Population boom to cause big headaches

File photo / Herald on Sunday.

Auckland's diverse population is bursting at the seams - and one of the first tasks of the new Super City council may be stretching its boundaries to accommodate it.

New Zealand's sole world-scale metropolis is growing out of all proportion to the rest of the country, accounting for just over half of the country's total population growth in the five years to 2006.

Statistics New Zealand expects it to take up 60 per cent of population growth from 2006 to 2031, growing from 1.4 million people to just under 2 million and needing an extra 260,000 homes.

But there are serious doubts around whether so many homes can be built within the metropolitan urban limit agreed to by the eight councils in a 50-year regional growth strategy back in 1999.

Consultant Phil McDermott says the growth strategy, which aims to concentrate growth in a string of designated nodes along key transport corridors, has "failed to get traction".

"In the Super City there is a chance to readdress the spatial plan and this time we could see that the failings of the regional growth strategy can be overcome," he says.

Ever since European traders settled on the shores of the Waitemata in the 1830s, Auckland's growth has been driven by trade, drawing migrants from near and far.

There was an interlude of 40 years or so after World War II when manufacturing powered the economy, serving a domestic market behind walls barring foreign competitors.

But those walls tumbled in the late 1980s, along with longstanding Eurocentric immigration laws. In the last 20 years, as the new liberal regime unleashed an unprecedented surge in both both trade and immigration, Auckland's character has been transformed.

Asians leapt from under 5 per cent of the region's population in 1986 to 19 per cent in 2006, and are projected to be 28 per cent by 2021.

A further 25 per cent of Aucklanders are of Maori (11 per cent) or Pacific (14 per cent) origin, both expected to rise only gently by 1 or 2 per cent in the next decade. The once-dominant Europeans dropped to 64.5 per cent by 2006 and are projected to be only a bare majority (54 per cent) by 2021, even including people who are a mix of European and something else.

The total proportion of Aucklanders born overseas rose from 23 per cent in 1986 to 37 per cent in 2006. Sociologist Paul Spoonley has said that makes the immigrant share in Auckland's population one of the highest in the world, sixth-equal with Vancouver.

As befits a trading city, Auckland's population has been allowed to sprawl wherever the market led it, once giving almost every family its quarter-acre slice of paradise. The urban area stretches 74 km from Waiwera to Drury, covering 55,000ha, making it one of the biggest cities on the planet in land area.

Developers have built for cars. The average Aucklander takes only 41 trips a year by public transport.

The 1999 regional growth strategy attempted a radical break with this heritage. The region's eight councils agreed on the goal of a "compact city", herding future growth into "high-density centres" mainly along a proposed "rapid transit system" - the existing rail lines and what is now the busway beside the northern motorway.

Economically, intensification was expected to save the costs of extending infrastructure to new suburbs; socially, it would reduce commuting times and foster more exercise and community interaction; and environmentally, it would reduce carbon emissions.

"By 2050, more than a quarter of the population (more than 500,000 people) could be living in high-density, multi-unit accommodation, compared with less than an eighth or 125,000 people in 1996," the strategy said.

Limited greenfield development was still allowed at Orewa/Silverdale, Long Bay, Albany/Greenhithe, Westgate/Redhills, East Tamaki, Takanini and Hingaia (west of Papakura), and in rural towns such as Helensville and Pukekohe. But all of these were to take up only a quarter of the population growth to 2050, with three-quarters inside the existing urban area. A decade later, the strategy has been only partially successful.

A 2007 Auckland Regional Council evaluation found that 85 per cent of new homes since 2001 were built within the urban limit and 43 per cent were in multi-unit blocks, lifting multi-unit homes dramatically to 24 per cent of the total housing stock. Public transport use also increased rapidly.

But only a third of the growth was in the designated "high-density centres", and most of that was in the central business district. Instead, developers preferred places with sea views such as Orewa, Takapuna and even the Te Atatu Peninsula, and other quiet areas well away from the designated "transport corridors". Most new shops and even public facilities went up outside the designated centres.

McDermott believes that the intensification that has occurred owes more to demographic change than to the planners.

"The growth in the next 20 years will certainly be small households," he says. Demand for flats and townhouses is being driven by young people having children later, plus an influx of foreign students, and by "empty-nesters" living longer after the children have left home. But he says most people still live in families and want space.

"Immigrant families don't necessarily come to live in the same environment they left. They opt for housing that gets them closer to the suburban ideal - safe roads, private yards and room for an extended family."

Bryce Morrin, whose Todd Property Group is developing the 2900-unit Stonefields development in the old Mt Wellington quarry, says most of his buyers are empty-nesters who no longer want to mow the lawns or tend big gardens, but still want four-bedroom houses.

Similar large houses still dominate in other big developments under way around the city fringes: about 3000 homes in Fulton Hogan's Millwater project north of Silverdale, 3000 at Housing New Zealand's Hobsonville Point, about 15,000 homes ultimately in a planned new town at Flat Bush, and 2500 planned by Todds at Long Bay as soon as planning issues are resolved.

Real estate sources consulted by the regional council to develop three future scenarios this year asked for development in mainly seaside areas right around the region - at beach towns from Leigh to Waiwera and across the paddocks separating Orewa from the North Shore in the north; around Whenuapai, Riverhead and Taupaki in the west; from Whitford to Maraetai and into the hills out to Brookby in the southeast; around the southern end of the Manukau Harbour out to Ellets Beach in the southwest; and across much of Waiheke Island.

But the council's planners found that its other two scenarios, both containing development within the urban limits, came out better than the "expansive" scenario on most criteria, including economic costs, accessibility to jobs and carbon emissions.

The expansive scenario, for example, would need $31 billion spent on roads by 2051, compared with $15 billion in the two "compact" scenarios.

Auckland University planning lecturer Elizabeth Aitken Rowe hopes the new Super City will give "muscle" to the regional growth strategy by integrating public investment with planning goals.

"A lot of the ideal follows from good transit-led development. We have really not integrated our land use with our transport," she says. "We have really not thought through the social implications - schools, hospitals and so on - and also issues around recreational spaces."

Dr Roger Blakeley, the former head of the Environment Ministry who started work as the Super City's chief planning officer on September 1, says Auckland cannot keep spreading outwards indefinitely. With 260,000 new homes required between 2006 and 2031, that's about 10,000 a year.

"On average at the moment we have about 10 households per hectare, so what that would mean is that if Auckland kept growing outwards at its current rate we'd have 1000ha a year going into housing, or 25,000ha in 25 years," he says.

He says the "spatial plan", which the new Auckland Council must draw up by 2012, will be a new kind of beast for this country, integrating planning for infrastructure, parks, conservation areas, heritage and social services as well as housing and commercial development.

Council-controlled organisations such as the new transport agency will be bound by the plan.

"The spatial plan will unlock the key to economic growth in Auckland and hence for New Zealand," says Blakeley. "It's going to have to be signed off by both the Auckland Council and the Cabinet. The legislation spells out that the Government has to be consulted."

Mayoral candidate Len Brown says he has heard "whispers" that the Government plans to step in soon to address the controversial issue of the metropolitan urban limit.

He advocates keeping the limit and believes the original concept of a "compact city" is still correct, but requires some review, particularly to open up more land for industry.

"Intensification continues to be a focus for us. We just need to look at those opportunities beyond the metropolitan urban limit that are indicated in the regional growth strategy."

Rival candidate John Banks also warns it is a "false economy" to provide more land for development if it costs more to provide infrastructure for it. But he advocates a new approach. "Rather than relying solely on the metropolitan urban limits as the mechanism by which we define new land for growth, a better, more innovative approach is identifying 'areas of growth' and 'areas of stability,"' he says. "By identifying areas of growth, we can properly plan for infrastructure like transport, water, power and other municipal services."

* From the New Zealand Herald feature, 'Project Auckland - our city'