30-year Auckland Plan signed off but the Government's not buying it

In Manukau on 29 March, Auckland Council signed off its 30-year Auckland Plan (the statutorily-required Spatial Plan), with just three councillors voting against it – Dick Quax, Christine Fletcher and myself.

I raised concerns about achieving such ambitious intensification targets when the trend has gone back to standalone housing; on-going affordability; adequate supply of business land; the protection of heritage in our high res areas which will come under a lot more development pressure; and the fact that the Mayor has failed to bring the Government to the table in signing up to his overly ambitious social, cultural, health, education, and environment targets prescribed in the plan.

I pointed out that the Government wrote a foreword in the draft Auckland Plan, but they are absolutely nowhere to be seen in final document despite the Mayor promising us it would also be a collaboration. Without the Government, this plan is screwed – particularly when you consider their imminent legislative changes to rein in local government. Council officials put up amendments right at the very end saying they would seek greater alignment with Wellington, but for me it was too late. Without Government, this plan is sadly not worth the paper it’s written on.

The all-important ‘Compact City’ architecture was encapsulated in this motion: “Adopt a Rural Urban Boundary in Auckland’s Unitary Plan that provides for land capacity for 280,000 new dwellings within the 2010 Metropolitan Urban Limit baseline, 160,000 new dwellings in new greenfields land, satellite towns and other rural and coastal towns, and at least 1,400 hectares of new greenfield business land.”

Over the past 15 years, the region has had an average uptake of 96 hectares per annum of business land and planners believe going forward 109 hectares per annum will be suffice.

However land data I produced from Urbis showed that the region’s current supply of business land will be “expended in 6.03 years” and of the land available “only 40% is considered prime and able to be developed sustainably”. They believe there is “a deficit of around 1,600 hectares in the southern area” alone and given recent uptake, Urbis says Auckland needs at the very least 110 hectares per annum.

Given the huge uptake of business land in the past couple of decades, the provision of 1,400 hectares of new greenfield business land across the entire region for the next 30 years will fall well short in meeting demand, particularly when you consider Auckland’s unrelenting population growth. New Zealand’s commercial capital needs business land, and more business land means more jobs!

Meeting Vietnamese delegation…