Smartgrowth should be more action less talkfest

The criticism I’ve most often heard levelled against Smartgrowth is that it’s a talkfest. The future planning partnership of the three western Bay councils, tangata whenua, Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency and the Bay of Plenty Health Board has been around since 2004.

The problem is not that its meetings involve a lot of talking it’s a forum, that’s the point - it’s, in recent years at least, the lack of tangible change and action to come from the proliferation of plans and strategies.

The election of a Labour-led coalition Government in 2017 after nine years of true blue threw the organisation, and its partners, for six - especially where transport was concerned.

There they were, chugging along, planning highways and stocking up on swathes of greenfield land, then BOOM! Buses, bike lanes, intensification.

When Smartgrowth agreed to form the Urban Form and Transport Initiative (UFTI) just over a year later, it seemed a bit bizarre.

It was presented as both momentous step and acknowledgement of failure, but, in my view, it came with a distinct whiff of hiring some other people to do the job that Smartgrowth should have been doing in the first place: Joined-up future planning.

I still think there was an element of that, frankly. But it is also clear that UFTI delivered a result that may not have come about without the dedicated and expert focus the project team provided.

It didn’t come cheap, though UFTI cost a hair under $2.5 million.

Still, the Government has directly credited UFTI’S work for convincing it to put some $900m into western Bay transport projects in January, including the Tauranga Northern Link, a pet project of the previous Government.

The unity on show at Wednesday’s summit - signing off the UFTI final report and the estimated $7 billion, 50-year programme for growth management it outlined - was a good thing.

The spirit of co-operation was in the air, if somewhat strained. Old tensions simmered not far under the surface.

A few elected officials expressed some misgivings but gave a vote in support nonetheless. One

"The spirit of cooperation was in the air, if somewhat strained. Old tensions simmered not far under the surface."

abstained rather than register a vote against the UFTI plan. A handful didn’t turn up.

No one in the room could escape the reality that keeping the partners aligned - surfing the same wave, picking from the same kiwifruit vine - efficiently for decades would be no walk in Memorial Park.

Will having Ministers of the Crown around the Smartgrowth table help? We’ll soon see.

The most hardened of cynics would say it will all start falling over by the time the first funding commitments get real a year from now when councils do their 10-year budgets.

But let’s not bet against this because we - as a region - really need this momentum to hold.

If Smartgrowth wants to drop the talkfest rep and show it can lead, the clock starts now.