Slums cry greets city housing idea

By BERNARD ORSMAN

A tenfold increase in intensification and a ban on building single houses in selected suburbs are being floated for Auckland City.

Planners are starting to worry about how to squeeze more people inside the city's bulging waistline and have come up with new ideas to achieve intensification targets.

Among the ideas are rezoning large swathes in 19 suburbs to take 200 to 300 dwellings a hectare, starting with Newmarket, Glen Innes, Panmure, Mt Wellington quarry, Otahuhu and Avondale. The typical density of these suburbs is 20 to 30 dwellings a hectare.

Planners are also considering stopping people building single houses on sites that have been zoned for higher densities and providing incentives for developers to build more housing on business and industrial land.

The latest revelations for intensification are contained in a central sector agreement between the Auckland City Council and the Auckland Regional Council for the city to accommodate an extra 141,800 people by 2021.

The population now is 401,500.

Planners are confident they can provide for the extra people in theory but have doubts about turning it into reality.

They say that the perception of intensification being badly designed, overcrowded residential development for the poor will be dispelled only by ensuring that future developments meet urban design criteria and there is constant communication on the reasons for intensification and its benefits.

Auckland City's flagship attempt to control where high-density developments occur and how they look is the new residential 8 zoning, approved in August. Apartments of three and four storeys will be allowed within an 800m radius of suburban shopping centres and apartments of five storeys within 2km of downtown Auckland. Planners now say that if residential 8 and other measures such as infill housing and developing commercial land do not lead to enough new housing after five years consideration should be given to:

* Minimum densities in the residential 8 zone.

* Incentives to encourage development in mixed-use business zones.

* More residential growth in downtown Auckland.

* Extending residential 8 into other suburbs.

* An active property role by the council.

Panmure Community Action Group spokesman Keith Sharp said the ideas suggested an air of panic in the council about the commitments it had made to the ARC and the Regional Growth Forum.

"Frankly, I don't believe this city can take an extra 141,800 people in 18 years without bulldozing huge areas of residential Auckland and turning the city into a vast construction site.

"Add the major public transport and roading projects and the disruption will be enormous," Mr Sharp said. "As for a rate of development at densities averaging 200 to 300 dwellings per hectare - that's future slum development."

Housing Lobby spokesman Sue Henry said there was only one conclusion to draw from the central sector agreement - "it will lead to slum development".

"The council should be getting the drift by now that people in residential areas do not want this kind of intensification. Unfortunately, the message is not getting through."

The council's city development committee chairwoman, Juliet Yates, has strongly defended the residential 8 zone and the central sector agreement. Her committee has beefed up protections in the agreement to respond to community concerns to alter and not proceed with areas of growth if necessary.

"Site by site, zone changes would need to be applied for each growth area and if a case could not be made, then intensification would not happen," Mrs Yates said.

"If the whole of Auckland says 'no', the council would have to listen to that very carefully and the region would have to listen to that.

"It may be that future growth takes place in Dargaville."

Packing them in

* Auckland City is committed to squeezing a further 141,800 people within its borders by 2021.

* The emphasis is on high-density housing along transport corridors.

* Auckland City has earmarked 19 suburbs for much of the growth.

* The areas are the central business district, Avondale, Stoddard Rd, Mt Albert, Sandringham, Balmoral/Dominion Rd, Newmarket, Pt Chevalier, Surrey Cres/Grey Lynn, Mt Roskill, Onehunga, Royal Oak, Remuera, Ellerslie, Mt Wellington/Sylvia Park, Panmure, Glen Innes, Otahuhu, Mt Wellington quarry.


* What do you think of the plan?
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