There have been increasing calls for more urgent infrastructure delivery and central Government involvement in the country’s biggest city. Video / NZ Herald
Auckland Council is developing a new plan for intensification and building restrictions in flood-prone areas.
The plan aims to increase housing capacity while addressing flood risks and other natural hazards.
Mayor Wayne Brown supports the plan, emphasising quick, practical solutions with minimal cost to ratepayers.
Auckland Council is drawing up a new intensification blueprint and new building restrictions for flood-prone areas – behind closed doors.
The new planning rules will deal with two of the city’s biggest challenges and respond to mounting pressure from the Government for more housing.
It comes as councillors approved tallerbuildings and greater density in the city centre last week, providing for more than four times the number of homes and businesses within the CBD.
Details of the new intensification blueprint and flood protection changes have been shared with councillors at a confidential workshop for an “Integrated Intensification Plan Change” and will be released publicly in the next couple of months.
The exercise draws on work from the previous Labour Government to liberalise planning rules for more housing and follows the devastating storms in 2023 and Resource Management Act Reform Minister Chris Bishop’s overhaul of the Resource Management Act (RMA).
Auckland Council approved higher apartments and more density in the CBD last week.
Mayor Wayne Brown has described the work as “a bit like RMA gymnastics” and supports legislation expected to be reported to the House in June and passed in August.
Council planning director Megan Tyler said the new rules would better protect people and property from significant flood risks, landslides, coastal erosion and natural hazards.
The Unitary Plan – the council’s current planning blueprint – had not stopped hundreds of new homes being consented in known flood plains across the city since the Auckland Anniversary weekend and Cyclone Gabrielle storms damaged or destroyed thousands of properties.
This is because the Unitary Plan did not allow for downzoning, leaving the council stuck with the status quo.
Tyler said the new intensification rules would respond to the Government’s expectations for more housing and business opportunities in and around town centres and key transport corridors.
This is where tension arises between the council and the Government, with Bishop making his views clear on the track for Auckland.
The Unitary Plan has not stopped hundreds of new homes being consented in known flood plains across the city since the Auckland Anniversary weekend and Cyclone Gabrielle storms. Photo / Dean Purcell
In a speech to the Herald‘s Project Auckland event in March, the minister said the opening of the City Rail Link (CRL) next year should come with high-density, mixed-use developments within walking distance of stations.
Bishop said the rejection by planning commissioners of an 11-storey office building on Karangahape Rd near the CRL made him feel “physically ill” and was an example of why the Government was scrapping the RMA and replacing it with “a radically more enabling system predicated on property rights”.
Bishop’s RMA reforms also impact:
The city’s “Special Character Areas” of villas and bungalows, and listed heritage buildings and areas.
Moving away from considering matters such as built form and appearance of housing.
Restricting councils from regulating interior requirements.
The minister has also aspired to have 10- to-20-storey apartment towers alongside the city’s rail lines over the coming decades.
Transport Minister Chris Bishop (left) and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown are working on new planning rules for Auckland.
To combat Bishop’s desire to standardise zoning and liberalise planning rules, the council is highlighting a study into medium-density housing that found issues with the quality of terraced housing and low-rise apartments.
Research from the study by the council’s economic and social research and evaluation team in 2023 said the popular form of housing was better suited to small households, not families with children.
It found medium-density units sweltering in summer, homes with too many toilets and bathrooms and too little storage, insufficient parking, garages becoming storage units or converted into gyms, and privacy issues.
More than half of the 110 consented plans analysed as part of the study had internal floor areas smaller than the best-practice guidelines in New Zealand and Australia.
The study highlighted the move away from standalone houses to large numbers of medium- and high-density housing over the past decade.
For example, 62% of new dwellings consented in Auckland in 2023 were “townhouses, flats and units”.
Terraced housing is becoming increasingly popular in Auckland.
“This relatively recent and rapid supply of medium- and high-density housing across Auckland is not only increasing housing options for Aucklanders but also transforming the built environment,” the researchers said.
Writing in the Herald this month, council chief executive Phil Wilson said that between 2016 and 2021, 21,800 new dwellings were consented as a direct result of upzoning in the Unitary Plan.
Planning committee chairman Richard Hills said the council would have the ability to opt out of the previous Government’s directive that allowed three dwellings of up to three storeys on most sites in Auckland. But the Government had been clear that the council must find the same or extra capacity in the new intensification plan change.
The new plan change will have stronger rules to better protect people and property from flooding and other hazards, Hills said.
“This will be an opportunity to focus more housing capacity in lower-risk and better-connected places,” he said.
Waitematā and Gulf councillor Mike Lee said councillors did not have all the details of the proposed changes, but it looked like the city’s garden suburbs and heritage townscapes would be targeted, despite the hard lessons of the 1990s shoebox apartments.
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