KEY POINTS:
Real Estate investors and home buyers are calling for councils to stretch city boundaries so more people can live on the fringes.
As the prices of homes in established suburbs continues to increase, many hope that new housing developments on Auckland's fringes will provide the answer to more affordable residential property.
However, there is also concern that over-development will ruin the landscape of areas currently protected from subdivision.
Here is a selection of Your Views:
Kusum
Yes the govt should certainly open up more land around Auckland for building houses. This will allow people to move out of city limits and enjoy lower rents! I think it also would make sense if Govt moves NZ Housing homes into these new areas as the rents would be lower for govt to subsidise as well(this indirectly brings down use of taxpayers' money)
Yes yes yes
At last a sensible idea, too simple to have occurred to Cullen and these new concepts of supply and demand driving property prices upwards have escaped Bollard and his team of theoretical boffins. But should not be limited to just Auckland. It is a sound idea and should be used wherever there is pressure on the supply of housing stock. Possibly the first house could be completed before the last non-dairy exporter turns out the lights.
Mercedes Auckland
Unfortunately the posters that are writing about it just being more land for foreign investors are right. This wouldn't be a solution for getting more kiwis into the country. It would just be another reason for foreigners to form real estate trusts and other investment vehicles which price us out of homes and give them citizenship.
Kim Ickland
NO! Absolutely not. This would be such a mistake. Before councils consider ruining more great things about this country they should look at towns like Boulder Colorado and their open space policies. Boulder has essentially built a moat around their city by purchasing open space. The idea is that the city should be surrounded by open land and vistas that everyone can enjoy while housing is centered around a downtown with good transport, bike trails, trekking trails out everyone's back door, and pocket parks in most neighborhoods. Well designed high density housing is one of the most eco-friendly things a city can do. Of course, Auckland has already blown it. Our downtown looks like a third world slum. Let's preserve our open space for everyone. Don't be selfish people. I know we'd all like affordable housing, but this isn't the answer. This would be a short term answer to a problem that needs some decent city planners to get after it. We'd end up ruining a lot of great things about NZ if we started down this path.
Out West
I would love to knock off an acre from my two acre 'plot' and have some extra cash, however with no sewerage, town supply water, street lighting, footpaths or rubbish collection I can't see this happening, even in my lifetime! So develop areas that do have a good infrastructure and allow people to 'unlock' blocks of land for low density housing. After all, Auckland is made up of 4 'cities' and we don't all need to be within 'spitting' distance of the CBD.
Dave
Most of the reactions so far appear to be from the usual selfish nimby boomers who want to keep everything exactly as it is now. You want other people (not yourselves of course) to live like battery chickens so you can continue to enjoy your lifestyle blocks and farm paddocks right next to the largest city in the country. It's insane.
Steven
Underlying this issue is economic freedom and property rights. If it is your land you should be able to do what you want with it. Councils and others should have no say in what you do with your own property. Property rights is an underpinning of a free society. Repeal the Resource Management Act.
If councils want to encourage higher density living in cities stop discouraging the development of apartments through taxes. It now costs over $35k to build an apartment in council fees in Auckland. This cost does not include the expense of excessive delays and problems incurred through red tape, regulations, and incompetent, and inefficient councils.
Mario
The landscape around the country and around Auckland is full of developed suburbs but dotted with undeveloped sections. There should be covenants that require development within a set period of time. That will free up land, take out some speculation from the market, and increase the value of existing suburbs.
S Tang, CBD
Grow Auckland up, not wide. Keep our belts green.
Andrew Atkin
Yes of course the land should be freed up. Only about 1.5 per cent of New Zealand is covered over with residential urbanisation, and the populations of the developed world are stabilising (including NZ). It will also help to reduce the development of congestion, as most new traffic becomes localised to the fringes ("sprawl" does not create congestion in itself, population growth does - sprawl actually keeps the development of congestion under control). Most importantly, it will lead to a rapid correction in land prices, so people can afford to have kids in New Zealand again. Cities that do not have oppressive urban-boundaries have much more affordable housing - fact. If you want to learn about all this in more detail (so you don't get pushed around by ignorant popular-media soundbites!), I recommend Owen McShanes' excellent website: www.rmastudies.org.nz/
Owen McShane (Kaiwaka)
How depressing. Virtually every claim made on the comments so far is false. The reality is that the use of Metropolitan Urban Limits is precisely what leads to "Carpet sprawl" which you are all objecting to. The city keeps growing - as it runs out of land, prices skyrocket and people start to leapfrog beyond the region (as I did) so they can live the life of their choice. Finally the belt is eased and that area fills up too. The solution is multi-nodal cities (no CBD has been built since the Ford), green "new towns" in peri-urban areas, and in existing townships, managed parks in the countryside and coastal areas. On my managed park on the Kaipara I grow olives, and grapes and truffles and we have planted 80,000 trees and plants over the last ten years. We treat our own sewage (as asset) and manage our storm water (five ponds and wetlands) and all houses have solar heating. It's called Green Growth - not Smart Growth which is dense thinking.
Angela
I think that they should open up more land for development but only if they plan for transport and they put in better services, i.e. waste water and sewerage and business should be encouraged to establish in the area. If they could encourage communities to live where they work, this would cut down on traffic congestion with people travelling from one side of the city to the other. I think that all new housing developments should be encouraged to collect their storm water and that solar power should be mandatory in all new housing this would solve a lot of issues that seem to be in forefront these days, i.e. storm water problems and power supply. I know that this will put the price of building up but I think that it is important and that in the long term it would save a lot of money.
Jenny (Waiuku)
No we must keep the green belts. The air is clean to come home to. Auckland is becoming more like a sprawling suburb than a vibrant city. Keep the city growing - upwards if necessary but keep the fringes clean. Developers dont pay for new infrastructure that is needed when there is urban sprawl - by that the trains, motorways, parks and Schools etc are not in place before the housing and the population so bring social problems with them.
Bruce
Totally disagree with unlocking more land around Auckland, or for that matter Wellington or anywhere else for that matter. Unlocking land will only demand more roads at a time when New Zealand can't get existing roads sorted. If there is such a demand for housing, then the obvious solution is to revise the zoning plans to allow more dense and high-rise development within existing sub-divisions.
Andrew (Auckland)
Ya go ahead with release of land and use the land to build new residences..and the rich local and foreign investors would come in to buy up the new properties. Eventually the house price would still go up as the supply of residential houses has been depleted. So are we back to square one? Now I know why capital gain tax is not going to be implemented. Obviously.
Joseph Epsom
Just more land for overseas investors to buy up really isn't it.
Tere Lowe
What impact would urban sprawl have in terms of transport and extended urban infrastructure and who would be paying for it, not the developers I would suggest.
Andrew
Auckland is already sprawling enough. Pushing back the city boundaries will add traffic congestion, use up valued agricultural soils, diminish amenity, limit urban design, and will make Auckland a less desirable city. Already more New Zealanders leave Auckland than move there. This issue is lack of housing, not land. The city councils and regional council should actively encourage developers to build lots more high-quality medium density living environments near good public transport. Existing brownfield sites, poor neighbourhoods and sparse suburbia should be invigorated with better infrastructure and incentives to encourage development of these areas.Councils should get creative, and put some serious money and resources towards increasing urban density to make housing more affordable and create better neighbourhoods that people want to live in.
Ray (Whangarei)
Yeah, go ahead and move Auckland's boundary's. Make Wellsford the northern boundary and Hamilton the southern boundary. Like, who cares what is done. I do. Can't you idiots see that Auckland is already over-rated, over-taxed, over-burdened, over-populated and over-bearing. Auckland is the creator of its own problems and the size of it is the main problem. It's about time the legal buffoons got their butts into gear and legislated the maximum size of a city. Who in their right mind would want to live in an expansive hell hole like Auckland anyway?
Le Fox
I deplore urban sprawl as it is, as the developer strips the entire area of vegetation. If you are going to develop areas for housing, the developer must be made to retain pockets of trees & provide green space to beautify the land he just stripped.
Little boxes on the hill side without trees & vegetation is downright ugly.
Rhea
No! Councils work hard listening to the people when writing their District Plans. People want controlled urban growth and not sprawling unconsolidated cities, they want land available for activities other than residential such as agriculture or horticulture. Cities are often built on flood plains, and so good productive fertile land is covered with concrete instead of providing us with vegetables and meat, export dollars and livings for people and their families. Already the rate of subdivision has outstripped population growth.
Andybee
Freeing up land on the outskirts of major cities is just another knee-jerk, stop gap measure. Until both central government and local bodies can come up with a vision and plan of what this country should look like 100 or 200 years from now, then expansion of cities will continue as it has for the past 100 years - three years at a time. (Hmmm, isn't that the electoral cycle? Strange that!) Greater Auckland (by area) is already one of the largest cities in the world. What about rapid rail links between (say) Hamilton and Auckland or Warkworth and North Shore, and preserving true "green belts" around the major metropolitan areas? And plan the growth of these satellite towns and cities.
Adrian Kerr
No! Urban sprawl is already causing the chronic transportation problems that plague Auckland, and to a lesser extent, Wellington and Christchurch. Let's revive our inner cities through the building of quality and integrated apartments (as opposed to the disconnected scattered towers that are the present vogue). Why do 'town' centres like Botany have no apartments above the shops, meaning that after 6pm it is deserted? It makes them seem fake, and without a resident base, there is little after-hours patronage of the cafes, restaurants etc. Yet several thousand people could have been accommodated there and brought life to the area.
NZGuy
History to date has shown almost without exception, developers do the minimum. Unlock the land when developers can show they're prepared to build high quality developments with public transport infrastructure in place. Or else the roading problem will continue to grow. I note in today's NZ Herald 400,000 rental properties. If even 20 per cent of those had been within the price range of the average NZer, rather than attractive to investors, that would have freed up 80,000 homes. Investors have played a large part driving prices up.
