Why the so-called Super City hasn’t delivered for Aucklanders – Bruce Cotterill

Auckland's traffic is worse and major projects take longer, run way over time and cost more than imagined. Photo / Jason Oxenham

THREE KEY FACTS:

• The Super City was set up nearly 15 years ago to improve efficiency and co-ordination.
• Takapuna has more than 40 shops either vacant or with temporary tenants in its 900m retail strip.
• Voters will have the opportunity to effect change in the local body elections late this year.

Do you remember the Super City? That gigantic failure of local government policy that saw Auckland’s suburbs surrender their decision-making and their character to the bureaucrats downtown?

By the time our local body elections roll around later this year, it will be 15 years since our seven regional councils were restructured into the so-called Super City under the Auckland Council. There was no referendum on the topic. Just a royal commission on Auckland governance and an enthusiastic Local Government Minister who championed its creation.

The Super City was meant to deliver unified regional planning, and improved co-ordination and efficiency in decision making and service delivery.

We don’t often review decisions made by our civic leaders, and I don’t think I can remember elected officials being held accountable for their decisions, other than that inevitable day at the polling booth in three years’ time.

But let’s be honest with ourselves. The so-called “Super City” failed. It was meant to be more efficient, but it wasn’t. Costs were meant to go down, but they didn’t. It was supposed to bring greater expertise to local issues, but there is no evidence to support that. It was meant to foster Auckland’s growth as a global city. But it hasn’t. Then there was housing. No, it hasn’t helped that either.

Instead, our traffic is worse, major projects take longer, run way over time and cost more than imagined. A modest amount of housing has been placed, some even without transport or parking. Council silos run deeper and less co-ordinated than before. Our roads are narrowed by excessive and unnecessary cycleways, and many of our once pristine suburbs have been forgotten.

Worst of all, we are left with uninformed councillors and bureaucrats, with little or no localised knowledge of the areas and suburbs they influence, making decisions about the streets that we live in.

I live on Auckland’s North Shore. It would seem that we’re the forgotten cousin of the Super City merger. We’re over the bridge. Easy to overlook. But these days, the grass in the park grows higher before it gets cut and the streets aren’t as clean as they once were. There’s more rubbish on the beach too, and the water’s a bit murky for swimming for a few days after it rains. That’s what happens when your representatives don’t drive past the problems each day. When they’re over the bridge. They don’t see the problems because they don’t live there! Out of sight, out of mind.

Call me parochial, but I never heard former Mayors Len Brown or Phil Goff mention the North Shore. To his credit, at least Wayne Brown knows where we are.

But like every suburb in Auckland, we have anonymous councillors and bureaucrats making decisions about our suburbs that are uninformed and ultimately disrespectful of the people who live in those neighbourhoods.

My suburb, Takapuna, was formerly the “capital” of the North Shore. The council offices were there, and local councillors were a common sight on the local streets. They couldn’t avoid the view of the locals or, for that matter, the overgrown lawns at the swimming pool. But Takapuna, like so many other corners of the so-called Super City, is now a shadow of its former self.

New planned rental tower (right) with the existing Sentinel apartment tower (left) in the heart of Takapuna. Photo / McConnell

Those distant councillors have now approved for Takapuna to have 12-storey high-rise apartments behind the reserve on the beachfront. Beachgoers need not worry about the late afternoon sunburn because there won’t be any sun! They’re also in the process of approving a proposal to turn the Takapuna Golf Course into a wetland. One assumes the golfers will go somewhere else. I guess it doesn’t matter when you live on the other side of the bridge.

In Takapuna, the local traffic flows were brutalised in the immediate aftermath of the Covid lockdowns. I wrote at the time that the unfortunate retailers on the suburb’s main strip, having endured the compulsory lockdowns, found their businesses in the middle of a construction site for months, almost immediately after we all returned to work.

The purpose was to realign Takapuna’s traffic flows. They made the main street one way and added, of course, a cycle lane. They forced traffic travelling south out through the suburb to choose a not-so-obvious route away from those retailers, either one that took them down a side road at 15km/h, dodging beachside car parking, or one out to the western side of town and into the motorway feeders. Just in case that didn’t clog things up enough, they took a free left turn and put a traffic light there. The result? Beachside gridlock and empty shops.

It’s little wonder that there are more than 40 shops either vacant or with temporary tenants in the retail strip of 900m. If you wanted to run a case study on how to stuff up a small suburban town, this would be it.

There are lessons for every suburb in Auckland in what is going on in Takapuna.

Takapuna is designated within the unitary plan as a Metropolitan Centre and a key transport hub. This, even though there is neither a train service, ferry service or bus terminal. There is parking for about four buses in an elongated strip in the town centre, and a bus station without any car parking adjacent to the motorway, a 20-minute walk away.

For some reason, according to council decision makers, this gridlocked “hub” with inadequate car parking needs more apartments. That same unitary plan that approved 6m and, further back from the beach, 13m maximum height restrictions has been over-ridden by planners and councillors who’ve approved one beach-side block, on the old Colmar Brunton site, at 35m without public notification.

Further back, on the old gasometer site, consent was granted for 358 build-to-rent apartments, 152m high and comprising 39 storeys. The height exceeds the unitary plan provision by 72.5m. And yet, again, there was no requirement for notification, meaning there was no opportunity for residents to object.

So, what’s the point of the unitary plan if it gets rolled so easily? A local beachside motel operator has sensed an opportunity in an area zoned for three storeys and put in a submission seeking 13 storeys! A successful application will see more afternoon shadows across the camping ground and beach, and even more traffic around the often chaotic boat-ramp area.

Elsewhere, on what is currently the council-owned central carpark, another new apartment complex, this time with 115 apartments, is due to get under way.

Takapuna is often a finalist for New Zealand’s top 10 city beaches. Photo / Mark Leedom

Takapuna Beach, 15 minutes from the CBD, should be a jewel in the city’s crown. And yet there seems to be little, if any, consideration of the beachscape, sewer capacity, traffic planning or, most recently, long shadows across that beach and its adjacent reserve.

Call me a “nimby” if you wish. But I see no point in developing student apartments where there is no university. Nor do I see value in building apartment accommodation without carparks in a suburban centre with inadequate public transport. And why would you build masses of apartments in an area where it can already take an hour to drive the 2km to the motorway at 7.30am?

These comments are not solely my own. The local residents I speak to don’t want this stuff. And yet the councillors, those whose backyards are nowhere near, are forcing the development and associated chaos upon us.

Assuming that we can break out of our local authority election apathy, we will have the chance to go to the polls once more later this year. For those of us on the North Shore, our left-leaning council incumbents will once again likely get the nod despite a track record that ignores us. But perhaps those of us who care about our suburbs should be looking for representatives who will start doing things for the people rather than to the people.

At the end of the day, we need to assess what we want from our local authorities. Simply put, we want the traffic to flow freely and the rubbish to be collected. We want the sewage to be well managed and stormwater to drain away quickly. We want our beaches’ pristine character to be reinstated and our harbour waters to be clear and safe. We want our parks and facilities to be well-maintained and accessible.

And so my plea to the candidates for this year’s local body elections goes like this.

Whatever your reasons for throwing your hat in the ring, try to stay true to yourself. Don’t be misled by unelected bureaucrats or elected officials whose views do not align with yours. And consider what the people want. The people who voted for you. You are, after all, there to act on their behalf and in their interests.

It shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Bruce Cotterill is a professional director, speaker and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book, The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast, Leaders Getting Coffee. www.brucecotterill.com