Auckland housing density and ‘Chrissie’s little train set’: Simon Wilson

Christine Fletcher speaks at a meeting in Mt Eden organised by the Character Coalition to discuss proposed development plans for Auckland. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

THE FACTS

• Auckland Council votes today on a plan change for density in the city.
• There’s been opposition in the “leafy suburbs” to both the options it faces.
• The Government says one option or the other must be chosen.

Christine Fletcher told a good story on Sunday afternoon, at an election campaign meeting in Pt Chevalier. She’s one of the councillors standing for re-election in the Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa ward.

In the late 1990s, Fletcher said, when she was mayor of Auckland City, she was instrumental in getting the Britomart Railway Station built. This is true.

Britomart brought the railway to the bottom of Queen St. Since then, the network has been electrified and double-tracked, and when the City Rail Link opens next year, the entire service will have twice the capacity. Britomart was the foundation of all this and Fletcher was its champion. We are in her debt.

The station was future-proofed: built to allow the tracks to one day run right through and on into the city. And it’s beautiful. Californian architect Mario Madayag, working with local firm Jasmax, gave us a magnificent public facility.

Few projects have been as significant in the making of this modern city.

But, said Fletcher, because of Britomart she became a one-term mayor. She lost the 2001 election to John Banks, who sensed the electoral advantage of being populist and campaigned against what he called “Chrissie’s little train set”.

“What I learned out of that savage experience of losing an election,” she said in Pt Chev, “is that you have to take the people with you ... Wayne Brown has shown a little of that. But you have to take everyone with you.”

Her real subject was not Britomart but the current plan-change proposals, now called Plan Change 120. If adopted, they will introduce more density around train stations and town centres and along arterial routes.

Fletcher said she was “utterly in favour of intensification” but it had to be “in the right places”. The Government and council, she said, had left public opinion behind. “We need to go carefully.”

The council votes on this today and Fletcher wants PC120 set aside. The council’s policy and planning committee chairman Richard Hills says legally this is not an option.

Fletcher’s experience leading the fight for good and necessary progress, only to get turfed out of office, is not uncommon. Politicians lost their jobs over the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney light rail lines, the Eiffel Tower, road-congestion charging in Stockholm, the Jubilee Line in London and even, astonishing as it may seem now, over cycleways in Amsterdam.

In my view, there’s another lesson to learn from all this. You’ll never take everyone with you and sometimes you will lose. But you have to do your best to get the right outcome anyway. Fletcher was right to make Britomart happen, despite what it cost her. History has supported her.

So has Banks, as it happens. In 2003, he was delighted to play a leading role during Britomart’s opening celebrations.

Former Auckland City Mayor John Banks outside the Chief Post Office, the building that would house the new Britomart transport project. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Which begs a question. What would a candidate in the Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa ward do if they believed “utterly” in density “in the right places” but knew they had to take the people with them?

Perhaps they’d say that when it comes to infrastructure, the ward is one of the best-appointed in the city. It has five railway stations, with substantial potential for growth around all of them. It has the city’s nearly completed new wastewater system, the Central Interceptor, running right through it.

It has an enormous empty lot around the Maungawhau station, perfect for new parks and play areas as well as residential and light-commercial blocks. The taller the buildings, the more land is available for green spaces.

It has the Mt Eden Rd ridgeline: as good a route for density as exists anywhere in this city. Other arterials are superbly placed too: Pah Rd, Mount Albert Rd, Balmoral Rd, Sandringham Rd, Dominion Rd, New North Rd, Carrington Rd and more.

An advocate for density done well might also explain that PC120 is much better than the existing plan, called PC78. This plan ignores flood risks and contains the “3x3 rule”: it allows for almost all sections to be divided in three, with three-storey homes built on each new part.

PC120, however, enables downzoning for flood risks and focuses density in the places where most people say it should go.

If PC120 is rejected today, PC78 will be locked in. Our advocate for density done well might be horrified about that. Especially if their ward had the potential to show just how well density can be done.

They would appeal to the better nature of their constituents. And taking a wider view, they might reassure concerned residents that the new plan won’t result in the sudden appearance of apartment blocks all through their suburb. Growth happens slowly.

Christine Fletcher hasn’t done any of this. But other candidates in her ward have, notably councillor Julie Fairey, whose leg was badly broken when she was knocked off her bike by a car recently. She’s been busy explaining the changes online and in meetings, as has her City Vision running mate, Jon Turner.

That’s what “taking the people with you” looks like and Fletcher could have been doing it too. Instead, she’s led a campaign against the plan.

She’s become the John Banks of today.

Why are some residents of Mt Eden, along with residents in some of the other city-fringe suburbs, so upset about PC120?

A Balmoral Residents Association member has written to me about this. He blames the “neoliberalism” of the Minister of Housing and RMA Reform, Chris Bishop.

“My understanding,” he says, “is that Chris Bishop’s policy ... is to drive property prices down by ‘flooding the market’ with [apartments] zoned residential and increasing the supply of housing.

“This is standard neoliberal economic theory. If the market has an oversupply of zoned land, it will respond by reducing land prices, and therefore houses built on them will become more affordable.”

It’s true Bishop wants house prices to fall. But this is not the principal aim of PC120. The plan creates more housing where people want it, addresses congestion and carbon emissions, and boosts economic and social efficiency by creating better connections between where people live and where they work and play.

It should also encourage more affordable housing. This is a term that means different things. For most first-home buyers, it’s low-cost homes. Further along the scale, it means decent but not top-of-the-line apartments for people living in leafy suburbs and wanting to downsize.

And as Mayor Wayne Brown says often, density will allow the potential of the CRL to be maximised. The more people who catch the train because it’s easy, the more the city will be able to afford cheaper and more frequent train services.

This creates a virtuous circle that will take cars off the road and give more people genuine choice about how they get around.

Mt Eden is already littered with sausage flats from the 1970s: low-rise apartments in a row back from the street, like in a pack of sausages, where the rest of the section is covered in concrete. PC120 will allow a much better option: mid-rise apartment blocks with sizeable gardens.

Then-mayor Christine Fletcher with council officials during the long period when she battled for the Britomart railway station. Photo / Martin Sykes

My correspondent points out that the median house price in Auckland has risen by 40% since 2016, when the Auckland Unitary Plan was adopted, even though that plan allowed for double the number of homes in the city over the coming decades. That, he says, is proof the neoliberal theory has failed.

Again, I think this misrepresents what’s really happening. It’s PC78 that represents “the neoliberal theory”. By applying the 3x3 capacity almost everywhere, it leaves development almost entirely to the market.

PC120 changes the equation: it applies a planned approach to ensuring development is focused where it will do the most good.

Criticising PC120 for being neoliberal is a bit like believing developers are evil. But developers build homes. We need them. And we need good regulations around them. PC120 doesn’t prevent that.

Auckland’s leafy suburbs are not going to be ruined by this. In Sydney there are many streets lined with mid-rise apartment blocks and multi-storey terraced housing, and they’re full of trees. These neighbourhoods are attractive, peaceful, successful. And they’re well served by public transport, shops and other amenities, because lots of people live there.

We can do that too. Especially now we’re getting ourselves a really splendid train set, for Chrissie, and Johnny, and everyone.