After thrashing out the Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan, the Government is apparently pushing Auckland to further intensify the inner city, way beyond the provisions of the Unitary Plan.
Council officers have begun going door to door assessing the quality of 30,000 character and heritage houses as low, medium or high character value. Those with the highest assessment might just be spared - unless the government interferes again.
Two bright young sparks have already been up and down my heritage street of Wanganui Avenue. They had better not allow our heritage villas to be touched, nor try to squeeze a few six storey apartment blocks where they deem an old villa is not up to standard. What standard? Whose standard? You may well ask.
Mayor Goff says, “We will not be sending in the bulldozers to wipe out old villas.” I echo Christchurch Mayor, Lianne Dalziel who said, “bugger this, you’re not going to tell us how we see our city.”
Even City Council senior planning officer, Jacques Victor told councillors that this will not solve the affordability issue. “This is not the solution,” he said.
We don’t want a city shaped by developers, totally fixated on money, shoving six storey apartments wherever they can, irrespective of amenity values.
I have written about amenity values before, but the subject just continues to be ignored. Sadly, politicians, bureaucrats, planners, usually equate amenity values with NIMBYISM.
I want to quote again a former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, Dr Morgan Williams. Dr Williams wrote in his 108 page paper about the reconciliation of intensification of Auckland’s population and the preservation of amenity values, “Amenity values are the things we really feel good about and cherish in our urban/suburban environments. They are fundamental to city and community survival in the long term.”
Williams went on to say that “failure to appreciate linkages between major systems that affect amenity values in cities (i.e. population growth, demography, sewage, transport, water, open space, vegetation, including trees, building design) will inevitably result in a decline in the environmental qualities of our urban landscapes.” One hundred and eight pages are spent challenging councils to identify and manage amenity values while urban intensification proceeds.
There is no doubt that amenity values will change as a result of intensification, Williams agrees, but planning is the key to achieving the sound management of amenity values. Living environments with high levels of amenity have some or all of the following characteristics according to Williams assessment:
• Low intensity development
• Presence of trees and gardens
• Landscaped frontages and street set backs
• Off street parking
• High degree of privacy
• Daylight and sunlight access
• A high proportion of private and public open space
• Low levels of noise, visual pollution, odour , nuisances
• Safe environment for children, cyclists and pedestrians
• Low levels of vehicular traffic
• A feeling of community
• Non-residential support, business, community activities
Williams says that good management of amenity values requires appropriate monitoring systems. He suggests that communities should meet and set up their own list of valued amenities that the Council should preserve and if possible enhance.
While musing over the thought of the bureaucrats assessing my home along with the 30,000 other character and heritage houses in the inner city to see if it is fit for purpose - his purpose - I thought of my kids’ cat buried under a tree, our studio at the back of our section where my partner ran a successful knitting yarn business for more than ten years while our kids were young, and the friends she made who often came more for company than to buy yarn.
I remembered one of my favourite environmentalists, Canadian Professor David Suzuki describing a real estate flyer in his letter box. “It’s time to sell,” it said. “Prices of houses in this area are sky high.”
Suzuki took the flyer and walked around his property. In doing so he saw a lovely view of Vancouver Bay, soaked up the sun and warmth, and eyed a carved fence post by a very old friend who had helped him build the fence. He walked past trees where favourite pets were buried, went into the kitchen and saw the unit his father had built for he and Tara, which they had brought from their first flat and still cherished.
So many lovely memories - this was not just a house worth a certain amount of money. This was their home full of treasured artefacts and precious memories. It was not for sale.
Discussions of real estate values have become vulgar and boring. Auckland should be about more than a few more ten million dollar apartments. Council and Government must respect owners who have loved their home and their community for twenty, or thirty years, as we have, and want what it is and where it is protected from large, ugly, modern buildings where the main criterion is how much money the developer can make out of it.
“Home is where the heart is,” embodies an essential truth. “What we fear most is separation, loss, exclusion, exile, death,” says Suzuki.
I had thought that Covid-19 lockdowns and lost love ones would have brought some sort of epiphany, with a new discussion about the meaning of life, how to live more gently on a planet under extreme climate pressure, and the importance of wellbeing instead of money.
It certainly hasn’t happened yet. Of course NIMBYISM exists, but most of the things that keeps Auckland near the top of the World’s Most Liveable Cities, are the amenity values as John Morgan Williams espouses in his paper.
We need to protect them. (John Elliott)
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Published 6 August 2021