Housing: 440,000 homes in and out of the city

"We have a huge amount of land currently zoned for development at Hobsonville and Massey North and elsewhere within the metropolitan urban limits ready to go." Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse. Photo / Richard Robinson

The Auckland Council blueprint for 30 years' growth is looking at stacking 280,000 new homes within existing city boundaries and gradually zoning land outside it and in rural towns for a further 160,000 dwellings.

Its Auckland Plan committee yesterday recommended the council adopt a rural-urban boundary in its forthcoming unitary plan, which will manage land release in 10-year steps as well as direct the city's redevelopment.

The committee chose a plan which will contain 60 per cent to 70 per cent of total new dwellings within the existing urban core in support of the council's wish for a compact city of a range of good-quality buildings.

Many submissions on the draft Auckland Plan criticised its former aim to keep 75 per cent of new housing on existing land and 25 per cent outside the limits within the next three decades.

Chief planning officer Dr Roger Blakeley said it was difficult to predict future demand.

The council could keep the aspirational target of achieving 70 per cent of that growth within the 2010 urban limit while being flexible about providing capacity for "greenfields" growth outside it in satellite towns of Warkworth and Pukekohe and other rural and coastal settlements.

But councillor Dick Quax said the council needed to do a finer analysis of the capacity of the existing limits to cater for demand or it would face serious legal challenges to the plan.

"We need to be less focused on ideology and more focused on the needs of Aucklanders and their wants.

"There is no evidence that there is capacity for 280,000 new dwellings within the metropolitan urban limit."

He said the council should be realistic and direct officers to tone down their estimates or examine the capacity of the whole urban core in more detail.

Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse said it was just a figure to give some idea of a target to aim at.

But she agreed with Mr Quax that the indicative figure might be tested by developers and work done to determine the true capacity as a base for the unitary plan.

Mrs Hulse said no one could expect an absolute figure over 30 years and estimates would be regularly reviewed.

"We have a huge amount of land currently zoned for development at Hobsonville and Massey North and elsewhere within the metropolitan urban limits ready to go."

The Property Council reserved its comment until it had seen the details of the recommendations put up for adoption by the full council on March 29.