Taming Auckland’s Landscape

in Auckland Bus Featured Motorways by Jon C — September 20, 2011 at 4:02 pm | 3 comments

Besides transport as a key to Auckland’s next 30 years, finally getting the urban and rural development right is essential after what the Auckland Plan, released today, admits is mistrust at a community level that the Council can deliver desirable intense urban environments.

One doesn’t need to look far to find examples of what the Plan politely calls the chequered past of intensive living and mixed-use developments.

“The fact is well designed, quality schemes are possible,” insists  the plan, citing intensively developed suburban housing in Ponsonby and Freemans Bay and the Stonefields development at Mt Wellington.

But it acknowledges that in the future quality development principles must be followed:

• Street and block patterns that provide connectivity

• Streets and road reserves that work for people with buildings at proportionate scale that still allow a sense of space

• Good public transport

• Respect for the natural features that connect us to Auckland’s landscape.

The problem is so much destruction and raping of the landscape has occurred it would require buildings to be obliterated and wrongs readdressed before large areas of Auckland can start following such essential design principles.

As the Plan admits, past housing infill within suburban areas, combined with disconnected roading and subdivision patterns has degraded parts of the environment and prevented opportunities for better development at higher densities.

Those areas have poor public safety, few public transport connections, an absence of services within walking distance, a lack of connected and usable public open space and a lack of beauty and civic amenities.

So how to fix it?

The Plan says a transition can be achieved with:

• A significant upzoning of land for medium and high density urban development

• Using council property as a catalyst for change including the chance to develop good examples of quality higher density living

• Working with private and 3^rd party sectors

• Investigating incentives to encourage intensification

• Dedicated consent account managers and cross-council assessment teams

• The development of an Auckland design compendium

• Ensuring appropriate infrastructure to support more intensive living is in place

• More flexible parking standards for intensive residential and commercial developments

Grafton Gully, would change from this:

.. to this

The Plan envisages  a 75-25 split between growth in existing urban areas and growth in new Greenfield areas (currently classified as rural land) and rural satellite centres. It sees a capacity for 25,000 more dwellings within existing Greenfield areas already identified or under development for residential areas.

6000 hectares of additional Greenfield land in both north and south areas have been identified for future residential, industrial and employment growth, adding there is only 10-15 years of industrial land left and even less of large lots.

To achieve the “compact form” in the Plan, about two thirds of all new dwellings between now and 2040  will be attached dwellings or low, medium and high rise apartments. 11% of all Auckland dwellings will be more than 4 storeys (presently it’s 2%).

Centres prioritised for growth are the City Centre and waterfront, Hobsonville, New Lynn, Onehunga town centre, Tamaki, Takapuna metropolitan centre, Warkworth and Pukekohe.

After the botched mess of the past, and with land running out, this is one thing we can not get wrong and needs the best advice possible to show that mistrust is no longer applicable.

How Auckland will look by 2040

Plans for Auckland’s Waterfront

What the Plan says about Transport

How Auckland will pay for it

 Read Auckland Plan

Tags: Auckland council Auckland Plan urban design