Smart Growth and sprawl

The Auckland Regional Growth Forum (ARGF) produced a fifty-year report in 1999, intended to plan for Auckland’s continuing growth and role as New Zealand’s largest city. The region’s rapid growth between 1991 and 1996 – “New Zealand’s fastest growing region with 12.9% growth in population” – was of concern, as was its impact on city infrastructure and the environment (Auckland Regional Growth Forum., 1999, p. 14). To reduce sprawl while attempting to prevent rising costs of housing, the ARGF’s housing strategy

includes aims to have more people living in medium and high density housing by 2050 (Auckland Regional Growth Forum, 1999).

Concerned that limited greenfield development sites in Auckland could affect the affordability of housing, the ARGF identifies eleven goals for housing strategy. Goals two and six of the strategy are relevant to Sustainable Neighbourhoods: “to encourage affordable housing that is well-located, appropriate to needs, well-designed, integrated into communities, and provides for people's needs for choice, security, safety, and good health”, and “new affordable housing is designed with an emphasis on energy efficiency, health and safety, privacy (both visual and acoustic), and integration into the neighbourhood” (Auckland Regional Growth Forum, 2003, pp. 12, 15). Principles outlined in the strategy show that design quality, walkability and reduction of energy consumption are considered important by the ARGF, although sustainable housing itself is not the goal.

These goals reflect the principles of Smart Growth, branded as ‘Liveable Communities’ by the Auckland City Council (Auckland City Council, 1999b, 2003). The Auckland City Council promoted similar key initiatives in subsequent growth management plans, particularly the intensification of density around existing urban centres and transport corridors (Auckland City Council, 1999b, 2003).

The main thrust of the council’s approaches seems to be the use of Smart Growth policies to address urban sprawl, rather than targeting sustainability of the city – and of housing more holistically – although sustainability concerns do come up in the community plans. Central Government attention to housing is concerned more with its affordability to low-income residents, and its durability following the issue of leaky homes.

While some documents targeted at housing provision focus on affordability and quality of housing, rather than addressing sustainability explicitly (Auckland Regional Growth Forum, 2003; Turner, Hewitt, Wagner, Su, & Davies, 2004), the Auckland City Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) does address

issues of sustainability. The LTCCP vision includes social, economic and environmental outcomes. Its priorities include affordable homes, diversity, public participation, real transport choices, strong communities, a beautiful and clean environment and that the city is well cared for: “our city continues to grow, and this growth is planned and managed in a sustainable manner” (Auckland City Council, 2006, pp. 15-16). The plan also includes an objective for suitable, affordable housing (ibid). The specific projects listed include a number of elements that are related to the way that residential neighbourhoods have been planned and actualised in the past, such as planned improvements to footpaths and storm-water, and while the vision objectives include affordable housing and concern for neighbourhoods and communities, there are no projects included in the plan that address housing, or residential development. One project to facilitate “high-quality urban development initiatives” (Auckland City Council, 2006, p. 33) may be intended for residential purposes, but this is only described as “making council owned land available for development” and “investing in urban infrastructure” (ibid, p. 33).

The influence of central government through legislation and ministries does not provide the strongest example for sustainability. While the ARGF strategy flags the 2003 Government intention to become more involved in housing provision (Auckland Regional Growth Forum, 2003), this is something that the current National led coalition Government does not necessarily share. In both the Minister's foreword and the Chief Executive's overview to the Department of Building and Housing’s (DBH) Statement of Intent (2010), the keywords of the document are 'improving productivity' and 'watertightness', with suggestions of reviewing social housing provision. The main strategic directions are concerned with productivity, upskilling workers in the construction industry, housing demand and affordability (Department of Building and Housing, 2010). This direction provides no guidance regarding either design quality or sustainability, and whether or not there is any consideration given to sustainability depends on the Department’s interpretation of the strategy.

The Housing New Zealand Corporation publication, ‘Best Practice in Medium Density Housing Design’ (Turner, et al., 2004) includes background on housing

policies and strategies, as well as research and evaluation with a focus on affordable accommodation. While it does not address the issue of sustainability explicitly, it asserts that “the most successful developments take detailed account of all design issues” (Turner, et al., 2004, p. 2). The design issues listed, such as intended resident mix and neighbourhood character, relate closely to some of the sustainable housing characteristics shown in Winston (2009). Although the paper incorporates wider sustainability themes, it emphasises the use of medium-density housing as a panacea for the issues facing Auckland neighbourhoods.

Local and central government publications provide mixed and sometimes insubstantial guidance with regard to sustainability in housing and residential development. Reports such as the ARGF’s regional growth strategy (Auckland Regional Growth Forum., 1999) emphasise goals compatible with Smart Growth: energy efficiency, walkability and neighbourhood integration, while the Long Term Community Plan incorporates a wider range of sustainability themes, such as: diversity, transport choices and public participation. In comparison, the Department of Building and Housing and Housing New Zealand are respectively focussed on ensuring the water-tightness of new homes, and that growing demand for housing is met through increased density.

Results of Smart Growth

The results of the Auckland City and Regional Council’s Smart Growth policies are discussed in an analysis by Statistics New Zealand (2009). It finds that the strategy to concentrate growth along transport corridors and in existing metropolitan areas has not eventuated. In actuality, “infill and greenfield development have been the most popular methods to facilitate population growth” and “living in rural and coastal areas has become more popular than was anticipated” (Statistics New Zealand, 2009, p. 4). Monitor Auckland figures show that the proportion of new residential buildings outside the Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL) has remained relatively steady since 2005: “in 2009, 78.8 per cent of residential dwelling units were authorised inside the MUL and 21.2 per cent outside the MUL. These proportions have been consistent over the last

four years” (Monitor Auckland, 2010b, para 1). Such indicators show that there has been no real reduction in the numbers of buildings built at the edges of Auckland, and that development outside key areas targeted for Smart Growth continues to spread the city.