Planners: out of control, or holding the line?
Council planners are feeling the heat at the moment for some recent decisions. They discouraged a high rise glass tower in a historic heritage area, declined subdivisions on rural land, and proposed changes to apartments that would make them nicer for future residents. Are they insane?
What people might not know is that there is considerable care, expertise and experience within council’s planning staff. Most consents are granted. And where they are not, it is usually because planners are trying to deliver what voters wanted in the first place, namely, an attractive city that hasn’t levelled all its heritage, or chopped down all its trees.
Let’s start with heritage. Some people love it, others hate it. There is not much of it, but a disproportionate amount is in central areas close to public transport, jobs, universities where it could provide more office space, shops and apartments for a growing population.
Recently the Independent Hearing Commissioners decided against consenting an 11-storey office tower on Karangahape Road, an 8-minute walk from the new CRL. Karangahape Road is one of two historic heritage areas in the city centre (the other is around Albert Park and the University), with lots of old buildings on the ridge including St Kevin’s Arcade, the George Courts building and old Victorian hotels.
The decision caught a lot of heat. On one side, protecting heritage slows and complicates development. On the other, it holds the line in the wrack and ruin of identity, beauty and craftmanship from another time.
However, it is not either/or. Heritage zoning does not stop development but informs it. Significant height is enabled, around 35m (nine storeys) on sites adjacent to Karangahape Road but asks developers to work with and support the existing heritage. One of the possible design solutions are setbacks. Look up and you can see how human scale has been maintained at street level but five storeys up, the roof line steps up with gardens on them. The back of the site might be eight storeys and the buildings behind are very tall indeed. Heritage precincts are found in many cities internationally including London, New York, Hanoi and Melbourne and is very, very popular. Having precincts with their own unique vibe is cool.
The bottom line is, Council asked the developer to take this sort of approach and they refused.
And then there is the proposal to remove protections for level 3 soils. While these are not the most elite soils, they are not bad, and useful for many farming activities: livestock, sheds and greenhouses. They can also serve as a buffer zone for farming to expand into as the population grows. Major weather events put our food supply at risk. To balance that we will need more farmland in the future, not less.
Clusters of housing development throughout the rural zone are not helpful either. Big areas of joined up land are easier to farm than fields here and there. Even Federated Farmers and Horticulture NZ are concerned about the government’s direction of travel.
Then there are proposals to allow the intensive subdivision of suburbia for low rise infill. Currently, single house zones and special character areas preserve the mature trees and gardens that form urban oases of biodiversity. Development of 480m2 sites with three to five townhouses means a lot of concrete, a wall to look at, and minimal room for plants. It’s happening all over Auckland while natural habitat vanishes.
It doesn’t have to be that way. We can have more homes for people, without chopping down mature trees and concreting over everything. Planning rules can enable taller terrace housing facing the street with joined up gardens behind, like in London, Prague or Copenhagen. This sort of housing provides the same or greater population densities as townhouses, but you also get trees, flowers, veggie gardens, play, and barbecues.
We should be thinking about water sensitive cities, and building away from flowpaths and floodplains to reduce the impact of flash floods. The RMA rules make it very hard for council to refuse developments on sites of natural hazard. This needs to change, to ensure people are not put in harms way. Council is advocating for this. Government is yet to support it.
More homes are needed and density is helpful. If you want to be able to walk to the shops and the pub, there needs enough other people in walking distance to make those businesses viable. This article is NOT arguing against development but it is asking that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Urbanists often point to exemplar cities like Freiburg, London and Vienna: they all use planning rules to make the most of historic and modern development. The Wynyard Quarter demonstrates this approach works successfully and profitably in New Zealand too. Conversely, there are plenty of examples here (cough, leaky buildings) that point towards the massive problems and losses that come when hope and ideology triumph over experience and sensible checks and balances.
Developers can be visionary, but for some building is just a business. While the RMA, the Auckland Unitary Plan and the Building Code are under scrutiny, it is in the interests of the sector to lobby for settings that boost profit margins. This does not help the best developers wanting to raise the bar - or future residents. More clarity is helpful, reduced standards are not.
It also pays to remember, there are leaders at local and central government level with no time for heritage, amenity or the environment. They are keen to enable development wherever it is, whatever its form, or its cumulative impacts. For Aucklanders, without second homes, or the wealth to control the environment around them, staunch council planners - holding the line on standards, while encouraging great new developments that will stand the test of time - are allies not enemies.
This post has been co-written by Jessica Rose. A shortened version of it was published in the Listener. The image is of a perimeter block in Denmark - https://www.plandesignxplore.com/buildingportland/2019/9/13/perimeter-blocks