Infill potential all used up

Keith Clement states the obvious in his Dialogue piece yesterday, that “allowing infill housing on existing titles” would enable more housing supply.

But one of the problems that is far too little understood is that Auckland, over the last few decades, has been infilling to such an extent that there are few properties left with a quarter-acre section or larger.

Actual data, like that from Demographia, or the Lincoln Institute, or Alain Bertaud (who visited Auckland a few years ago and added it to his database) shows that Auckland’s density has already reached that of most comparable European cities, and is around three times the density of really sprawling US cities where infill development would still have massive potential.

Some data (including Wikipedia) is absurdly wrong about many cities’ density, using municipal boundaries rather than the actual footprint of the built area.

There is actually not much scope for efficient infill left in Auckland now; builders have a nightmare working around existing houses, neighbouring properties, already-congested roads, nowhere to park their trucks, exorbitant prices of all existing properties — plus increasing underground pipe capacity is also needed, creating even worse hassles.

Phil Hayward, Naenae.