Local Government elections are coming up this October, Alex and Jess were recently in the spotlight with an article in the NZ Listener, talking about the politics and policy of planning in their Regional Council. We’re printing the slightly longer version here

Council planners are under fire for some recent decisions. They discouraged a high-rise glass office building in a historic heritage area, declined subdivisions on rural land, and proposed changes to apartments that would make them nicer for future residents. Are they insane?

What people might not know is that 99% of consents are granted. And where they are not, it is usually because planners are trying to deliver what voters wanted in the first place, namely, an attractive city that is good to live in and hasn’t ruined its natural or built environment.

Let’s start with heritage. Many people love it, others don’t. There is not much of it (far less than 1% in Auckland, but 3% including character protections), but a disproportionate amount is in central areas close to public transport, jobs, universities where it could provide more office space, shops and apartments for a growing population. Protecting heritage can slow and complicate development. Character also holds the identity of a place, with stories and craftmanship from another time. This topic is ripe fodder during election when people gravitate to polarisation and combative opposites.

However, it could be both. Heritage zoning does not stop development but informs it. For example, significant height is enabled on Karangahape Road (ten storeys or 35m) and it’s double that on the sites behind. New developments are expected to complement the existing heritage through form and design. Having precincts with their own unique vibe is cool, desirable, and genuinely achievable too. A precinct approach is found in many cities internationally –Brisbane, Vienna, Freiburg, Barcelona, even cities in Japan, and they are popular.

Then there is the proposal to remove protections for level 3 soils, reducing area of protected soils by two thirds. While not the most elite, level 3 soils are not bad, and useful for many farming activities: livestock, sheds and greenhouses. They serve as a buffer zone for farming to expand into as the population grows, or to mitigate the impact of major weather events that put our food supply at risk. In the future, we will need more farmland, not less. We would join horticulture NZ or in calling for a food strategy to ensure the affordability of food in the future is considered as much as housing.

We have proposals to allow the intensive subdivision of suburbia for low rise infill, on the surface it sounds good. But development of 480m2 sites with three to five townhouses means a lot of concrete, a wall to look at, and minimal room for plants. Currently, mature gardens form urban oases for nature and they are affected indiscriminately in this process. It’s happening all over Auckland while natural habitat vanishes.

It doesn’t have to be one at the cost of other. We can have more homes for people, without chopping down mature trees and concreting over everything. Planning rules and form codes can enable taller terrace housing facing the street with joined up gardens behind or in the street, like in London, Prague or Copenhagen. This sort of housing provides the same or greater population densities as townhouses, but you also get trees, flowers, veggie gardens, play space plus light and cross ventilation inside homes. With biodiversity in crisis, we need urban biocorridors more than ever, why not build them into our subdivisions from the get go.

Floodplains and overland flow paths need to inform development too. We don’t want buildings or infrastructure where they are most at risk, but masterplanning could ensure we build tall on the least vulnerable areas, and make space for streams, wetlands, blue-green corridors and places to play. It will cost less and deliver better outcomes in the long run.

More homes are needed, and density is helpful. If you want to be able to walk to the shops and the pub, there needs enough other people in walking distance to make those businesses viable. Different sizes and types of homes from high rise apartments, to large multi-generational households support people in different life stages and enables aging in place or the opportunity to relocate somewhere else. This article is not arguing against development, but it is asking that we do it well.

Developers can be visionary, but building is a business, it must be. While the RMA, the Auckland Unitary Plan and the Building Code are under scrutiny, it is in the interests of the few to reduce regulatory settings to boost profit margins and the value of land. In the past though this has led to substandard apartments, leaky homes, vulnerable homes and overheated terrace houses. Building on experience and expertise to support good urban design is sensible.

As builder Mark Todd recently identified, the main barrier in the provision of affordable housing close to centres is the cost to build taller buildings. Building materials are expensive. The building code demands each taller building is bespoke. Let’s look at these issues. What we shouldn’t do is enable development in the wrong places to profit landowners with the ear of those in government, or, indeed, government itself. No developer has built more homes in flood plains than Kainga Ora.

There are libertarian leaders at local and central government level with no time for heritage, risk, amenity or the environment. They are keen to enable development wherever it is, whatever its form, or its cumulative impacts. For those of us without the wealth to control the environment around us, council planners protecting what we value, and encouraging well-designed developments that stand the test of time are our allies.

As we head into the local elections, keep an eye out for those topics that seem to be created to cause division in our party, because under that, there is a whole lot more that we can agree on.