Stop blight spreading by rising above it all

By NIGEL COOK*

All over Auckland, council planners are fumbling as they try to write regulations for the higher densities required to house our burgeoning population. The limitations of the teaching at tertiary institutions such as Auckland University's school of town planning mean they have to learn on the job. The city is their guinea pig.

The dire results of this ignorance is obvious along the waterfront from the Parnell overbridge to Westhaven. There, the wonderful outlook over a working harbour and the distant Hauraki Gulf makes it ideal for high buildings. The results so far are a travesty of good urban design.

As a people, we love a view. We will pay much more for a house with one. That is a measure of how much we enjoy and value that sense of expansive freedom and ownership that a long view gives. This is especially true if we can see the sea - even a glimpse of it is precious.

Auckland planners seem incapable of building this quality into their plans for the city. The rules they have made make it possible for a few to hog all the view and leave almost nothing for those living behind.

The results are walls of apartments being built that shut off the sea. People in any housing behind this wall see not much more than the street. Adding insult to injury, the wall behind usually contains things one doesn't want to look at, like plumbing and stairwells and rubbish bins.

This is a mediocre city and need not be.

A good example of this mediocrity is the much-praised Viaduct basin. By any standard it is one of the most attractive places to live in Auckland. What is being praised, however, is only the thin barrier of buildings right on the water. They have all the view.

The apartments in behind - only 100m or so from the sea - have the street to look at, or the back of the seaside apartments, or even a parking building. Only an occasional gap to the basin reminds them that the sea is out there.

This need not be. The modern city overseas has worked out methods of sharing precious public things like a view. If this narrow barrier of buildings fronting the water had been shaped differently, all the land behind could have been developed to see the sea and the harbour.

Further along Fanshawe St is another wall. Here, it is imitation 19th-century office buildings, with the height fixed to ensure they don't tower over senior council staff in the bank behind.

For the public, though, all that America's Cup activity in the basin is well hidden.

The blight of the building-as-wall is spreading along the new residential land facing the harbour. On the Strand at the bottom of Parnell, a long new apartment building follows the street. There is enough land to build at right angles and let those behind see through. There was no regulation, however, to stop the developer from grabbing all the view.

This strip of old railway land along the Strand is zoned from medium height (33m maximum) apartments. This low height encourages developers to build walls instead of higher, separated towers. It devalues the other side of the street which is ready for real development.

The planners seem to fear tall buildings. The district plan shows examples of admired cityscapes which are not more than four or five storeys. There is no need for this historical meanness. What Auckland needs are regulations that will encourage tall, slender buildings, fairly widely spaced to allow views between them. Buildings behind can be slightly higher and placed to get a view. Behind that again, perhaps, can be larger slab buildings at right angles to the sea, so that both sides get an angled view.

It does not have to be very wide to give a lot of pleasure. It is distance that is important. Though the outlook is narrow, apartment dwellers will get the feeling that they are not walled in.

The Auckland regulations ignore this quality. In the great English garden revolution of the 18th century, they called such long narrow views "prospects" and the wide view was a "panorama".

This layout gives everyone a look at the harbour and, as a bonus, because it all faces north, a fair share of the sun, too.

This would all be reflected in higher city values because people enjoy their apartments that much more.

It is too late for the Viaduct basin and not much can be done for the failure on the railway land. But the western reclamation work can still be rethought to maximise living quality, encourage the boat industry and still give developers good returns.

* Nigel Cook is a founding member of the Institute of Architects' urban issues group.