Developer hopes Unitary Plan brings certainty

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A property developer who has copped flak for proposed apartments at Milford hopes Auckland's Unitary Plan will provide more certainty.

A draft of the plan is due to come out at midday.

It will determine things like where multi-storey buildings can go, which land will be opened up for new sections and which buildings will be protected.

New Zealand Retail Property Group chair Mark Gunton says he has had to do seven different plans to intensify the Milford town centre.

"We're very pleased with the plan that we've put forward, and we find ourselves banging our heads against the continual conundrum of the existing residents saying change is not for us."

Mr Gunton says there would be more people doing what he is doing if it wasn't such a long, fractured business.

Transport engineer Steve Dudley says rather than looking at building a lot of new assets, we should try to work out how to use our existing assets better.

"Roading capacity, for example, spends 20 hours of the day half-full or virtually empty, so there is quite a lot of capacity to use and get more out of our transport network, and indeed out of all of our infrastructure, really."

Mr Dudley says office and retail hours could be staggered to even out peak loads, lecture times at universities could be made more flexible, and smartphone applications used to provide information on travel conditions earlier.