There goes the neighbourhood

By GEOFF CUMMING, part 1

When Grey Lynn vicar Hugh Kempster learned his diminutive church was to be dwarfed by five-storey apartments, he appealed for reason. When that failed, he started stirring.

For Kempster, attending to parishioners' spiritual concerns now extends to providing website updates on resource consent issues.

"We are helping Auckland City Council and property developers come to understand the depth of public opposition to recklessly placing the interest of big-money developments ahead of the good of the local community," Positively Grey Lynn's website proclaims.

At least one property developer has thought twice since Kempster and other locals formed Positively Grey Lynn in April. A Richmond Rd site earmarked for 70 apartments changed hands after consultants recommended that the council notify the application for public submissions.

But across the road in Surrey Cres, Markham Developments is proceeding with plans for 270 apartments in four big blocks. In nearby Garnet Rd, another residents' group has formed to oppose developer Grant Rutherford's plans for 29 three-storey units in an area of Edwardian villas.

It's the same from Browns Bay to Papatoetoe, from Henderson to Panmure. As the apartment boom spreads from the inner-city to residential areas, neighbourhoods are taking up arms.

"When developers move in, residents fear the knock-on effect," says Keith Sharp, of the Panmure Community Action Group. "We don't want to see people overrun by cheap, faceless, high-density housing."

Auckland's rapid conversion to apartment living stems from an alignment of market and political forces. If the city is to grow to two million people without sprawling from Hamilton to Whangarei, housing must intensify, say city planners.

The regional growth strategy, agreed by the region's seven councils, calls for 70 per cent of population growth to be in existing suburbs.

Fast-growing cities like Hamilton and Tauranga are grappling with similar issues but in Auckland's case, time is running out. Studies show the supply of vacant land will be used within 15 years. The most densely populated area, Auckland City, is expected to grow by 141,000 in the next two decades but has room for only 30,000 - unless people squeeze up.

More than half the houses built in the region last year were apartments - and they have undeniable attractions. But four years after civic leaders approved the growth strategy, opposition from traditional suburbs is mounting.

Leaky buildings, rotting balconies, noise problems, lack of privacy, developments that back on to the street - intensification has become a byword for tomorrow's slums.

The growth strategy was not supposed to have much impact on the leafy, low-density suburbs which characterise the city. Apartments and terraced housing were to be clustered near commercial centres and along rail and bus routes. A drive around Eden Tce, Kingsland and other suburbs near the western rail line reveals plenty of scope for urban renewal on industrial land which shouldn't upset the neighbours.

But development has been unco-ordinated. Most suburbs have their horror stories: Oteha Valley in Albany, Greenwich Park in Newton, Summerfield Villas in Grey Lynn, Eden One and Eden Two in Mt Eden, Tuscany Towers in New Lynn, Sacramento in Howick.

The problem is that civic leaders signed up to intensification without first putting in place rules to guide development. In the vacuum, developers have maximised returns without worrying about incidentals like impact on neighbours, traffic volumes and street appeal.

Councils are playing catch-up, but getting the right rules into district plans is a painstaking process.

"What we are seeing now is what happens under a district plan that doesn't have many controls," says Penny Pirrit, the Auckland City Council's manager of environmental planning. "We have realised that not everybody does good urban design unless they are required to do it."

Keith Sharp says councils have contributed with their willingness to bend rules and approve non-complying developments without public notification.

"There seems to be far too much emphasis on what's required for incoming residents and nowhere near enough emphasis on the rights of existing residents.

"People need to keep an eagle eye on things. You can't afford not to be involved any more."

Tell that to the Glenfield Ratepayers Association, fined nearly $60,000 in costs after opposing the Manuka Cove terraced housing development in what chairman David Thornton describes as a cul de sac of traditional quarter-acre sections. The association, which estimates it has less than $2000 in funds, has yet to pay. Despite not complying with the district plan, the development was approved by the North Shore City Council.

A light-handed planning regime is not the only culprit. The leaky buildings crisis exposed the inadequacies of the Building Act, also blamed for noise problems and "shoebox" apartments for Asian students. Unlike Britain, New Zealand has no minimum size for bedrooms.

While waiting for the Government to rewrite the Building Act, the Auckland City Council has ruled out apartments smaller than 30 sq m and those with poor natural lighting.

It's a far cry from David Lindsey's vision of intensification: "well-designed blocks of varying heights and styles, pleasant streetscapes, and community-minded developments with amenities such as creches, shops and playgrounds."

Lindsey, the regional growth forum communications manager, says establishing just where intensification should take place may involve years of planning ,but it must happen. Apartment developments on old industrial sites in Morningside, within walking distance of rail, bus routes and the St Lukes shopping centre, are a pointer to where intensification should go. "The question of whether the development that's occurred in Morningside is actually good development is another thing.

"We recognise that we need to do it better. We have to create a regulatory environment to ensure it happens in the right place and happens in sympathy to the surrounding neighbourhood, but the pressure is on us from all directions."

The planners' big fear is that, in a city of traditionally divided councils, the public reaction to what's occurred to date could undermine political support for the growth strategy. That's not an option, says Lindsey.

"The choice is between well-planned growth and poorly planned growth, not a choice between growing and not growing.

"I appreciate some people would prefer their neighbourhood to stay the same but Auckland is growing by nearly 100 people a day. These people have to live somewhere."

An extraordinary 44 per cent of housing built in Auckland City since 1996 has been on business 4 zoned land which rings the inner-city and extends into Parnell, Freemans Bay and Newton. The zoning was intended to bring people back to the inner city by allowing a mix of residential and commercial land use. But its lack of design and density rules have produced some notorious failures, with boundary-to-boundary six-storey office blocks robbing traditional houses, and new apartments, of sunlight and views.

"To be honest, it took us by surprise," says Pirrit. "We've had some really good developments but also ones that really pushed the boundaries.

"The business 4 zoning was developed at a time when the market was considered to know best. But the last council and this one have come to the conclusion that the market doesn't know best and tried to have more controls."

The council introduced district plan changes to improve design and the relationship between residential and commercial buildings but affected landowners are fighting the changes in the Environment Court.

In the meantime, with demand soaring and spare inner-city sites dwindling, development has crept outwards to Grey Lynn, Eden Tce, Kingsland and Morningside, on business-zoned blocks along main roads. But off the main road, the land zoning quickly reverts to residential - allowing four-square office and apartment blocks to tower over villas.

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