Joel Cayford asks how Greater Auckland will be a better place to live in if it has a spatial plan.
The seed for an Auckland Spatial Plan was firmly planted when the Royal Commission into Auckland Governance recommended one: "To improve resource management and integrated planning."
Legislation now before Parliament will require the new Auckland Council to develop and implement a spatial plan. But what is a spatial plan?
And will Auckland be a better place when it has one?
Superficially a spatial plan for the Auckland region sounds like a good idea. A city spatial plan conjures up images of a big map with new road, state highway, sewer main, land subdivision, parks and new school projects - each labelled with budgets and action plans for staged completion.
In practice this is what Auckland's set of strategic plans already show. The problem is they don't get implemented.
But the deficiencies that are endemic in Auckland local government planning go beyond implementation. There is a lack of integration between strategy and policy development.
There is poor measurement of the relationship between policy initiatives and actual results. And the engagement with stakeholders (such as land owners) and communities is often little more than a leaflet drop.
This is changing. The Auckland Regional Council is developing a refined classification for Auckland's centres, corridors and business areas, in order to provide greater certainty for the location and sequencing of growth, and strengthened alignment of land use, transport and economic development.
But difficulties in implementation remain. As do integration gaps such as the lack of alignment between national and regional priorities. Or the need to broaden planning to include social objectives.
Sadly, proposed reforms for Auckland governance incorporate a spatial planning approach that is little more than a tool to shoe-horn central government's economic growth-oriented infrastructure programme into the heart of Auckland.
Integration between central planning and regional planning is important, but indications are that the main purpose of the new spatial plan is to ensure Auckland is ready to receive infrastructure projects that have been centrally planned and funded through the National Infrastructure Plan.
This emphasis threatens local place-making and community building which was central to much of the discussion that led to the Royal Commission.
There needed to be better integration between regional and central government planning. But there also needed to be more integrated thinking at local level around local place-making and planning.
The bill now being considered by Parliament does provide for a more inclusive and consultative approach to the preparation of Auckland's spatial plan than the first drafting, but the underlying purpose of the reform remains.
That is for a nationally funded infrastructure programme to drive the design of a spatial plan ensuring Auckland and its communities are ready to receive centrally planned infrastructure - be it schools, prisons or roads of national significance.
That is not a best practice spatial plan. It risks short-changing the region by focusing on short-term economic objectives.
Best practice spatial planning begins with a public process of identifying and defining a limited number of strategic issues, and building public confidence.
Then come implementation-oriented plans which take account of power structures (including land owners, businesses, local boards, central government), and decision-making processes as well as conflict-solving approaches to lubricate implementation.
And buy-in is maintained throughout by committing to vertical integration with central government in regional decisions, alongside horizontal integration with local boards and local stakeholders in local decisions.
A best practice spatial plan is not a comprehensive all-things-to-all-people plan or map. It needs to target specific Auckland development issues. These must include: housing poverty, transport energy demand, community building, and meeting the needs of an increasing population.
The spatial plan needs to state how it will be implemented. The transformation of Auckland through better passenger transport systems, compact town centres, pedestrian- oriented design and development, won't happen if it's merely seen as a regional strategy.
Transformation will only occur centre by centre, commercial zone by commercial zone, and street by street.
It will be project by project at local level, with each project treated on its merits and according to local requirements, community hopes and aspirations, and land owner expectations.
Best practice spatial planning is as much about local place-making as it is about the construction of central government-inspired large scale infrastructure. That is the kind of spatial plan that Auckland needs.
* Dr Joel Cayford is an Auckland regional councillor.
