The faults inherent in this approach have been highlighted by Auckland Council, the Commissioner for the Environment, planning professionals and residential groups across Auckland.
In essence, the MDRS is old-fashioned infill housing dressed up as a new policy. Here is what is wrong with it.
If Auckland’s population were indeed to grow by 500,000 over 30 years, as currently projected, we would need 200,000 to 250,000 new homes.
The Auckland Unitary Plan (AUP) already enables higher densities in and around centres and along rapid transit routes, a mixture of other densities further away from these nodes and also special priority intensification areas.
This provides a market-feasible capacity of over 650,000 new dwellings in existing residential and mixed-use areas, which more than meets the projected future demand.
The AUP is already working. Nearly 20,000 consents are being issued annually, over 60 per cent for apartments and terraced houses, and over 80 per cent within the existing urban area.
Identifying these priority development areas has enabled transport and other infrastructure providers (those involved with wastewater, water, stormwater, electricity, community facilities, schools and more) to plan for growth and to get the best “bang for their bucks” when investing in infrastructure.
The MDRS will now make matters more difficult by attracting development away from the AUP’s priority areas.
Having spent $6 billion-plus on urban rail, we should now be focusing on well-designed housing and the growth of jobs and communities around the rail corridor and other priority areas, not facilitating dispersed infill housing.
MDRS also undermines the business case for the Auckland Light Rail project.
With MDRS, at least three houses of three levels will be pepper-potted throughout neighbourhoods.
This will have negative effects on shading, daylight, dominance, privacy and outdoor living spaces. A hotch-potch of building sizes and architectural styles will upset owners and renters alike.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment reports that despite its important stormwater management and temperature regulation roles, urban green space has fallen by 30 per cent in Auckland over 40 years, infill development being a major contributor.
The MDRS will accelerate further green space loss. The commissioner says “one solution lies in building upwards rather than via low-rise infill development”.
The Herald recently reported on a Swanson couple whose property is subject to flooding“, especially since an extra 400 homes have just been built upstream and are causing more runoff”. Their plight is terrible.
In central Auckland, floodwaters, in some cases mixed with wastewater, ran from properties located in the higher areas of the Meola and Oakley catchments into houses and onto school playing fields across Mt Eden, Balmoral, Sandringham and Mt Albert. MDRS infill housing at the top of difficult urban catchments will worsen flooding in lower areas downstream.
Post floods, Minister for the Environment David Parker picked up on some of the problems in an April 6 letter in which he promoted building blue-green corridors in flood-prone areas, providing more green space and reducing the number of concrete driveways in existing urban spaces.
Those are difficult, expensive and often impractical things to do in many of the already-developed urban areas. Houses built under the MDRS do not have to provide any of them.
The Auckland Council has neither the funding nor the financial headroom to fix all of our current stormwater and wastewater problems, let alone the extra problems that will be created by increased infill housing.
It is ironic that Auckland Council is now having to consult on a “future development strategy” that includes the very MDRS infill housing provisions it has previously disagreed with.
Since National has now withdrawn its support for MDRS, it would be quite simple for Labour to do the same.
Labour would still be left with the significant political prize of having championed the more logical increase in intensification around rapid transit nodes and centres.
Auckland, and our other cities for that matter, would then be left with making their own more logical choices about how and where to zone for more housing.
- Greg McKeown is a previous Auckland City Councillor.
