David Seymour, Joni Mitchell and the Auckland housing density debate - Simon Wilson

THREE FACTS

• Auckland Council has proposed a new residential zoning plan.
• It introduces more density around train stations, town centres and along arterial roads, but reduces the number of properties subject to greater density in the suburbs.
• The council will decide soon whether to “notify” it for public consultation.

I’ve been going to public meetings about the proposed new residential zones, and I keep hearing (and reading) things that are simply not true.

Sometimes, they’re said by people who are supposed to know better.

The biggest mistakes concern “walkable catchments” and the number of new homes to be built.

Walkable catchments are the areas around specified train stations and town centres where medium-rise or high-rise apartment blocks will be permitted.

For 10-storey and 15-storey blocks, they define the outer limit of a 10-minute walk to the station. Roughly, that’s about 800 metres. If you live within the limit, you’re in the catchment.

Act leader David Seymour complained to a meeting he called in Parnell last week that walkable catchments were set “as the crow flies” and did not allow for steep gullies, a railway line you can’t cross or other impediments to an easy walk.

In other words, they’re just a circle with an 800m radius drawn around the station.

Councillor Mike Lee has said the same thing, in that meeting and at council meetings.

The council’s chief planning officer, Megan Tyler, was at the Parnell meeting. Her role was to keep the non-political facts on the table.

When Seymour made his “crow flies” claim, he turned to her for confirmation.

“Is that right?” he asked her, then turned to the crowd.

“Megan Tyler is giving me the thumbs up.”

But it’s not right.

The walkable catchments around those train stations do not include everywhere within an 800m radius around the station. They are measured on actual streets and take the landscape and obstructing features into account.

David Seymour and councillor Mike Lee, allies at Seymour's public meeting on housing density in Parnell. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

The best example is the catchment around the Kingsland station. An 800m radius would stretch to Great North Rd, on the far side of the gully containing the Northwest Motorway.

But the catchment stops on the near side of that motorway.

I asked Tyler why she had confirmed Seymour’s claim and she told me; “I have no recollection of agreeing to that statement”.

But, she added; “You are right, it’s not as the crow flies, we try to make sure it recognises topography, state highways, railway lines, etc”.

Seymour also told the meeting he thought the 800m limit was “plucked from nowhere”.

Tyler did correct him on that.

“It’s completely normal in many other cities,” she said.

And the number of homes to be built? Opponents of the plan continue to claim it’s designed to build two million homes, which would mean a massive increase in population.

Councillor Maurice Williamson told a meeting in Howick the plan “assumes a population of six million people”.

Eden-Albert local board chair Kendyl Smith told a meeting in Mt Eden; “The proposal is to load in a huge new population”.

Councillor Christine Fletcher told the same meeting the intention is to have “4.8 million more people”.

Lee told the Parnell meeting; “The major problem is the crazy amount of intensive housing. Catering for seven to nine million people in Auckland is completely crazy”.

But as Tyler said; “Zoning doesn’t mean development will happen all at once. Or at all”.

She’s right. Zoning always allows for more homes than are needed or will be built.

Think about what would happen if it didn’t.

If zoning allowed only for the number of homes required, then every property owner in a density zone would be required by law to build to the maximum capacity allowed in that zone.

Regardless of the homeowner’s wishes, economic circumstances, or even whether there was a market for the new homes.

We don’t allow governments to tell property owners what to do like that, and nobody thinks we should.

This is the core reason zoning capacity has to exceed demand.

And it’s not “another” two million homes, as North Shore candidate John Gillon told a meeting in Beach Haven this week. He was repeating a very common mistake.

Tyler and her planning colleagues have repeatedly advised council the capacity for two million includes the 550,000 we already have.

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop is a fan of both housing density and greenfields growth. Photo / RNZ / Mark Papalii

For the record, the actual number of homes we’ll have by 2050 will probably be about twice what we have now. And even with new zoning, it’s likely most of them will still be single houses on their own properties.

Mayor Wayne Brown is scathing of councillors who say we’re going to build two million homes.

“Scaring people about something that isn’t going to happen is always a good way to be re-elected,” he says.

Leaving aside the factual disinformation about the proposed plan change, there is also a values debate going on about the city we want.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, Epsom list MP Paul Goldsmith and Seymour all say we should build more on the outskirts of the city.

Even RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, who is driving the density requirements, is a fan of “greenfields” development.

Seymour was thinking of this when he said in Parnell; “The post war baby boom produced huge numbers of babies, and yet we managed”.

Did we? You can see the results of 75 years of greenfields growth all around Auckland. That baby boom and the harbour bridge, opened in 1959, pushed out the urban edge of the Auckland region in the north, south, east and west.

It wasn’t problem-free.

In the 1960s, society learned about “suburban neurosis”: the trauma of mothers stuck in sprawling featureless suburbs with babies, no services and no way to escape.

Market gardens in the south and orchards in the west disappeared, with elite soils irreversibly ruined.

The city dug up its tram tracks, largely abandoned its commitment to public transport and built motorways and many other big roads.

Auckland made itself dependent on cars.

It’s often argued that greenfields growth pays for itself with development contributions. But that’s only partly true.

Those contributions help to install power, water services and local streets. But they don’t pay for parks, playgrounds and other such amenities.

And they don’t cover the costs of car dependency, congestion, carbon emissions, motorway construction and maintenance.

If we keep assuming we have to cater to car dependency instead of trying to reduce it, all those problems will get worse. If we do want to reduce it, we need housing density close to public transport.

More than once, at the public meetings I’ve attended, opponents of density in their neighbourhood have quoted protest songs to support their case.

But Malvina Reynolds’ 1962 song Little Boxes isn’t about the perils of density done badly.

“Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes all the same” is a satire about sprawl.

And Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi from 1970, in which she sings, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot,” is an indictment of the car dependency that sprawl creates.

Greenfields growth is what paves paradise.

Orakei Local Board member Troy Churton makes a finger gun gesture at local MP and Cabinet minister Paul Goldsmith, at a meeting in Mt Eden. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

We need to get better at talking about this. Violent metaphors don’t help, especially as Ōrākei local board member Troy Churton’s finger gun pointed at a Cabinet minister’s head is not the only example.

Fletcher declared last week that the Government and council have “blood on their hands”.

A homeowner in Kohimarama, with neighbours building up to three storeys next door, says; “It’s like we’re being raped and pillaged”.

Let’s try to stick to the facts.