Last week we looked at the need for more homes. In this final part of the series on the New Zealand housing crisis, why building up and not out is the way to go.
Auckland City Council yesterday approved the Unitary Plan. For those outside of the City of Sails, this is an overarching plan which will guide how the city grows in the next few decades. It has been needed and overall it sets out clear ideas and guidelines as to how Auckland will look in years to come. It will see more concentration of housing and more apartment living.This is necessary and vitally important.
It also signifies a shift in thinking in New Zealand. For years we have clung onto a 1950s ideal of a house on a quarter acre section with a white picket fence. While the section has stayed the same, often the houses have turned into something akin to a 1980s Eastern European athlete pumped full of steroids. That ideal should be banished to history. It is no longer valid or logical. Let’s consign it to history where it belongs.
Instead of holding onto an outdated ideal, we need to build up, embracing apartment and townhouse living. Our family sizes aren’t getting any bigger so why shouldn’t the size of our houses reflect this? And in a sprawling metropolis like Auckland, building up solves not just the housing crisis but many other problems as well, so long as it is done well.
What do I mean? Well, we should focus on efforts on building town centres in and around key transportation hubs. No more NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard). All parts of Auckland need to embrace this. Whilst the council may like to showcase Flat Bush and Hobsonville Point as great examples of the way forward, the big problem with those new suburbs is that neither is near a major transportation hub. People will still need to jump in private cars and add to an already congested roading network. I think we need to look more towards New Lynn and make that our blueprint.
New Lynn has the third busiest rail station in the Auckland region behind only Britomart and Newmarket. Next to the transport centre is an apartment block and behind that the public library. Across the road is Lynnmall. A medical centre is in the lower floors of the apartment block. Looking west, on the other side of the transport hub is Les Mills and behind that a new housing area which will fill up with townhouses, expected to house 5000 people where the old Crown Lynn and Monier Brick companies were sited. Up the road is a local primary school. All within walking distance. Commuter trains travel in and out, as do across town buses. There are also smaller commuter buses, gathering people from the wider catchment and dropping them to the transport centre. The only thing truly lacking is some decent playgrounds and green areas for families. That’ll change but the point is this is the way forward. Building up. Creating more concentration. Utilising space better.
Building up means a more concentrated population. It makes public transport more doable and appealing. It increases housing supply and also cuts back on the number of single occupant vehicles on the roads. Whilst there are plans for building out in the unitary plan, I strongly believe that the emphasis needs to be on building up.
Building out means taking more farm land and turning it into suburbia. It sprawls Auckland even more. It pushes people away from their work places and forces them into hours of commuting on congested roads each day! More outlying suburbs mean less farmland to produce the food we need. Look at Pokeno, just south of the Bombay Hills. Where farmland and cows once stood, a whole town has now popped up. And it is pretty much all people who then commute into Auckland, some 45-50kms away.
Building out is old world thinking trying to solve a problem of today. It’s time to build up. It’s time to invest in public transport infrastructure. It’s time to see multiple town centres sprouting up throughout Auckland. It’s the only logical way forward and the most sensible way of solving the housing crisis without creating a new problem on the roads.
----------------------------------------------
This is the final part of a 6 part series titled “See Are We Really Serious About the Housing Crisis?” Thanks for all who journeyed all the way through. For those who may have only come in part way, please feel free to read all the parts as I attempt to offer a multi-faceted solution to the current housing crisis.
No comments:
Post a Comment