Alain Bertaud, a self described ‘urbanist’ visited Auckland 14 years ago and sponsored by Auckland Urban Development Office (ex-Panuku) visited again for a lecture in the ‘Auckland Conversations’. He is a distinguished visiting scholar, Mercatus Center, George Mason University and Senior Fellow, Marron Institute of Urban Management and lecturer at New York University, with over five decades of experience in urban planning, land markets, and spatial economics. He is the author of Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities.
I was expecting Alain to be promoting ‘15 Minute Cities’, an urbanist concept of restricting movement to 15 minutes vehicle travel from your home and punishing with fines those who exceed this distance. This concept is designed to reduce vehicle emissions.
Instead he said cities were made up of “people not streets and buildings”.
Saying that planners are only able to open up possibilities not to dictate how people live he used the example of town houses become popular after the Unitary Plan made building them easier.. people get to choose whether they “travel 15 minutes or an hour to get to work from where they choose to live”.
Retired NZ Herald journalist Simon Wilson MC, was obviously surprised by these comments as he is a big believer of 15 Minute Cities.Alain Explained that planners have to admit when they get it wrong. Those questions can be heard in the video https://conversations.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/events/
Auckland Council chief planner, Megan Tyler and Richard Hills, chair of Planning Committee were also speakers at this event so I do they heeded that advice. Auckland is a large city and we Kiwis don’t like being controlled where we can go within our city.
Gael Baldock, community advocate
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