Editorial: New building regime needs wit and will

For years, community groups have fought a solitary and often demoralising campaign to improve the appearance of Auckland City. For most of that time their concern over a plethora of ugly developments and quest for greater urban design controls were ignored. Finally the clamour became too great. First, and tentatively, the previous city council acted. Now, far more emphatically, a new council has declared it has "put a stake in the ground and said 'enough is enough"'. For the sake of that long-suffering community, it must ensure this is the case.
At a first glance the measures announced by Mayor Dick Hubbard appear impressive. In time district plans will be overhauled to include urban design criteria as part of the resource consent process. More immediately a carrot will be offered to developers through the scoring of each new building on its design merits. That will see mediocre proposals rejected, acceptable ones processed normally and those of high quality fast-tracked. And Auckland will follow the lead of Melbourne and Sydney by appointing an urban design champion and a city architect. The task of the architect will be to change the culture of the council's planning department.

The size of that job is considerable. Council staff will always claim that their past rubber-stamping of many poorly designed apartment towers without public scrutiny reflected the controls of the day and the prevailing inattention to design issues. They will say they were powerless to address the consequences of a strategy of high-density development which neglected to include rules that would bring sensitivity to the process.

Yet they showed no appetite for doing other than wield that rubber stamp. Thus, as part of the process of community pressure it took a lobby group to win a High Court ruling that, through the auspices of the Resource Management Act, aesthetics were "an indispensable concern in every planning regime and for every consent authority". The response of the city planning manager - that the council had more powers "than we thought we had" - could hardly have been lamer. Clearly, the council, through the city architect, must instil in its planning staff a new sense of purpose and the urge to deal transparently.

Nor should it underestimate the resistance of some developers. The Property Council has put its weight behind the council's initiative. But some of its members were only too willing to take full advantage of the previous regulation vacuum to maximise their returns. There was precious little worry about architectural merit, street appeal or the impact of their monstrosities on neighbouring properties. Some, now, will be intent on probing the new system for loopholes. The council must have the wit and will to combat developers of this ilk.

The potential snags do not end there. Aesthetics are a subjective matter. One man's concrete box is another man's cutting-edge architecture. In an ideal world architects and developers would not be hobbled by mind-numbing restriction. Where "taste police" are involved there is always the risk of conservatism.

This makes it inevitable that contentious decisions will be made from time to time. Yet there is no reason astute appointments by the council, including that of the urban design champion, should not prompt building of reasonably consistent character, one by which needs and functionality are not advanced at the expense of respect for, and enhancement of, the environment.

In reality there is little alternative to this initiative, given the visual pollution rendered by the former regime. Long-running community concern has led, finally, to a city council that says it views shoddy development in the same light. That elected body, having announced a robust response, must now ensure there is no slippage. The re-creation of a city attractive to residents, business investment and tourists demands nothing less.