Housing Corporation chief executive Glen Sowry, right, is pictured here with Housing Minister Nick Smith, left. Photo / Richard Robinson
Housing Corporation chief executive Glen Sowry, right, is pictured here with Housing Minister Nick Smith, left. Photo / Richard Robinson
Hundreds of new homes will be developed on Housing Corporation land in some Auckland suburbs, including Avondale, New Lynn and South Auckland.
In a Herald video interview, chief executive Glen Sowry talked about longer-term plans for the landholdings but also about what he learned on a recent trip to Europe.
"A couple of weeks ago as part of a New Zealand delegation, [I] went to look at infrastructure in the UK so it was everything from big regeneration programmes in London and Manchester through to transport links that support it, so there's a huge amount of infrastructure investment going on in the UK so the scale of course is massive," Sowry said.
"We went to a place called MediaCity, which is the old port area to the west of Manchester in an area called Salford which was a pretty tough area and had become pretty dilapidated and that had been completely regenerated so the BBC had moved there, a big part of their operations. ITV was there, we could look over the Coronation Street set," he said.
"One of the big things I brought back around regeneration in the UK was the huge focus they place on transport links because public transport is massive [there] so to see the way that is built into everything they do with regeneration."
