Auckland Council is in financial trouble. Mind you, so are most councils in New Zealand.
Not only are they broke, with a potential double digit rates rise on the way, but our infrastructure is so broken that 50 Auckland beaches have raw sewage floating in the bay. That alone is third world stuff.
But, as the ad says ‘wait there’s more’.
We are getting to the stage where we cannot cram any more housing into our central city as amenity values crumble, and more and more trees get cut down to make room for skimpy little apartments. I’ve just been re-reading Jared Diamond’s classic book, Collapse, the historical story of why civilisations succeed or fail. A classic is Easter Island. In the 14 to 16 hundreds, Easter Islanders cut down every last tree in some maniacal, yet still not understood, madness. We’re not quite at that stage yet, but every week there is a new story about trees giving way to new apartments so developers can squeeze a few more tiny units into their developments.
This week it’s Occam apartment builder CEO, Mark Todd, aiming to cut down a huge old macrocarpa so he can build more units on a tiny piece of land in Avondale. Occam has built some attractive buildings in inner city Auckland, but enough is enough. Todd complains about insufficient ‘yield’ (meaning ‘profit’). He has also been in the habit of building without parking, another way to increase profit, sorry ‘yield’.
Just a couple of weeks ago it was old pohutukawa trees under threat from Campbell’s Bay School’s planned new development. The school roll has outgrown its current classrooms. Population intensification has been on the Council agenda for a long time. What happened to Education Department future planning?
Read Diamond’s book. He cites as reasons, ‘distant managers, creeping normality, landscape amnesia’.
In Central Auckland some suitable infill housing has been built, some of it quite creative, but there is now a plethora of ugly, inhumane high rise buildings which are a blot on the city, especially a city once aspiring to become the ‘world’s most liveable city’.
Amenity values are being lost at the rate of knots, and the council either ignores complaints or calls complainers NIMBYs.
These are Auckland citizens, ratepayers, who value sunlight, vegetation, trees and gardens, views, a relatively quiet environment, less noise, space, and preservation of heritage and cultural values - among many others.
As a former Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said in a 1997 report, population intensification must compete with amenity values citizens refuse to give up. It is time for Council to address these amenity value concerns, and where necessary come to some compromises. The compromise must not be ‘every tree must be cut down’. Neither should we give credence to the obscene idea that every exotic tree should be removed and replaced with natives.
I’m the first to support retention of our ancient native trees, and worked on Tiritiri Matangi island bringing back the dawn chorus. I’ve ranted about loss of old pohutukawa on the coast so greedy developers can fit another multi-million dollar apartment into their development.
Businesses are helping out in various ways, including by quitting the central city. I know that Viv Beck will be horrified to see that comment. Why should thousands of workers commute every day from all corners of Auckland’s sprawling city to Queen Street and surrounds and home again in the evening - a round trip of up to two hours?
We need to rethink intensification. We don’t need to replace it by random urban sprawl, with all the infrastructure services that will entail and the loss of good farming land. But we do need to rethink nodal development. Let’s have half a dozen intensive nodal communities between Whangarei and Hamilton, with residential on the water side, schools, community centres, play grounds on the inland side, with commercial and industrial parks in close proximity. Many work places would be walkable, quick, small public transport vehicles would connect everything up, and cars could stay in the garage, or even be sold because of the close knit, all inclusive community.
We already know that insurance companies, lawyers, accountants, and hopefully council departments would love these new communities and flock to them. Some of those huge office towers in the central city could be converted into apartments, or demolished. Take a look at the hovels masquerading as apartments off Symonds Street; tiny boxes called home for thousands of students and low income earners. A roof over their head, certainly, but pretty dismal living.
We need too, to ensure that immigration is kept to an absolute minimum - returning New Zealanders of course, and our quota of refugees. No American billionaires looking for a bolthole, need apply.
With smaller, well integrated communities, good amenities, and local control, Aucklanders could abandon the costly commute that so many endure every day. God forbid, they may even get to know their neighbours! (John Elliott)
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