by David Clendon
There has been a lot of chest beating this week about the pros and cons of development on Queens Wharf. Mayor Banks has been particularly vocal about the issue, insisting that “he was not going to be told by Wellington what could be built at the bottom of Queen St in Auckland”.
It is a bit perverse for Banks to suddenly get all heated about the matter of Wellington (i.e. central government) ‘interference’ in decisions that ought to be made in Auckland. He might save his indignation for the real transfer of power that is happening under the guise of Auckland governance reform, notably the removal of direct control of public assets away from our elected councillors and into the dubious care of unelected directors of council-controlled organisations. These worthies are to be appointed by the Minister of Local Government if he manages to push the latest Reform Bill through Parliament.
Rodney Hide’s demolition job on local democracy is not limited to handing effective control of public assets to directors who will no doubt be hand-picked to ensure they share his anti-democratic, pro-privatisation agenda.
Within the Bill introduced to Parliament a week before Xmas, he has also denied Maori any chance to exercise their mana whenua rights, by establishing a toothless advisory board rather than seats at the decision making table.
Aucklanders will be denied the right to propose any reorganisation until after 2013, a right that residents in any other local authority have under the Local Govt Act. Aucklanders will also be obliged to stick with First Past the Post for the 2013 election, denying electors and/or the council, the choice they would otherwise have under the Electoral Act to opt for an STV system.
The Bill puts a moratorium on the sale of strategic assets, but only until July 2012, which means the Council would have ample time to propose and implement privatisation plans well before the election in 2013.
Sue K has rightly described this Bill as Machiavellian, and there are only four weeks until the deadline for submissions (February 12th).
Published in Justice & Democracy | Society & Culture by David Clendon on Thu, January 14th, 2010
Tags: Auckland, local government
More posts by David Clendon | more about David Clendon
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Benefits of growth
http://www.arc.govt.nz/economy/aucklands-growth/aucklands-growth_home.cfm#benefits%20of%20growth
What’s good for the Property Council is good for everyone
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@JH –
I read ARC’s page… and frankly I feel for them… It’s hard to elucidate bullshit with jellybeans.
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- Both Rob Muldoon and John Key, Knew or know who they were/are working for…
Muldoon (although he made mistakes) was a loyal New Zealander who served, in what he believed to be NZ’s best interest, where as John Key is a Monetarist Finger Puppet (Muppet)who still serves the the Banksters who got him where he is today.
Muldoon advocated a return to Bretton Woods ie. Sound Money… Key still serves his masters having been a member of New York Federal Reserve Bank from 1999 to 2001. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Key
2- Muldoon was the Best ‘Riff Raff’ (Rocky Horror Picture Show Riffraff) I have ever seen).
But, I expect John Key will excel Health Ledger as the best ‘Joker’ ever in the next Batman Movie…
I just hope it’s not too life like.
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I just hope you realise the negative impact of the Proposed Part Six of this third Bill.
It’s bad enough that we borrowed Smart Growth from California – but now we plan to introduce the Robert Redford effect.,
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The ARC are only happy if someone else picks up the tab. Having sold the wharf to Auckland City for $40 million kindly paid pay tax payers in Invercargill, they now want someone else to build them an overseas passenger terminal on our wharf. Why not sell Ports of Auckland to the Chinese for whatever the governments total debt is, wait a few years for the tide to wash it away, then buy it back for $1.
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Owen, the fact that you don’t like Part 6 makes me very confident indeed that a Spatial Plan is exactly what Auckland needs.
In terms of Queens Wharf, I reckon a market in the existing sheds, similar to the Pike Place Market in Seattle, would be fantastic.
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Dr. JACKAL is GNAWING AWAY at DEMOCRACY!!!!!
I said that dr.Jackal was very busy over the Christmas period gnawing away at the feet of democracy.
I guess that we had all better get cracking with those submissions.
Just a note of warning I think that it would better to send the submissions snail mail as well as e- mail, I (and a few others) had problems e-mailing (via parliamentary site) submissions before Christmas.
Of course the trolls accused us of paranoia of the great RW conspiricy.
Submissions to parliament is supposed to be handled by the Speaker of the house but I wander how neutral the speaker is.???????
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jarbury,
Have you any concept of the notion of the rule of law, and the need for certainty in administration of the law?
Do you know what I mean by the Robert Redford effect?
Are you aware of what is happening in California?
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Owen, yes and that’s what the Spatial Plan provides. More certainty as to what will happen and where growth will be allowed in the future. The last thing anyone wants is for areas where growth is or isn’t allowed to happen in the future.
I’m guessing you’re talking about the impact of urban limits on housing prices. Of course, if you stop sprawl and don’t allow for intensification (or make intensification easy enough) you will end up with higher prices. It’s a simple matter of housing supply not meeting demand. However, there are two ways of increasing housing supply. The one part of Auckland where we have made it reasonably easy to build intensification (the CBD) doesn’t really have an affordability problem as apartments of all shapes and sizes have been provided, and prices have followed the market quite closely.
Your advocacy for sprawl completely ignores all its adverse environmental, social and economic costs. Clearly we mustn’t stop all development (which is what we have done for the past few years – hence the crazy house prices) but we must make it easier for the kind of development we want, as well as making it hard for what we don’t want.
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WE have greenfly and I advocating people who want to should be able to grow their own vegetables (which means room to collect and store water too) and yet jarbury is saying we must not have sprawl – whatever that means. But if everyone ends up living in intensified neighbourhoods and in apartments then where are these gardens?
There are no costs of sprawl. In fact it is the other way round.. Energy consumption is lower in households on the fringe. Transport costs may be slightly lower in inner city areas but higher housing costs (including rates) compensate for that to that the cost of transport and housing is a constant share of household income in any part of the city.
Certainly travel times are lower in outer suburbs because their trip to work is across town from suburb to suburb rather on the more congested radial routes.
There are no valid reasons to stop people living how and where they want to provided the developers pay all the costs and rates pay all the ongoing costs.
Excessive planning regulation creates a heavy planning penalty and prices young households out of the housing market.
MOst of those who rail against low density living normally live on large lots in the outher suburbs or on the beach. They want to control where other people live while living where they want themselves.
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Great Book Review in the TImes Literary Supplement:
The Review is “Life on the Edge of Things” in which Ferdinand Mount reviews a new book from Paul Barker of the UK, titled “The Freedoms of Suburbia”.
Go to:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article6965221.ece
Great lines:
“… the Town and Country Planning Acts of 1947 introduced state control of land use on a scale that even
William the Conqueror might have thought excessive.”
“The publishers blurb introduces Paul Barker’s enchanting and persuasive pictorial essay, with a nervous defiance, as if the book were proposing free heroin for toddlers.”
“When asked to choose their preferred type of home, Britons always put the bungalow top, with the Manhattan-style loft and the tower block nowhere.”
“Planning either slows change down to a glacial pace, or it is swift and destructive, as we can see from the post war history of Liverpool, Birmingham, Bradford and Hull.”
“The planning laws in their present rigid state give rise to the only serious corruption in British politics: they enable landowners to capture enormous unearned profits; even in a time of prosperity such as we have just enjoyed, they cause crippling housing shortages. Above all, in an age when thousands of acres are no longer needed for agriculture, they prevent ordinary people from living where they would most like to live (and from fostering biodiversity in their back gardens). As the Treasury report on land supply pointed out in 2003, current policy is bringing about “an ever widening economic and social divide”.
So jarbury if the UK has no problem how could NZ have a problem?
Our land is only 1.5% urbanised and over 40% is under control of the Department of conservation while most countries aspire to 10%.
What is the problem you want to address that warrants directing and controlling people choices as to where they live work and play?
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I guess at least we know why Owen states his view as he does, nonsensical though his reasoning may at times be.
On the issue of sprawl, I would suggest moving a good portion of our present tax take to land tax and then removing zoning. This would allow growth horizontally and vertically, which is chosen being based on the preference of the individual; the larger price incurred in tax in the central locations encouraging intensification there whilst the suburbs would be more conductive of individual housing. A inner city lot may cost a lot more but when you have 100 apartments in the space of a couple of suburban houses the cost is not so much on a per individual basis.
There may need to be room for some sort of compensation mechanism should a development adversely effect property prices though.
~
As to the importation of people, every additional immigrant decreases the wealth of every citizen. There is no reason to let in more just for human rights reasons or to boost the property values for developers.
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Sapient
I don’t know where you learned your construction and land economics, but this has been my special field since 1965. And I have kept up to date. I have advised the former Governor of the Reserve Bank (in 1995)and the current Chairman of the Board of the Reserve Bank (starting in 2005).
In a lightly regulated and reasonably efficient economy the most “efficient” density on expensive land per net square metre is medium density or town house density. Once you go above that the costs per net square metre rise. This does not mean that apartments should not be built on very expensive inner city land – it just means that the costs per net square metre will be very high.
This is especially true in New Zealand with high wind and earthquake loads.
HIgh rise towers provide decent housing for the very rich – penthouse apartments –but only provide decent housing for low income households if the households are small – like single students or childless couples.
The cost per net square metre is high because so much of the gross area is for stairs lobbies lifts parking etc etc.
When I designed the codes for Auckland in the sixties the premise was to maximise peronal choice. This is only valid reason for enabling people to build high medium and low density and to let the market decide.
There are no bad densities. And the current yearning for setting “minimum densities” is an assault against reason. The technique was developed in the US as a means of driving blacks and hispanics our or neighbourhoods the City hall wanted to redevelop at minimum cost.
Sadly, the whole urban planning system has been taken over by central planners who believe density is a goal rather than a measurement. The love the idea of using measurement to rule!
They believe there is some moral virtue in density – normally linked to a belief that there is a moral value in public transport compared to private transport. Neither belief is valid.
So before you start advocating land taxes to match your preferences you need to be sure your basic construction and land economics are correct. I am curious as to who has persuaded of the density economics you spelled out above. An urban economist or a central planner?
Land may be a useful target for tax because it is immobile. But the people who buy land and buildings are mobile. And they will migrate to where housing is affordable. Witness the out migration from California.
And remember the whole leaky building disaster is a combination of density-chasing by central planners made worse by the green chemopbobes who lobbied so hard for chemical-free timber driven by the belief that boric salts are toxic, not realising that the funghi that grow in the absence in wet timber are genuinely toxic. Natural chemical toxins are normally more toxic than anything we mortals put together. Try botulism.
Folly knows no bounds.
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Owen, all these arguments are just rehashed versions of the debates we have had many times before.
I am more curious why you oppose having a Spatial Plan at all though. Surely a spatial plan could well be a tool for relaxing the urban limits where this can be co-ordinated with infrastructure investment. While I would not necessarily advocate for allowing more sprawl, co-rdinating development with transportation and infrastructure investment, ie bringing together the often disparate and contradictory plans out there, must surely be a good thing?
If we look at Auckland, the lack of co-ordiantion between transport policy and land-use policy is most clear out east, in the Howick/Pakuranga/Botany/Flat Bush area. Goodness knows why so much development was allowed out there when it has such poor transport links to the rest of the city. What’s wrong with a Spatial Plan that tries to avoid mistakes like that in the future?
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Plans are not the reality. I was part of the team that designed the motorway arterial network that would have provided proper transport links to the East but those plans were never implemented.
However, that is not the real point with Part 6.
One of the great benefits of the RMA is that it was designed to integrate all land use controls (and to include the new demand for a greater emphasis on the environment) into one piece of legislation so that making an application would be a one stop shop – and the process would be controlled by a single time line.
Prior to 1991 a simple application for something like a mine or a dam had to go through five separate consent processes – in series – and it could fail at the last one.
And for many years the one stop shop survived. Then the last government introduced the Long Term Community plan which turned Local Government into a long term central planning agency. (Note that the RMA never mentions planning as an activity at all – it was meant to bring an end to the direction and control of the USE of land and to focus on the effects of USE on the Environment.)
IT was not long before councils made their Long Term Community plan a superior document to the RMA District Plan. The last government also made Regional Plans higher in the ‘hirearchy’ than District Plans by requiring District Plans to “Give EFfect to” Regional PLans. The original RMA said District Plans were not to be inconsistent with ” regional plans and policy statements.
Both these weakened the one stop shop and separate functions approach of the RMA.
You can make an application that fully satisfied both the District and Regional planning documents but run foul of the LTCPP which could be changed without the due processes of the RMA documents.
Nor read Part 6. It gives the Mayor and Council power to write a Spatial Plan for the region with none of the submission/cross submission/Appeal processes or safeguards of the RMA. It says all is OK provided the council consults. THere is no reference to any section 32 analysis, or to compensation, or to any of the other processes and requirements of the RMA.
This is a dreadful assault on our rights in property. (See Prof Lucas’s paper on safequards and planning legislation for the RMA back in 1991.)
This means that an applicant can go right through the RMA processes even to getting approval from the Environment Court only to have a council official decline it because it does not comply with the Council Spatial plan.
And presumably one can only appeal that decision through the High Court.
This is like California etc where you can take eight years to get a consent for development only to have someone challenge using a clause in the EPA, and if you survive this, they can use the Endangered Species Act and keep using different legislation until you run out of money. Its called the Robert Redford effect because he has made great use of this blow by blow approach to stop him having to endure the presence of neighbours.
Remember it works both ways.
This simply means that the risks of trying to do anything in Auckland will be too great.
Appeals and objections to matters under the RMA must be based on the Act and on the planning documents which are available to us all and we can all participate in their production.
But Part 6 gives total planning powers to the Council and council determines all the processes.
I am so glad I left the Auckland region when I did.
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Owen, I’m not sure if you’re understanding this spatial plan in the same way I am. There’s quite an insightful cabinet paper into it here: http://www.mfe.govt.nz/cabinet-papers/cab-paper-spatial-planning-options-for-the-auckland-council.pdf
Effectively, in the longer term we will see the spatial plan probably replace the Regional Policy Statement, the Regional Land Transport Strategy and so on. we won’t end up with more hurdles for something to have to clear, we will end up with clearer and more integrated hurdles.
What you say about the RMA is quite true, that it’s designed to get away from “use-based” planning and into effects based resource management. However, there’s a pretty strong debate that that kind of approach doesn’t really work particularly well in urban environments. In cities often you are not so much interested in reducing, avoiding or mitigating ADVERSE effects, you are more interested in generating POSITIVE effects.
The way I see the Spatial Plans working is as a framework which the District Plan (and there will eventually be only one in Auckland, thank goodness) is required to give effect to. This should lead to a far superior District Plan, as I think the biggest planning problem in Auckland at the moment is that the District Plans are generally rubbish and completely outdated.
I do take your point about the need for a proper process to establish the Spatial Plan. There should be full submissions, although I think if there’s appeal rights it could take decades for the thing to become operational. Something to balance I suppose.
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