Suburban intensification and sprawl outside city boundary - Unitary Plan

After five years of debate and uproar – including 250 days of public submissions – the government-appointed independent hearings panel’s recommendations on Auckland’s long-awaited Unitary Plan has been released. (See the Unitary Plan maps here)

It has dumped specific heritage restrictions, minimum apartment sizes and cultural impact assessments. It also allows for more urban sprawl and greater intensification.

The single set of rules to manage the city's housing and infrastructure concentrates intensification on centres, transport nodes and corridors.

The rural urban boundary (RUB) will be expanded by 30% so the council or developers can apply for private plan changes to shift the boundary and rezone the land.

It will not be abolished as some politicians wanted.

The council regulatory services director Penny Pirrit says the quality compact city is to be retained and 70% of future growth will be the existing urban area.

Forty percent of new development will be on greenfields land outside the boundary.

There is to be a big drop in the single house zone right across the city.

On the North Shore the single house zone will drop by 17.9% while mixed housing urban will increase by 11.7% and terraced housing and apartment zoning will rise 12.4%.

In South Auckland the single house zone will drop by 25%, mixed housing urban will rise by 64% and terraced housing and apartment zoning will increase by 34%.

On the isthmus, single house zoning will drop by 42.5%, mixed housing urban will increase by 64.3% and terraced housing and apartment zoning will rise by 21.3%.

The panel says the council's minimum 40sq m apartment size should be removed and decided via the Building Act.

The plan says there will be room for residential capacity for more than 400,000 new homes over the next 30 years.

The independent hearings panel that recommended the final plan "errs toward over-supply" of housing.

There is a current shortfall of 40,000 houses and the plan has used the projected council demand of 13,000 houses every year to allow for 131,000 over the next seven years.

All of the existing residential zones in the proposed plan have been retained as have the planning rules relating to height, and distance to boundaries.

The plan has recommended the restrictions on pre-1944 houses be removed and they are zoned in the same way as other properties in the area.

Gone under the plan are cultural impact assessments, design statements and integrated transport assessment as a standard requirement of resource consent applications.

The panel says these should be decided only on a case by case basis.

The recommendations can be accessed via the council's website, here.

The panel has also provided maps representing its recommendations in relation to rezoning, precincts, the location of the RUB and the extent of the overlays, which are available here.

Planners pore over documents
Now the council has 20 working days to decide whether to accept or reject it.

Although council planners have had access to the recommendations since late on July 22, this is the first opportunity for councillors, central government, the public and the media to examine the 1000 page document.

Ms Pirrit says staff spent the past four days poring over the panel’s preferences in order to brief councillors this morning on any shifts in key policies – but haven’t engaged in any in-depth analysis.

Ms Pirrit cautions against making “property decisions” based on the document released today, advising instead that people wait until the completed plan is published – as required by legislation – on August 19.

In the interim, staff will spend 12 days analysing the recommendations more closely, followed by six days of open governing body meetings during which councillors will decide whether to accept them in part or in full, or reject them.

Prior to these meetings commencing, councillors are gagged from commenting on the recommendations.

Any changes councillors make to the hearings panel’s recommendations must be accompanied by an alternative with a cost-benefit ratio attached.

“If changes are made ... it will be tight but it can be done,” Ms Pirrit says.

If it can’t, there’s the possibility of a one-off extension of 20 working days if the council is granted permission by Environment Minister Nick Smith, who also heads the building and housing portfolio.

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