Brian Rudman: Master plan needs to prioritise competing directions for city

Auckland Mayor Len Brown wants to build a central city train tunnel. Photo / Herald on Sunday

By the end of last week Ye Olde Auckland, with its competing factions shouting past each other for public attention, was back in business as though the revolution had not taken place.

The new city, just a month old, was supposed to be so different. One Plan, One Vision, One Direction and hugs and kisses and apple pie all round.

But instead, in rapid succession, has come a plan, promoted by Mayor Len Brown, to build a central city train tunnel which, by encouraging intensification of land use above it, would transform Auckland into a world class city - then, on its heels, a put-down by Transport Minister Steven Joyce, who picked holes in the reasoning and promoted, instead, growth at the city fringes, aided and abetted by his pet Puhoi to Wellsford highway.

Then on Friday, up pops Bob Harvey, once Waitakere City mayor, now chairman of Auckland Council's waterfront development agency, to launch a report promoting the gentrification of the waterfront as the key to the city and nation's economic rebirth.

Talk about time for a lie-down. Having got all pumped up by the CBD tunnel report a few days before, I decided, in the interests of my blood pressure, to give the waterfront-report launch a wide berth. But neither Mr Brown or Mr Joyce could resist turning up. Mr Brown was quick to crank up the hyperbole. He said the $4.95 billion in economic benefits the report predicted that a reborn waterfront would deliver by 2040 was "under-calculated ... We can surely aim for greater than that".

In the opposite corner, Mr Joyce was there to hose down the hyperbole. It was dependent on government funding anyway. Having got in first with his new highway and grabbed all the spare cash going, you can appreciate where he was coming from.

The optimist would argue these are just the death rattles of the old regime. But the way the mayor and retinue have not just embraced the two reports, but said both are too modest in their goals, is a worry.

Even to a layman like myself, who warms to the idea of both a CBD tunnel and the redevelopment of the waterfront, it's hard to believe the growth assumptions on which the two reports are written can both be correct.

Surely if one gets the green light first, the other will suffer. And if both go ahead, the assumptions built into both will need revisiting.

Of course, this is why the designers of the Super City put such emphasis on a master plan - the "spatial plan" - which is supposed to provide the blueprint for Auckland's development over the next 30 years.

The competing interests highlighted by these three projects is exactly why the Government insisted this masterplan be the first priority of the new council. It's also the reason the boosters of these projects should take a step back and get the overall priorities defined first.

Mr Joyce supports a masterplan, it seems, as long as it goes along with what he believes. He says the challenge for its planners would be "not to impose their ideal Auckland on us ..."

However, the very nature of a plan is to sift through competing ideas and interests and produce an "ideal" guide to the city's growth and development.

Soon after taking over as Auckland's new chief planning officer, Dr Roger Blakeley, emphasised the Auckland Plan, which he calls a "high-level and strategic plan" had to be in place by the end of next year.

In an interview a month ago he said Auckland could not keep spreading out indefinitely and had to improve the quality of urban intensification. If this is reflected in the spatial plan - and Mr Brown is certainly a fan - then it seems common sense to concentrate limited public monies, both local and central government - into realising the final "vision" of that plan.

Chances are, both waterfront development and increased urbanisation will be part of this vision, along with the CBD tunnel.

As for building escape highways on the fringes, that's more debatable, particularly when funds are scarce.

But we won't know for sure about any of this until we have a plan. That's where the focus needs to be.