This is the paper I presented to the Waitematā Local Board on Tuesday 16 March.
I have worried a lot recently about tree demolition in Auckland City. And I still do, despite a Local Board plan to achieve 30 perecent tree cover by 2050. However, trees are only one of the amenity values we should be considering.
While I have been considering and discussing population intensification in Auckland City in recent years with residents, developers, politicians and council officers, I have heard a lot about NIMBYism. I have always supported population intensification, and deplored urban sprawl, and I still do. However, after I read a report by former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, J. Morgan Williams, I have modified my views somewhat. His report, called ‘The Management of Suburban Amenity Values’, while supporting intensification, calls on Aucklanders to clarify their amenity values, and ask Council to protect and enhance the most important ones.
Morgan Williams is talking about an extensive list which might include vegetation, views, sunlight, heritage, architecture, noise levels, privacy, physical safety, and many more. He lists the threats to values, including changes to the streetscape, increased dominance of the built environment, loss of public and private open space, increased traffic generation, on-street car parking, loss of special character, and many more.
Morgan Williams advocated in his paper that local residents should get together and set down what amenity values they like best, those which they want retained and enhanced, and perhaps those which they would be prepared to sacrifice for excellent population intensification.
I think we have now reached the stage where this exercise should take place in local community hubs. It can be done in small bites, by a few streets getting together, or in larger groups like, say, West Lynn residents. Lists can be prepared and presented to Local Boards or Council. Council would accept that before amenity was lost, serious consultation would occur. Many NIMBY accusations might evaporate, when residents explain what values they care about and want to preserve.
Intensification will obviously affect amenity values, but good mitigation might be more possible with greater consultation. I’d like to see Waitemat-a Local Board embrace the idea, and ask our local communities to engage with it. At the very least, I encourage all board members to read Morgan Williams paper.
My submission was well received. Local board member, Alex Bonham, who holds the planning portfolio told me she thought it timely. The board had been attending workshops on the National Policy Statement on Urban Development in which the question of what made for a well-functioning urban form was central. There seemed to be a desire among board members to pass my report on to officials.
Subsequent to the board meeting I talked with Alex Bonham about her Auckland Fringe Festival play, An Extraordinary Meeting. This play, devised by Alex and the cast, is rooted in the Urban Growth Agenda, which is, in the Government’s words “an ambitious programme that aims to remove barriers to the supply of land and infrastructure and make room for cities to grow up and out.”
The play focuses on the National Policy Statement on Urban Development which demands a well-functioning urban form.
What this means is only partly defined, allowing councils to determine their own standards. In the play, the audience forms a council to discuss and decide what makes a city function well, not just for economic growth but for them as people, and that will serve for future generations too.
The theme of this play fits in perfectly with my paper about the preservation of residents’ favourite amenity values while Auckland’s population explodes.
The blurb promoting the play says the show “combines verbatim theatre and participatory theatre. It is inspired by the rituals and rules of real local councils that allow strangers to make impossibly hard decisions together.”
I look forward to attending the play, and I look forward too, to continuing to push Council to always consider residents attachment to certain amenity values near where they live.
An Extraordinary Meeting is at the Basement Theatre 30 March to 1 April and includes guest experts including Grant Hewitson of the Low Carbon Network, Tom Irvine of Ngati Whatua Orakei, Emma McInnes of Women in Urbanism, and Greer O’Donnell of The Urban Advisory. (JOHN ELLIOTT)
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