Brian Rudman: Pledge to improve urban design needs resolve

By rights I should be cheering the establishment of the mayoral taskforce on urban design. After all, I have been banging on about the need for such a body for months. But if Mayor Dick Hubbard is going to succeed in warming us to to his mission, it's going to need rather more inspirational leadership than we've seen so far.

In one breath the mayor is sternly warning: "I'm putting the property development business on notice that I'm deadly serious about urban design". But just a few days before he was ducking for cover on whether he supported the battle to save the historic Jean Batten State Building, claiming that to comment would be "improper".

Since when was it improper for a politician to speak up for what he claims, in the abstract, to believe in? Where is the cheerleader for Auckland when a threatened slice of the heritage he pledged during his election campaign to protect needs him?

If Mr Hubbard wants the rest of us to believe in his fight for heritage and better urban design, then he has to stand up and be counted when things get sticky.

As regional council chairman Mike Lee observed last week: "If the Jean Batten building is destroyed by a council elected to place more value on heritage, I fear it could have serious repercussions for public confidence in this council". Public confidence in its genuine commitment to the outcome of taskforces on urban design, for sure.

Several callers have queried the composition of the 14-strong taskforce, particularly the inclusion of developers such as Nigel McKenna and Richard Didsbury, and longtime key council functionaries director of planning Jill McPherson and deputy mayor Bruce Hucker.

It was reassuring to check the report of the Edinburgh urban design working group, on which Auckland's is modelled, and discover it was dominated by council officials and politicians, along with two developers and two architects. Hardly the ideal nursery, surely, for a landmark report.

To get a wider perspective, the Edinburgh taskforce "identified priority areas of concern and invited a series of expert speakers to make short presentations, followed by questions and group discussion".

No one is criticising the quality of the Edinburgh report. Whether the outcome is as pleasing in Auckland, we'll have to wait and see. But not for too long.

I'm not sure whether it's a matter for wonderment or worry that Dr Hucker, who is to chair the group, is saying, on the one hand, "It's a hugely important exercise" and on the other that "We need to have the first recommendations with the mayor well before May".

Today is March 21 and the first of six planned meetings of the taskforce is tomorrow. May is scarcely five weeks away. Just where "well before" fits in to that time period I don't know.

But given that the taskers are busy people (Mrs McPherson and majority leader and part-time university teacher Dr Hucker, for example, have a city to run and Mr Didsbury, a property empire to grow), the old saying "less haste, more speed" does come to mind.

If they do run short of time, they could do worse than borrow from the Edinburgh document. Two brief extracts: "Good design is a sound investment - it creates an urban environment which attracts residents, business investment and tourism, improves the city's economy and diversity, adds value to the city's quality of life and is an asset to the developer".

And: "The city's economy is vibrant. Other cities may still have to encourage and entice developers to them, but Edinburgh does not. The city can therefore insist on higher urban design standards without fear that developers will walk away - and if they do, it will be in the knowledge that there will be others willing to take their place.

"Developers who are not prepared to make the commitment to a high quality of design are generally not of the calibre that the city is seeking."