By BERNARD ORSMAN
High-rise housing is heading for Auckland suburbs under city council plans to allow 80,000 multi-storey apartments and townhouses.
Critics claim the proposals - which could mean whole streets of four, five and six-storey apartments - would change the face of the city and amount to social engineering.
Already, angry public reaction in working-class Panmure, which is being used as a test site for the new style of housing, has forced the council to reconsider plans.
It wants to let developers tear down homes in the post-war state housing suburb and replace them with low-cost four to six-storey apartment blocks.
Other areas would then follow the Panmure model, designed to cope with the city's booming population.
The eastern suburbs of St Johns, Glen Innes and Panmure, Otahuhu in the south and the western suburbs of Newmarket, Newton, Kingsland, Mt Albert, Avondale and Blockhouse Bay have been earmarked for the most concentrated development.
Dominion Rd, Greenlane, Onehunga, Ellerslie, Grey Lynn, Pt Chevalier, downtown Auckland and even areas around Remuera's Upland Rd and Meadowbank are other targets.
Over the next 50 years, these areas will absorb an extra 200,000 people as the city's population grows to 580,000. The population of the Auckland region is expected to double to two million people.
To cater for this growth, the council developed a "liveable community" plan.
But the council was not prepared for the furious reaction when it released the plan for Panmure, to have 90 per cent of streets rezoned for four, five and six-storey development.
A Panmure Action Community Group was set up after public meetings. Chairman Howard Sutton said: "You can't build a new community by destroying an existing one."
Last night, Panmure's revolt began in earnest as one quarter of the 120-strong group crammed into a local physiotherapist's office to discuss plans to thwart the proposal, which they claimed was foisted on the community without enough consultation.
One of them, Michael Drake, felt the council was being patronising towards residents, and the name of the plan implied that Panmure was "unliveable."
They were particularly concerned that real-estate agents had been talking down property prices, on the premise that if homeowners did not sell now, they would be unable to get a fair price for their property after the housing project was implemented.
They voted to start raising money for a fighting fund and vowed to fight the council all the way to court.
Panmure councillor Jan Welch was as "gobsmacked" as the community by the plan.
She said people did not want high-rise apartments and believed the plan was a social engineering exercise by council planners. There was a strong feeling that a consultation process had been a sham.
Council planning director John Duthie and the manager of environmental planning, Penny Pirrit, were surprised at the level of opposition.
Mr Duthie has already given an undertaking to scrap plans for six-storey developments in Panmure and he will not rule out abandoning four and five-storey building heights.
The council has put on hold plans to release draft liveable community plans for Avondale and Glen Innes.
Suburban high-rises on hold in backlash
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