To what extent are the Auckland Council's plans really their own when the larger decision on population has been made by central government already? A million people - almost all of whom will be immigrants - are expected to fit into Auckland in the next 20 or so years. Aucklanders seemingly have no say in this - all they can do is try to respond to the influx with the new unitary planning system.
No-one in Auckland has yet thought to tell Wellington that their plan to put a million extra people into Auckland is impractical, costly on many levels and probably unsustainable. Auckland's fate is being decided by Wellington bureaucrats, not Aucklanders. Wellington would never plan to turn itself into an Asian city of course, but does not blanche when advocating it for the 'Northern Gotham' of Auckland.
The NZ Herald editorial:
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Auckland's newly promulgated unitary plan has entered a rocky stretch of water called local-body election year. Members of the council and local boards are going to public meetings where they are hearing predictable opposition to the building heights and residential density envisaged for the neighbourhood. A number of the council, mainly on the right, have taken fright. They have put their names to a letter to the Prime Minister asking the Government to slow the plan's progress.
[...]
They need to harden up. The people they are hearing at public meetings are probably not a cross-section of their community. They are likely to be older, established residents who dislike change.
[...]
One year would surely be ample time for objections and appeals to be heard and decisions made. Developers, builders and - most importantly - home-seekers, should not have to wait three years to know the permitted height, density and design standards for different parts of the city.
We hear constantly from the Government and the council that Auckland has to accommodate another million people within the planning period and that the rate of new house construction is falling well short of the growth in demand. An arid argument of whether that growth should be on the periphery or within existing limits matters less than the need for a decision.
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It would be most likely that if the Auckland Council refused to plan for an extra million people and told Wellington to put them somewhere else (and came up with a plan to only take say half or less than a million) that the government - at least a Tory government - would sack the Council and replace them with their own commissioners in the same way they did to the Canterbury Regional Council when they refused to allocate all the water to their farmer constituents. I don't believe Auckland, or any other city for that matter, has any effective control over its own destiny when mass migration is enforced from outside. It would be a task of coping and mitigating rather than planning under the type of scenario the officials envisage.
No-one in Auckland has yet thought to tell Wellington that their plan to put a million extra people into Auckland is impractical, costly on many levels and probably unsustainable. Auckland's fate is being decided by Wellington bureaucrats, not Aucklanders. Wellington would never plan to turn itself into an Asian city of course, but does not blanche when advocating it for the 'Northern Gotham' of Auckland.
The NZ Herald editorial:
--
Auckland's newly promulgated unitary plan has entered a rocky stretch of water called local-body election year. Members of the council and local boards are going to public meetings where they are hearing predictable opposition to the building heights and residential density envisaged for the neighbourhood. A number of the council, mainly on the right, have taken fright. They have put their names to a letter to the Prime Minister asking the Government to slow the plan's progress.
[...]
They need to harden up. The people they are hearing at public meetings are probably not a cross-section of their community. They are likely to be older, established residents who dislike change.
[...]
One year would surely be ample time for objections and appeals to be heard and decisions made. Developers, builders and - most importantly - home-seekers, should not have to wait three years to know the permitted height, density and design standards for different parts of the city.
We hear constantly from the Government and the council that Auckland has to accommodate another million people within the planning period and that the rate of new house construction is falling well short of the growth in demand. An arid argument of whether that growth should be on the periphery or within existing limits matters less than the need for a decision.
--
It would be most likely that if the Auckland Council refused to plan for an extra million people and told Wellington to put them somewhere else (and came up with a plan to only take say half or less than a million) that the government - at least a Tory government - would sack the Council and replace them with their own commissioners in the same way they did to the Canterbury Regional Council when they refused to allocate all the water to their farmer constituents. I don't believe Auckland, or any other city for that matter, has any effective control over its own destiny when mass migration is enforced from outside. It would be a task of coping and mitigating rather than planning under the type of scenario the officials envisage.
