Housing intensification: Yes, but where and how? – Dushko Bogunovich

Housing Minister Chris Bishop has offered Auckland Council the option of enabling high-density development around key City Rail Link (CRL) stations. Photo / Michael Craig

THE FACTS

• Auckland Council has voted to send a new plan change out to public consultation that will dictate how much intensification can occur across the city and where.
• The new plan change, called PC120, creates the capacity for about two million homes, concentrated around railway stations and town centres, and along busy transport routes.
• Aucklanders will have their say on high‑rise and housing density rules from November.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop recently offered Auckland Council the option of enabling high-density development around key City Rail Link (CRL) stations. This includes buildings of up to 15 storeys around Mt Eden, Kingsland, and Morningside stations, and buildings of up to 10 storeys around Mt Albert and Baldwin Ave stations. The council responded by tentatively adopting the so-called Plan Change 120, which will soon be put to public discussion.

This event marks a significant shift in how we plan for Auckland’s future layout. The minister acknowledges Auckland is already arranged along a linear corridor shaped by its distinctive geography. Tāmaki Makaurau is one of the most distinctively situated cities globally – on a volcanic land-bridge squeezed between two oceans and three harbours. The key point is Auckland’s geography and landscape are so distinctive that our city planning philosophy, to be effective, should be unique.

It’s high time for the Auckland Council to drop the “compact city” model and stop aiming to make Auckland look like London, Vienna and Copenhagen. We need to create our own, local approach to good urban planning.

Auckland is neither a “city” nor “compact”. Auckland is a “linear city-region”. For more than a hundred years, the conurbation now known as Greater Auckland has tended to expand and merge to the north and south of the original central city of Auckland. The linear shape of our metropolitan area is an inevitable result of our location on an elongated isthmus.

It’s important to recognise that this pattern is not just unavoidable – it’s actually beneficial. Linear cities and city-regions are exceptionally efficient in delivering transport and other infrastructure.

The term “city-region” indicates Greater Auckland already functions at a regional level rather than just a city scale. Our daily commuting area extends from Pōkeno to Warkworth (about 100km) and is now beginning to reach Te Kauwhata and Wellsford (around 150km). As roads, communications and other services improve, it is easy to envisage by 2040 a 200km-long “Greater Greater Auckland” stretching from Huntly to Bream Bay.

Naturally, this urban region is neither continuous nor necessarily leads to more “sprawl”. Timely master planning at the local level, again, considering the geography and landscape, should ensure the new development has an efficient and attractive structure and form.

The linear city-region approach produces positive results across all five measures of a successful city: prosperity, affordability, liveability, sustainability and resilience. A large urban area of this size, with a population of about two million, would benefit the NZ economy; it would offer space for many more liveable and affordable suburbs; it would foster opportunities for solar-powered suburban solutions to low-carbon sustainability; and ultimately, it would be inherently more resilient against future climate chaos because of its low density and high level of self-sufficiency.

This large city region would have a single main corridor for public and private transport, combining motorways, rail lines and busways. Most high-density development should happen along this corridor. This would ease pressure on our existing suburbs, many of which are among the best globally for quality of life and heritage value.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon gets an early look at the City Rail Link, which may influence what areas of Auckland are subject to high-density development. Photo / Michael Craig

However, some intensification remains necessary in the older parts of the city. The council can sidestep a lengthy political dispute with local communities if it mandates detailed, 3D planning around inner-city rail stations and town centre hubs. In other words, Plan Change 120 should only be approved if the council is willing and capable of producing about 50 master plans over the next 20 years. We need around a dozen of these as soon as next year.

If that sounds like the biggest urban design campaign in New Zealand’s history, then so be it. There’s no other way to develop one of the world’s best cities.

Dushko Bogunovich is a retired professor of architecture, urban design and city planning.