With an eye to increase the number of Special Housing Areas in Tauranga, city council is looking for land owners or developers with plans for a piece of land.
Establishing SHAs helped increase the supply of housing in rapidly-growing cities.
Council would be considering new SHAs in batches every six months and was calling for the first round of applications.
In Tauranga SHAs were a good way to provide more immediate development capacity while plans continued for new, larger-scale urban growth areas on the outskirts of the city.
The process to creating a SHA began with a landowner identifying a piece of land suitable for residential development.
This could be greenfield - undeveloped land - or brownfield with existing houses or commercial properties but with potential for redevelopment into housing.
The landowner next would determine what type of housing the land could accommodate, for example suburban residential, terraced housing, apartments.
The landowner would assess how soon development could happen, contact city council with the information and talk it through together.
Council did not need a detailed development plan to consider approving a SHA.
The finer details of developments were determined through the subsequent resource consenting process.
Resource consenting processes for SHAs were fast-tracked so houses could be built quicker.
SHAs could only be established in areas with suitable infrastructure such as roads, wastewater systems, water supply pipes.