Development must sit within limits
Nigel Paragreen outlines the hidden costs of new housing developments.
EVENTS have intersected this past week in a way that highlights the hidden costs of our cumulative urban planning decisions.
In Mosgiel, a subdevelopment was approved which could add up to 500 lots on to the outskirts of the city. This followed calls to expand housing further into the Taieri Plain to address Dunedin’s short housing supply. The Government also released its longawaited emissions reduction plan on Monday and will undoubtedly shape the climate responses of cities such as Dunedin.
What are the consequences of an expanding city? Will we end up like the residents of Auckland or Wellington, with their painful commute and failing infrastructure?
When cities expand, they most often take up space that is already being used by people and nature. This is especially problematic when thinking about expanding on to the Taieri Plain. There, the crisscross of roadside drainage already reveals a story of loss. The plain was once a giant complex of wetlands and lakes. What would have been a haven of ecological productivity was progressively drained with the arrival of Europeans.
In Otago, only 24% of historical wetland extent remains, placing significant pressure on the species which once lived within. With the Government’s aspiration to restore waterways to a healthy state within a generation, we should be looking seriously at returning places such as the Taieri Plain to their former glory, rather than building on them.
Besides, a former wetland isn’t a great place to build houses. Despite all the drainage schemes, the plains regularly flood. If people are concerned about regional council rates now, imagine the cost of running the lower Taieri flood schemes in the face of climate change. A higher sea level combined with more vicious storms is surely going to lead to more cost and complexity for flood schemes.
Being wet is the nature of a wetland — the name says it all. These aren’t places to build houses, they’re vulnerable ecosystems that should be restored. Doing so is beneficial for nature and humans alike. Restoring wetlands in the Taieri Plain may well provide a buffer against future floods for the residents of Mosgiel and become a massive carbon sink to help with achieving net zero emissions.
On the emissions front, the form of our urban areas matters greatly. Transport emissions are roughly 20% of New Zealand’s total — greater than electricity and manufacturing emissions combined. At the household level, transport is the leading contributor to our carbon footprint.
Both the Government and the Dunedin City Council have made ambitious commitments to reducing emissions. For the best chance of keeping climate change impacts in check, we must honour those commitments.
The recently released Emissions Reduction Plan will direct where the rubber hits the road in that sense and transport is one of its major focuses. The plan is set to incentivise a shift in the way we move from place to place. This is a positive direction, as replacing private car trips with public or active transport is one of the most effective ways to combat traffic, reduce emissions and make cities more liveable.
If emissions won’t put the brakes on private car trips for the most of us, then the traffic eventually will. Larger cities have learnt the hard way that the space taken up by cars quickly gets out of hand. Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency, in its plan to increase wellbeing in cities, cautions that adding roading capacity in cities without alternative travel options often negates an initial congestion relief over time.
If we’re going to take advantage of alternative transport, it’s better to keep the city compact. The wider our cities sprawl, the harder it is to run an effective and convenient public and active transport system.
We can create housing in Dunedin that is affordable as well as sustainable. To achieve this, we need to fight the urge to expand the city and encourage as much as possible the responsible densification of existing urban areas over the development of new areas. We must plan now to create convenient and effective active and public transport systems. Most of all, we need to ensure that development sits within environmental and climate constraints.
This next decade is crucial. We must do our part to address climate change while our city grows. Proactive urban planning decisions now will make our lives better in the future.
We just need to get on with it.
Nigel Paragreen is the Otago Fish & Game Council environmental officer.
TODAY is Wednesday, May 18, the 138th day of 2022. There are 227 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1291 — After 100 years under Crusader control, Acre is the last Crusader stronghold reconquered and destroyed by the Mamluks (nonMuslim slave soldiers) under Sultan alAshraf Khalil.
1643 — Anne of Austria, the Queen Mother, is vested with supreme powers in France.
1804 — Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of France.
1830 — Edwin Budding of England signs an agreement for the manufacture of his invention, the lawnmower.
1860 — Abraham Lincoln is nominated as United States president.
1896 — The Khodynka Tragedy occurs due to a human stampede on Khodynka Field, Moscow, during the festivities of the coronation of Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II, resulting in the deaths of 1389 people.
1897 — A public reading of Bram Stoker’s new novel, Dracula, is staged in London.
1899 — An international peace conference is convened at The Hague in the Netherlands.
1917 — Prince Lvov reconfigures his cabinet in Russia to include socialists.
1919 — Australian pilot Harry Hawker with observer Kenneth MackenzieGrieve attempts the first nonstop direct westeast crossing of the Atlantic in a Sopwith Atlantic singleengine biplane, but engine failure brings them down in the ocean, from where they are rescued.
1937 — The only organised New Zealand contingent to serve in the Spanish Civil War is detained in Auckland before its eventual departure. New Zealand Spanish Medical Aid Committee (SMAC) nurses Rene Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples eventually arrived in Spain on July 15.
1944 — The Monte Cassino Benedictine monastery in Italy is taken from German forces after bitter fighting in World War 2.
1951 — The United Nations moves its headquarters to New York City.
1953 — Jacqueline Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier when she pilots a Canadair F86 Sabre over Rogers Dry Lake, California.
1954 — An additional protocol adds new fundamental rights to those protected under the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.
1966 — Koroki Te Rata Mahuta Tawhiao Potatau Te Wherowhero, the fifth Maori king, dies at Ngaruawahia.
1974 — India becomes the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.
1977 — The US, the Soviet Union and 29 other nations sign a UN pact banning artificial use of the weather as a weapon of war, pledging never to attack each other by triggering storms, earthquakes or tidal waves; Menachem Begin becomes prime minister of Israel.
1980 — Mt St Helens volcano in Washington state explodes, taking 400m off its top, causing the largest landslip in recorded history, and leaving 57 people dead.
1986 — The South African army occupies Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
1988 —
Cheering crowds greet the first group of about 1300 Soviet soldiers to cross the border in withdrawal from Afghanistan.
1990 — The two German states sign a monetary union treaty, the first step to reunification.
1991 — Helen Sharman becomes the first Briton to rocket into space, aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft.
1995 — Scientists in California announce that they have revived a 25millionyearold bacteria from the gut of a bee trapped in a piece of amber.
2018 — All of Chile’s 34 Roman Catholic bishops offer their resignation to Pope Francis in the wake of a child sex scandal.
2019 — The Australian election is won by Scott Morrison’s coalition government in what was considered a surprise result.
Today’s birthdays:
Nicholas II, last tsar of Russia (18681918); Christopher (James) Parr, New Zealand politician (18691941); Nathaniel (Ranji) Wilson, All Black player/selector (18861953); Tom Heeney (the Hard Rock from Down Under), New Zealand boxer and world heavyweight challenger in 1928 (18981984); Arthur Stubbs, New Zealand war veteran (19042008); Peter Adams, New Zealandborn actor (193899); Rick Wakeman, English keyboardist (1949); Chow YunFat, Hong Kong actor (1955); Allen Leech, Irish actor (1981); Josiah Wells, New Zealand freestyle skier (1990).
Quote of the day:
‘‘Just the other day, it seems, the kids were running through the house, slamming doors, breaking glass, making noise. Time goes by so quickly. Sometimes everything seems so fleeting.’’ — Perry Como, US singer/actor who was born on this day in 1912. He died in 2001 aged 88.