The inevitable has happened; the NIMBYs (not in my backyarders) opposing the Unitary Plan have turned to legal redress to prevent change. The likes of the Character Coalition claim that the Unitary Plan process “trampled on people’s rights”, but this is completely wrong. The Unitary Plan is in fact increasing the choices available to all Aucklanders, including existing homeowners. It isn’t perfect, but we should just get on with it.
There is no loss of ‘rights’ here, just increased choice
First up, let’s deal with the obvious bit of misinformation floating around; nobody is going to force an owner to move or demolish their character home. Home owners have the choice to keep living where they live as long as they want to.
Generally speaking the Unitary Plan is increasing the choices people have over what they can do with their own property. If you want to build yourself a new home on the back section and sell the old one to pay off the mortgage, you can. If you want to bowl the lot and retire on the proceeds you can, and if you just want to stay undisturbed, good for you.
Much is being made of the loss of Auckland’s heritage. The Character and Heritage Coalitions claim wealthy inner city suburbs are ‘threatened’ with increased density. The owners are distraught their million dollar views are going to be lost. Sorry, but views are not part of your property right; if you don’t believe me have a look on your LIM.
Heritage schmeritage
These claims of heritage need a little perspective. Firstly Auckland isn’t that old. Every city has bits that are relatively old, but that doesn’t automatically grant them ‘heritage’ status. Secondly, heritage is still protected by the Unitary Plan. The pre-1944 overlay that everyone harks back to was actually intended as a temporary measure to allow the Council to undertake the heritage assessment.
If you want to continue to live in a bungalow filled suburb, you can. You will be generously compensated for your precious land in central Auckland and you can move to the city fringes or another city entirely. You can even afford to shift your current house there if you like. Heck, you can probably afford to shift your neighbours’ houses too if you like looking at them so much. And if you can’t afford that (what have you been doing with your untaxed capital gains I wonder), you can always take a trip to MOTAT to soak up the heritage there.
Of course, if we want restore Auckland to its true heritage status the first thing we should do is get rid of the motorways and restore thriving inner city neighbourhoods instead. But we can’t do that without decent public transport, which we can’t do without intensifying development. Even better, let’s remove people altogether and restore Auckland’s true heritage: the moa.
Kneecapping the creation of a world class city
We are so worried about today’s heritage of yesterday that we are kneecapping the creation of tomorrow’s heritage. That’s why it’s important to support quality building and design now. All we need to do is put the same effort into ensuring medium density housing is done well that we currently put into preventing it happening.
The whole of New Zealand needs Auckland to be a successful world class city, and it can’t do that without productive people. The trouble is that these people have nowhere to live. The refrain that people should move to the regions is the epitome of economic illiteracy – a more realistic prospect is more of our young people moving to Australia. Even without current levels of internal and external migration, Auckland’s population will continue to grow naturally.
In short, the Unitary Plan is not reducing choice, it is increasing it. If you are lucky enough to be part of Auckland’s landed gentry, you now have exponentially more choice. This is quite the opposite of young people whose only option to get on the housing ladder currently is to live in Pokeno and spend 3 hours a day commuting.
These houses out around the Bombays may be cheaper, but once you include infrastructure costs, transport costs and congestion, they are more expensive overall. More sprawl cannot solve Auckland’s woes. There is already enough sprawl in the plan to threaten the remaining productive land and environments on the city fringes. The amount of medium density housing in the plan is the absolute minimum the city needs to allow for future demand. It can’t be compromised any more.
Let’s get on with it.
Geoff Simmons is an economist working at the Morgan Foundation. This article is here with permission and first appeared here.
5 Comments
Geoff should stick to his knitting in economics.
As much as I think Auckland needs a lot more density, this was a rubbish process that prejudiced many parties.
I agree with much of what Geoff says about density, choice etc. But I don't favour all those good things over people's rights to have a fair say in what happens in their suburb and city.
At the end of the day, the Council dropped the ball because the Plan as notified in 2013, and the analysis underpinning it, was so poor. If they had got that right, we wouldn't have this issue. And I just don't buy the argument about rushed process. The Council had a huge resource, and ignored a whole lot of work that has been done in Australia in the last 10 years on dwelling capacity. Total blinkers, because the Council thought they knew it all.
It's yet another example of shoddy, sloppy and unintelligent New Zealand policy making
Oh I suppose it is okay for people on the outskirts of the city who thought they'd set themselves in a nice semi-rural lifestyle to be over-run.
How ridiculous is it to have large single dwelling sections minutes from the inner city while the fringes get chopped up in to tiny sections, now so small you won't be seeing much in the way of leafy trees in the subdivisions there, ever.
I actually think the opposite - people had too much say. Planners should be able to make planning decisions based on what is best for the city overall, not what is best for a small number of people. If you want to live in the biggest city you need to be able to embrace change and progress.
it will be interesting to see how much council rates increase for these upzoned properties. We also need clarification from IRD around the taxing of gains made through the zoning changes as per Terry Bauchers article http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/83647/terry-baucher-says-new-auckland…
I largely agree with Geoff Simmons. None of the changes that wil be allowed will be compulsory to any one property owner. The Nimbys of course want to control what their neighbours do as well.
Land prices, which will be higher in the inner city, will in any case determine the quality of housing. There will be no economic point building poor quality on an expensive section. Meanwhile there remain considerable height restrictions on much of Auckland, even if these are necessarily more liberal than they were. These restrictions protect most neighbourhoods from the more extreme scenarios that could be imagined.
Transport remains the biggest downstream need of increasing population, and intensification at least makes addressing this feasible, although still needing Bill English or his equivalent to get his head around the necessity for real investment in the issue. Even the nation's CEOs are now insisting on such investment, so we just may get somewhere.
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