Or from Lester Naughton: "Higher density can mean perhaps more people have the beach or a well groomed park and cafe 500m away and a bus every 15 minutes to work.
"New Zealand needs to learn how to design higher density well, that is the issue and it need not be high rise. Anyone who has travelled to Europe has seen terraced houses and low rise apartments with vibrant street life and great public space."
From lunchtime today, Aucklanders have been able to go online here and discover how their own home and neighbourhoods are affected by the new masterplan. About 44 per cent of urban Auckland will remain zoned for single housing lots, 9 per cent of the total being in a "large lot" category on the fringes. A slightly larger land area - 49 per cent - will be zoned for "mixed housing", permitting an assortment of housing including town houses, terraced housing and small-scale apartment buildings. These zones will be restricted to two-storey dwellings.
The remaining 7 per cent will be for terraced housing and apartments up to four storeys next to local and town centres and six storeys next to metro centres. Within the centres, there's a hierarchy of restrictions, with no height limits in the Auckland CBD - volcanic view shafts willing, then dropping from limits of 18 storeys in metropolitan centres such as Albany and Manukau, down to four storeys in town centres such as Ponsonby, Devonport and Te Atatu.
It's not just "young" Ryan Mearns that sees apostles of urban sprawl as being trapped in a 1950s time warp. Many oldies like myself feel the same.
Each time I read of residents of the remoter East Coast Bays railing against the threat of "high rise" in their sleepy suburbs, I can't help thinking, a bit more Surfers Paradise development up the Auckland coast might be just what we need to bring back some of the Kiwi capital invested in apartments across the Tasman. In reality, of course, Browns Bay is restricted to 6 storeys, which is far shorter than Surfers.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's report on residential land availability in Auckland, released this week, highlights what will be a growing demand for a variety of housing.
By 2031, there will 223,580 couples without children, a 55 per cent increase on the current figure. There will be 178,800 single-person households, 67 per cent more than now. Families with children will drop from 47 per cent of households to 41 per cent - the number of additional housing units required for families rising just 53,587 over the 20-year period, compared with 79,319 new homes needed for child-free couples, and 71,800 extra needed for single households.
At the risk of repeating myself, what we should be concentrating our attention on during the period of consultation beginning today, is the detail. I've already mentioned the failure to rewrite the noise rules - heat pump generators, air conditioning units and the like - to reflect the new intensive living. Another obvious concern will be checking our local areas to see there are increased numbers of neighbourhood squares and parks.
Intensification is great. But only if we get the details right.
