Back To The Future: By sanctioning green-field (as opposed to brown-field) housing development, Phil Twyford and his colleagues are now free to draw forth from Labour’s honourable past the sort of planning ideas which, had they been implemented at the time they were developed (the late-1940s) would have made Auckland a much easier city in which to live and move around.
PHIL TWYFORD has urged the National Government to rule
Auckland’s contentious Urban Growth Boundary out of the city’s Unitary Plan.
This is a major policy announcement from Labour’s housing spokesperson. By
embracing the virtues of expansion over intensification, the party has
repositioned itself as a defender of Auckland’s characteristic urban sprawl –
and everything that goes with it. That Twyford’s announcement prompted
congratulatory media releases from the National Party, Business New Zealand and
the Taxpayer’s Union is a measure of just how big a concession Labour has made.
Labour should not, however, be condemned simply because in
some respects (and only in some) its housing policies are similar to the
Right’s. Politically-speaking, the policy of urban intensification was as
impractical as it was controversial. Homeowners were always going to balk at
the prospect of multi-storeyed apartment buildings sprouting up in their leafy
streets. Overruling those objections would have required a degree of
heavy-handedness quite foreign to the New Zealand scene. Those deemed
responsible – be they local or national politicians – would have paid a heavy
price.
Policy-wise, Labour now has room to breathe. It also, quite
literally, has the space to display some progressive creativity. By sanctioning
green-field (as opposed to brown-field) housing development, Twyford and his
colleagues are now free to draw forth from Labour’s honourable past the sort of
planning ideas which, had they been implemented at the time they were developed
(the late-1940s) would have made Auckland a much easier city in which to live
and move around.
Seventy years on, however, with the population of Auckland
approaching two million, the size of the planning canvass has expanded
considerably. Looking forward, we must now envisage an urban corridor extending
all the way from Hamilton to Whangarei.
A conurbation of this size cannot be serviced efficiently by
the automobile. Crucial to its success would be the creation of a
state-of-the-art rapid-rail network capable of whisking commuters from Hamilton
to Downtown Auckland in 30 minutes. (If that seems impossible, just have a word
with the French and the Chinese!) The huge enabling power of such a network would
be more than sufficient to underwrite the many housing developments along its
length.
Rather than leave the design and construction of these new
communities to the private sector, Labour should promote the creation of a
public design and construction entity dedicated to building homes, apartments
and community facilities equal to anything currently on display in Germany and
Scandinavia.
This massive public construction programme (which would not
only encompass the building of houses and apartment buildings, but also the new
rapid-rail network) would need to be accompanied by a radical reform of New
Zealand’s tenancy laws. Only by, once again, making the State the nation’s
pre-eminent – and most accommodating – landlord will New Zealanders enjoy
access to well-designed and healthy homes, with full security of tenure, at an
affordable rent.
On RNZ’s “Morning Report”, this morning (18/5/16) Max
Rashbrooke and James Crow spoke to Guyon Espiner about the urgent need for
20,000 new homes – just to meet the needs of this country’s homeless families.
Many of these families reside in Auckland, and neither their needs, nor the
needs of the tens-of-thousands of New Zealand and immigrant families who intend
to make the Auckland Region their home, will ever be adequately met by the
existing, market-driven, system – which daily demonstrates its incapacity.
By abandoning the Urban Growth Boundary, Labour has given
itself both the physical and intellectual space in which to prove that it still
knows how to make New Zealanders dreams come true.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of 18 May 2016.
