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Marketing gurus Tony Noble and Caroline Sayle swapped Ponsonby for the bush for the same reasons many forsake the convenience of the city - "because they want to look out on a beautiful landscape, they want quiet, they want peace," Noble says.
Noble and Sayle moved to Dairy
Flat five years ago so Caroline could be close to her horses. By delaying their travel, commuting to and from their IT marketing consultancy business in Freemans Bay took about half an hour.
Even then, suitable properties were in short supply and they paid nearly $500,000 for 3ha, mostly in bush.
They spent a further $150,000 on the property, mostly on landscaping, before selling last month for more than $900,000. Now they're renting while they look for a bigger lifestyle block.
"We thought if we were prepared to drive 10 minutes further out we could get a reasonable house with quality grazing land." But such properties are scarce and priced accordingly.
Noble says land values in Rodney's lifestyle belt are rising as rapidly as in Auckland's inner-city suburbs.
He says quite modest houses on 2.5ha properties fetch about $1.7 million. Nice homes on 4ha go for more than $2 million.
"We were hoping the heat might go out of the market in winter but I'm not sure that's going to happen. There's been a $100,000 shift in around two years."
The green-belt property boom is not confined to Rodney. Noble's weekend hobby - flying gliders, based at Drury airstrip - has given him a bird's-eye view of the pace of change from Manukau to Franklin. "Five years ago there were a couple of houses on the hill. Today there are 60."
"As values go up and suburbia creeps out into lifestyle blocks people cash up and go and buy nicer land - more land - further out."
As Noble and Sayle continue their search for a larger slice of paradise, war is being waged over the green belt surrounding Auckland.
The Auckland Regional Council says there's land to burn for lifestyle blocks within cooey of the big smoke. Consultant demographer David Lindsey told a planning hearing last week that at present "take-up" rates there was enough land for lifestylers to last 44 years without easing subdivision rules.
That took some swallowing, given the evidence of soaring demand and tight supply. But Lindsey's research identifies a potential 28,800 titles on which homes could be built if their owners choose to do so.
He says the present rate of uptake is just 650 lots a year.
Critics maintain that the uptake rate is low only because the supply of available lots is so small.
Owners who could subdivide may choose not to, for many reasons. Some are land-banking and happy to continue to ride the surging property wave.
Real estate agents say many are migrant investors who spend most of the year overseas.
But most are former city slickers too in love with their lot to consider selling or subdividing.
Land agent Mary Massara gets a couple of inquiries a week from prospective buyers but says hardly any bare blocks have been for sale in Rodney in the past year.
Demand is mostly from couples with young families wanting to leave the city, be more self-sufficient, and keep a few animals.
Research shows that many want to be near the Woodhill Forest for recreation, or like the idea of small country schools. While a growing number work from home, most are still tied to city jobs.
The ARC is using Lindsey's research to justify holding the line on rural subdivision. Its regional policy states that it wants the ability to carve up rural properties limited to the potential supply in district plans as at March 31, 2005. Affected district councils - Rodney, Manukau, Franklin and Papakura - would be bound by the ARC policy.
The regional council stance is linked to its dual role of safeguarding the environment and managing public transport. Continued urban sprawl is bad for both.
There is the cost of extending the water supply and sewerage, the loss of productive land, the pollution caused by longer vehicle trips and added congestion.
It wants councils to stick to the region's 50-year growth strategy, which calls for 70 per cent of population growth to be housed within existing city limits - increasing the viability of public transport.
The council has been given added clout by the 2004 Local Government Auckland Amendment Act. In return for the Government's $1.62 billion commitment to transport projects, the act requires councils to shore up their policies to control growth and encourage public transport.
A joint hearing is now underway to determine changes to district plans.
The regional council, for its part, is strengthening the regional policy statement with changes to boost landscape protection, preserve agricultural land and rural soils, and ease pressure on the roading network. The policy will be binding on district councils.
At the same time, the affordable housing crisis is being used to press for a relaxation of rules for land use.
Some argue that the metropolitan limits which ringfence the city should be rubbed out altogether and land use left to market forces.
Land prices inside the city limits are soaring because supply is scarce - so increase the supply and house prices will ease.
Meanwhile, outlying councils argue that they need to free land for both residential and commercial development to cater for the 30 per cent of population growth they must absorb. Providing jobs close to where people live will ease congestion.
The policy of intensification is under a blowtorch just eight years after the district and regional councils signed up to it. A "them and us" mentality is emerging - with district councils wanting more room to manoeuvre pitched against the ARC's hold-the-line stance.
Rodney mayor John Law says the ARC should not have a land-use planning role. "In my view the ARC should not have anything to do with land use, it should only be involved with the environment."
"Local communities should have a say in planning decisions, not people that, in the main, are almost invisible."
But at least some of the pressure on the countryside is developer-driven. Rick Martin didn't let a rural land zoning deter him when his Cornerstone Group snapped up a 460ha farm at Waimauku.
Now he's seeking a private plan change from Rodney District Council allowing an estimated 1300 homes in a cluster-style development between the main highway and railway line.
As a stepping-stone, Cornerstone wants permission to develop a "railway village" near the town which will act as a "sensitive reinforcement of the existing Waimauku community".
At Weiti, Williams Capital wants Rodney to allow a 600-lot development of forested land formerly owned by renowned land-bankers Green and McCahill, where 150 lots are permitted.
Near Clevedon, a proposed canal-housing development on the Wairoa River would introduce 300 homes to the coastal landscape.
There is pressure to ease the city limits at Westgate and Hobsonville, near the end of the northwest motorway, while Manukau Mayor Sir Barry Curtis believes Brookby, east of Flat Bush, could be suitable for future housing.
And developers promote large cluster-housing projects, often with trade-off plantings of native bush or farmed areas, as preferable to ad hoc lifestyle block sprawl peppering the countryside.
Franklin, meanwhile, is proposing a plan change to ease the way for lifestyle blocks in appropriate areas while keeping large lots viable for farming through such mechanisms as transferable titles.
The ARC is worried it will simply accelerate lifestyle sprawl.
Councils claim they can preserve rural character with rules such as restricting minimum lot sizes.
Noble says Rodney is "very tough" on subdivision of rural land - section sizes can be no smaller than 5 ha in some areas and 10 ha in others.
But with property, there are always exceptions.
Several councils allow landowners to subdivide into smaller lots in return for planting native bush or protecting wetlands.
This is fair enough, says Noble. "It means unproductive land which is too boggy or too steep is being planted; it's improving the overall landscape."
It's the cumulative effect of large and small-scale subdivision which is threatening the green belt - particularly when you throw in allowance for residential and business development around rural 'satellite" towns such as Kumeu and Silverdale.
The danger is that the distinction between city and country is blurred to the point where the metropolitan urban limits are redundant - the satellites get swallowed up by the ever-expanding, green-gobbling death star.
Environmental Defence Society chairman Gary Taylor says rules in other countries ensure a much clearer demarcation between urban and rural, with areas for development and non-development clearly defined.
"In Rodney in particular it's just become a blur with built structures dominating - it's neither rural nor urban.
"The land is no longer useful because it has become so fragmented with so much subdividing."
The lifestyle block goldrush highlights the Resource Management Act's inability to deal with cumulative effects, he says.
"In our experience, the RMA encourages ad hocery. Rural development down to 2ha is really just creating an area that will inevitably have to be further divided into residential."
Taylor says councils need to make more use of the RMA's power to prohibit activities in certain areas. "You can make things non-complying, but clever consultants and lawyers will inevitably find a way around that."
Nowhere is this more evident than the area between Albany and Silverdale, where council rules failed to prevent several large housing developments, and the green belt between North Shore City and Whangaparaoa is under siege.
Using such mechanisms as creating common land, developers exploited Rodney's provision for farm-park style developments at Albany Heights. Rodney's effort to rescind this rule has been challenged by developers.
Further north, housing was allowed around the Dairy Flat airfield while "recreational" developments such as Snow Planet near Silverdale chip away at rural perceptions.
Law says Rodney is still 95 per cent rural. "This fixation which everyone has about the metropolitan urban limit is what's causing some of the dreadful urban and commercial outcomes."
"The growth strategy is an awful document ... all it addressed was where people should live, it didn't address commercial land or the impact of tourism or sustainable development of villages."
Rather than hemming most population growth into the metropolitan area, Law says satellite towns such as Kumeu should be allowed to grow - but with tighter restrictions on the surrounding green belt.
Manukau mayor Sir Barry Curtis, the growth forum deputy chairman, says the urban limits should be relaxed in appropriate locations.
Intensification was supposed to support public transport "but unfortunately the increase in residential densities hasn't occurred anywhere near the extent proposed. Consequently Auckland is bulging at the extremities like a fat man contained by a big belt."
The standoff threatens Auckland's continued economic growth, he says.
ARC officials say they cannot comment because the joint hearing on district plan changes is still underway.
But in his submission on countryside living zones, group manager of policy implementation Hugh Jarvis says it is unnecessary and inappropriate to add to the pool of potential lifestyle lots. "There is more than adequate opportunity for people to undertake that lifestyle choice."
David Lindsey, who was with the ARC before becoming a consultant, says countryside living is only one option for city slickers. "A lot of people escape completely and go to Tauranga or Nelson."
* In Auckland next month, Beyond the Resource Management Act, a conference organised by the Environmental Defence Society, will include workshops on urban development.
