The City Council isn’t known for being a particularly united bunch, but last week they all came out in opposition to the same thing: new urban planning laws. The government proposal was derided as being an “Auckland policy”, and the mayor and all 16 councillors were singing off the same song sheet in opposition to it.
Mayor Lianne Dalziel and her 16 councillors are united in their disapproval of the Government’s national policy that aims to increase housing density and encourage development in places close to public transport. “It does seem infuriating, particularly when over-intensification is a big issue for our residents and it is something we are committed to addressing.”
The story has further comment from other councillors, including problem drinkings Jamie Gough.
“Some of our biggest planning issues in this city relate to parking or lack thereof and deeply inappropriate intensification in residential zones, so this will only exacerbate what is already broken.”
Parking! Of course. Parking is such a long-running issue in Christchurch that dates back to the founding of the city by English colonisers, who originally sent a flotilla of 14 ships, but could only find parking for four of them. Following the quakes, most of the central city was cleared of buildings, allowing for gravel carparks to spread like an aggressive tumour. The council is right to stand up for the rights of cars, who have been overlooked for so long.
Gough’s fellow councillor and Gerry Brownlee-wannabe, Sam McDonald, also waded in, emphasising his and the councils impotence on this issue by advocating for people to bypass him directly, and go to their local MP.
“Everyone in the city can literally rise up and write into MPs and get something changed.”
But with all the councillors opposed, that means some of the guys on my team are too:
Deputy mayor Andrew Turner said the NPS was designed to deal with a demand problem that did not exist in Christchurch and that the policy was not a good fit for the city.
A demand problem that doesn’t exist in the city? Guessing he hasn’t seen any story about house affordability in the last decade or so. Just because houses aren’t as expensive in Christchurch as they are in Auckland or Wellington doesn’t mean that they also aren’t far too expensive. We absolutely have a demand problem, one that is pushing house prices up and our urban footprint out, all across the plains. We can’t keep converting good agricultural land into gated communities. We have to start increasing our housing density, and we have to start doing it properly.
The changes to the NPS have been designed with Auckland in mind, that is true. In our biggest city, successive governments have had to make big changes to try and undo 50 years of bad planning and underinvestment in infrastructure. If Christchurch wants to avoid the same dysfunction that has made Auckland a city of hour-each-way commutes and million-dollar-median-house-prices, then we need to start doing something about our urban layout. Now, not in another 50 years. Christchurch is New Zealand’s biggest city, but its councillors are acting like it’s a provincial backwater.