Panuku was involved in the Panmure Silent Disco walk.
Adrienne Young-Cooper holds powerful chairs at the nexus of two agencies: Auckland Transport and Panuku Development Auckland.
Late last year, Auckland Council appointed Young-Cooper as chair of Auckland Transport.
This on top of the role she has held since November 2018 as chair of Panuku Development Auckland, the council's urban regeneration agency.
Young-Cooper acknowledges the two roles make for a heavy workload saying it is a "for-now situation".
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Yet she says there is a huge overlap between the two organisations. One is about places and the other is about moving between places.
"There are many lenses you can put on councils' responsibilities. For me, there are two drivers from Auckland Transport and from Panuku which have an obvious connection."
Panuku's role is to create places for Aucklanders to love. It has a particular focus on urban regeneration. It concentrates on those in the central city and in town centres.
"Auckland Transport's mission is to provide easy journeys. This is for businesses as well as people and families getting to work, getting to school or elsewhere. One of the things that arises from this is 'journeys to where?'"
This is something Young-Cooper encountered early on in her career as a planner.
"We always understood how land use would drive transport demand and how transport infrastructure drives land use patterns. For a long time Auckland has had a policy of managing its urban growth and where it needed to be with transport. This started in the 1960s with a huge investment in motorways.
For the past 20 years or so it has been large investments in not only motorways, but also in public transport.
In that time, a lot of the urban development in Auckland has occurred around transport nodes.
"Auckland Council and its predecessors have had the job of marrying transport development with urban development in an active way for the last 70 years."
There is a new urgency to this work.
Auckland is growing faster than ever and, at the same time, there is a heightened sense of the need to address climate change.
And while this is going on, the nature of the central city is changing.
Young-Cooper says about 2000 to 3000 people lived in the central city in the early 1990s.
"Even then it was the most sustainable part of the whole region. It was very easy to get to, and to get around. It had lots of public transport. Today 33,000 people call the central city home. Those people who have made the city their home are conscious of what the city has to offer, they have also figured out ways to get around."
In some cases they walk, others get on a bus or a scooter. Many of them have found that everything they need to do in their everyday life is there. This could be going to work, going to university and so on.
She says most of the benefits of living in a city are achieved by being close to the things that are special to you. Though not everyone wants to live this way, Auckland Council has been increasingly wanting to create a city where people who want to live in the centre or close to one of the town centres are able to have the opportunity.
There is a move to create different kinds of housing, and high-quality housing in places where amenities are close to hand.
These might be community facilities such as libraries and recreation centres, shops or schools. This housing also needs to be near transport such as bus stations and train stations so that people can easily get around the region and don't always need to get the car out.
"We've been doing this for about seven years, but now it's really intensive. The council realises that," Young-Cooper says.
It has to ask its delivery agencies like Panuku and Auckland Transport to bring this vision to life.
"Onehunga is good example of what this might mean in a suburban context.
"It's been identified by the council as a priority for urban regeneration. It's got great bones. By that I mean the streets are there, the shops are there.
"There are lovely old terraced buildings. It has got a main street, it is about 150 years old. It can take an increase in medium density housing and other forms of investment.
"There's a long history with mana whenua. Auckland Council has a lot of areas around Onehunga which are car parks and with careful planning can be converted to low rise apartment buildings."
More great bones come in the shape of existing and planned transport infrastructure.
"Onehunga has a train station on a line with services every 30 minutes to the central city," she says.
"There is a bus hub that's in a back street that could do with rethinking. It's already accessible to the central city but more is coming.
Onehunga is on the proposed route for the one of the light rail lines."
Onehunga is on Auckland's other harbour — Manukau Harbour — which is also overdue for greater attention.
Young-Cooper says the council recently purchased the Onehunga wharf. She says this could potentially be the Wynyard Quarter of Manukau. At the same time as this is going on, Kāinga Ora is investing in providing affordable and state housing in Onehunga.
The result is that Onehunga will become quite central to Auckland.
Young-Cooper says the council is working with Panuku, Auckland Transport and the Crown.
"It all comes together. Instead of doing their own things separately, they all operate to an integrated plan. We're still learning how to do integrated plans, but it means the right things are done in the right place at the right time and we don't end up digging up the roads three times to get there."
Over the next few years people will see the work on the ground in Onehunga and the other centres singled out for regeneration.
Young-Cooper names Manakau city centre, Northcote and Takapuna.
Avondale is scheduled to have 900 new homes constructed in an area that's close to rail and on high-frequency bus routes.
These are all projects where the planning stages are now advanced. The common theme running through all these council-led regeneration projects is that they are closely tied to public transport options, usually the bus network and often the railway.
Many of them are also close to the motorway network.
Adrienne Young-Cooper points to the recently-opened Wilsher Village development as a good example of how Panuku Development is facilitating affordable rental housing for older people.
Wilsher Village is a new four-storey building on Henderson Valley Road and is the first Panuku Development Auckland has built for Haumaru Housing, a joint venture between the Selwyn Foundation and Auckland Council.
It has 40 one-bedroom units and has been designed from the ground up for older people to continue living independently.
"Panuku used its property development team to work with a council joint venture on its land and then get a return from that," Young-Cooper says.
"It returns 100 per cent on rebuilding better housing for elderly folk.
"A lot of thought went into how to honour and respect mana whenua. It's clever in terms of visual imagery and there are some amazing artworks there.
I walked through before the official opening. It made me feel a sense of pride in our community that we could build this kind of housing for elderly people who can't afford the full market rate for a commercial retirement village. We'd all like to see a lot more of it."
The council helped fund the development, which is also assisted by various government grants to replace housing areas are in need of an update.
The building is part of a wider move to help revitalise Henderson town centre and is the first project in a series designed to get people living in the area into high-quality housing.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff says Adrienne Young-Cooper's in-depth knowledge and understanding of Auckland's challenges and about transport and its role in supporting housing development made her a standout candidate for chair of Auckland Transport.
"Transport and housing are two of Auckland's biggest growth challenges. To build a modern and successful city where people want to live, we need solutions that integrate transport choice with housing needs. Adrienne will bring this combined perspective across the work of two of our key council-controlled organisations."
In a 30-year governance career, Young-Cooper has held significant roles such as chair of Housing NZ and Homes, Land and Communities (HLC).
She was a long-time director of the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) and deputy chair of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority and Waterfront Auckland.
She sits on the Queenstown Airport board and is a chair of Cornwall Park Trust.
Young-Cooper started her career in town planning and property development.
OPINION: Tensions are likely to become more evident next year.