemplars.  These are hardly helpful, either. Melbourne with more than 4m people is by no means a compact city.  With 2,660 people/sq.km it has a lower residential density than Los Angeles or Auckland (2,700/sq.km).  And it’s apparently the 15^th most expensive city in the world to live in – compare this with Auckland’s 56^th ranking.   

Hong Kong makes the eyes water

Hong Kong – now there’s an urban design success story, the 9th most expensive city in the world.  Seven million people living in 1,104sqkm, that’s 6,480/sq.km.  Maybe we could emulate that.

But why would we?  Hong Kong may be a great place to visit but few Aucklanders are likely to choose to live there.  Any notion of reproducing Hong Kong here would destroy what already makes Auckland a great place to live.

But it sure would cut down on migration, and that would ease our growth pressures.

Hong Kong is crowded, congested, polluted.  There is limited accessible green space.  It might work for the small group of elite and wealthy who dwell above it all on Victoria Peak.  But the lifestyle of the majority is not one that most New Zealanders would aspire to.

Sprawling Metro, Crowded City, Congested Streets - that's London

The London Urban Area has a population of nearly 12m and occupies 8,920sq.km. The density is some 1,336 persons/sq.km.  But this includes extensive green belts.  The City comprises around 8.2m people living in 1,870sq.km, or 5,210/sq.km.

The majority of Londoners live out their lives in urban villages in an area settled in one form or another for 2,000 years. It occupies gentle rolling down land which has enabled it to extend outward in all directions.  

Interestingly, despite high residential densities and high charges aimed at reducing it, congestion today is a critical problem.  Look at this from a recent report by the Transport Committee for Greater London:

20 per cent of the UK’s congestion is concentrated on just five per cent of the road network in London. These economically and strategically important areas will continue to face pressure as billions of pounds in regeneration funds are concentrated on areas where the opportunity to add new infrastructure is severely limited. According to the Mayor’s Transport Strategy, congestion could rise by as much as 14 per cent, even with the Strategy’s proposals implemented in full.

Does that hold out any prospect that pursuing London-like densities will make Auckland a better place to live?

So does what we say line up with what we do?  

The Mayor said that Aucklanders have already agreed on the city's "compact footprint". He is presumably relying on responses to surveys conducted in the shadow of heavy council promotion of the idea that improved amenity and easier traffic will result from consolidation.  But that’s simply an abstract response to an unproven vision.

The theory is different from the practice.  The apartment alternative – which tends to be what people think about when confronted with the idea of higher residential density -- doesn’t hold a lot of appeal.  More to the point - it doesn’t reflect the choices people are making. 

Look at the graph below: the mix of building consents issued for dwellings in Auckland between 1996 and 2012 shows that the great majority of participants in the market for new homes prefer detached dwellings.  Not many appear to want to live in the housing conditions more commonly associated with Hong Kong or London.



The share of consents issued for all residences comprising detached houses



 

Some conversation starters

The Minister and the Mayor are clearly going to engage on this matter.   Here are some ideas that may help the discussion.

1  Please, avoid misleading international analogies.

2  Don’t uncritically lean on potentially flawed studies from overseas (and that includes Australia) to support policies that risk imposing large costs on the community and reducing the quality of Auckland as a place to live. 

3  Instead, focus on Auckland, its distinctive and constrained physical geography  and its distinctive and expansive culture, and be prepared to apply some rigorous and relevant analysis to unitary plan objectives and policies for accommodating its growth.

4  Consider that perhaps the claimed cost differences between greenfield growth and redevelopment are illusory.  For starters, take fully into account the price of retrofitting ageing and under-capacity infrastructure to achieve the latter.  Think about how – and how much it will cost – to cope with the congestion that comes with intensification. 

The visible and invisible spending associated with supporting higher densities can lead to very expensive step changes in public capital expenditure and ongoing costs, especially transit costs  (think Auckland’s proposed underground central rail loop).  These and their fiscal impacts need to be honestly costed into your equations.

5  Think about the benefits of the alternative to going up. What do people want? Any apparent economic advantage favouring inner city living may be a lot less than the price people are prepared to pay to purchase a house in a suburban locality.

6  In any case, analysis generally reveals that any savings that might arise from increasing housing density follow a U-shaped curve.  After a preliminary fall, unit costs begin to rise again with increasing densities (at precisely what point depends on where you start from).  Given Auckland’s geography diseconomies are likely to set in quickly as density increases.

7  Recognise the opportunities to put into place highly efficient urban design that responds to local conditions and incorporates modern infrastructure in well-connected greenfield and satellites sites that retain Auckland’s and Aucklanders’ access to country and coast.

8  Look seriously into the long-term health effects of exposing many more people to high doses of air pollution in inner city housing.  And try to resist the idea that open space in urban areas (including golf courses) is just housing land in waiting.  In their green and accessible state such spaces make a major contribution to the well-being of city residents.

9  Consider the prospects for environmental and economic savings by increasing suburban employment centres (and encouraging public transport to serve them). It makes economic sense to have employment opportunities close to where people live rather than require mass commuting to a few central nodes.

10  There are social equity issues here, too.  We could have our own Victoria Peak by preserving just a small amount of greenspace in the quest for greater density.  We can bias our policies and plans for the young and restless, the transient and the dispossessed – the people who will occupy those apartments that lack water views and designer kitchens.  The rest of us, planners and politicians include, can take refuge in the remaining leafy suburbs, hoping that we are not left with imitations of London’s depressed housing estates or Scotland’s tenement slums in twenty years’ time.  Now that would really be taking us back to the 1950s and 1960s.

We need a solution that works for Auckland and Aucklanders, old and new

Economics, household demand, equity, environmental outcomes and – yes, that overused word –liveability demand a lot more imagination and flexibility than comes with simply copying overseas cities, especially the wrong ones. 

Certainly look up a little.  That will work for some of us.  But don’t forget to look out for the majority.

Auckland is already eminently liveable.  That’s why so many people live here – including many migrants from the sorts of places the Council would apparently have us imitate.  Let’s not bury what we already have by gazing up if out is a better fit.