Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has entered the fray over Auckland’s new intensification plans by calling for more rural land to be opened up for housing.
Luxon, the electorate MP for Botany, yesterday said he personally believed there should be “a lot more greenfields opened up across Auckland”, a view shared by RMA and Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Auckland Minister Simeon Brown, who is the electorate MP for Pakūranga.
Bishop said he was in favour of new greenfield housing, where infrastructure costs could be recovered from new residents.
“However, the current council has a weird aversion to new greenfield housing, big new subdivisions on the city fringe,” he said.
A council spokeswoman said the draft replacement plan, enabling two million homes over many decades, does not propose to rezone any additional land outside the urban area, nor does it alter the urban boundary.
However, she said substantial development capacity already exists on land that has been rezoned since 2013.
At Milldale, a development for 4000 homes inland from Ōrewa, the National Infrastructure Fund provided $48.9 million for water and transport infrastructure in 2018, secured by a levy paid by homeowners.
While attention switched to greenfield development, debate over the proposed up-zoning of tens of thousands of houses for terrace homes and apartments, and the loss of special character status for villas and bungalows, ramps up.
Deputy Prime Minister and Epsom MP David Seymour has said that “Chris [Bishop] has done a good job restoring some common sense to housing policy, particularly by removing the previous Government’s one-size-fits-all intensification rules. That was a big step forward”.
But tonight, Seymour will host a meeting in Parnell to address concerns about up-zoning the city’s oldest suburb and whether existing infrastructure can support increased density. He has a similar meeting in Remuera next week.
Last month, Auckland councillors agreed to begin a replacement plan allowing capacity for up to two million homes by accepting Bishop’s offer to opt out of the previous Government’s medium-density residential standards (MDRS) rules permitting three-storey homes everywhere. Opting out required the council to adopt new planning rules enabling equivalent housing capacity.
Seymour told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking yesterday he was concerned the new plan required almost no greenfield development, where infrastructure costs could be recovered from new residents, unlike in old suburbs.
“In Parnell, a building fell into a sinkhole two years ago after a 120-year-old brick sewer imploded.
“We do need to make it easier to build a home, but what we absolutely cannot do is dislocate planning and infrastructure provision, which will lead to a total disaster,” he said.
Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, the ward councillor for Ōrākei with close ties to the National Party, understood Parnell and Remuera had more single-house zoning under the new plan than under the MDRS.
Special character in Parnell and Remuera was also better protected under the new plan than it was under the MDRS, she said.
Simpson was still unsure how the public would have their say if councillors voted on September 24 to proceed with the draft replacement plan.
“We have written to the Government for clarity around how that will take place and requested a longer submission period than the usual statutory time frame,” she said.
Dushko Bogunovich, a retired adjunct professor of urban design and planning at the University of Auckland, said the intensification debate was becoming Auckland’s number one public controversy.
He said the pro-density camp was right to champion the economic and social benefits of denser development, especially around the soon-to-be upgraded rail network.
But the suburbs earmarked for intensification were still home to residents who deserved the right to peace, privacy, sunshine and a view.
For three decades, Aucklanders had been promised a “quality compact city”. The compact part was well under way, but the quality was conspicuously absent, he said, arguing the city was growing denser, but also uglier and more congested.
Public transport was struggling to keep pace, largely because intensification had been scattered and lacking a coherent spatial strategy, he said.
Bogunovich said Auckland’s geography had evolved into a linear, north-south city anchored by State Highway 1 and that was where most of the planned intensification should occur.
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