Plan to house growing population set for release
A major strategy report on how New Plymouth could handle a marked increase in population growth over the next three decades is about to be released for public consultation.
The New Plymouth District Council will hold an extraordinary meeting today to vote on whether to adopt the draft Future Development Strategy, which sets out the framework for providing urban growth.
The strategy has been jointly developed between the district council and the Taranaki Regional Council to give direction to just where new homes and businesses will be located over the next 30 years.
Under instruction from the previous government, councils had to develop the strategy in order to cope with what was expected to be unprecedented population growth over the next decade.
Projections for the New Plymouth District have its population growing from 89,000 to almost 99,000 by 2034, and to more than 110,000 by 2054.
That growth would require an additional 368 houses to be built every year for the next 30 years.
“We need a variety of housing to cater for both smaller, single-person and coupleonly households and larger households requiring intergenerational living arrangements,” the draft strategy said.
“Affordable, healthy, long-term rental options and the need to increase the proportion of accessible housing for disabled people, lower-cºst accommodation and social housing are also important.”
In collaboration with Ngā Kaitiaki hapū, an iwi resource management working group, and land and housing developers as well as infrastructure experts, the two councils had formed key focus points in the draft strategy.
The feedback emphasised the importance of making use of existing urban areas and infrastructure while avoiding “ad hoc development” in disconnected and isolated locations.
The draft strategy also identified that the New Plymouth District was already well served by a good supply of business-zoned land in the district, with 44 hectares of retail and commercial land and 163ha of industrial land.
The focus, therefore, was identifying exactly where new houses should be built.
Three potential scenarios were looked at: urban intensification; new, residentially zoned greenfield land; or providing a balance of residential growth through medium-density housing in existing suburban areas and the use of undeveloped residential land.
While all three scenarios had merit, the councils preferred a balanced focus.
This would “provide opportunities for intensification and all the benefits associated with this approach, while also allowing for flexibility and choice in the market through greenfield development”, the draft strategy said.
More intensive housing in and around the city centre would also allow the councils to better manage greenfield expansion in stages so that it could cope efficiently with infrastructure needs.
“A compact city footprint offers a range of benefits for people, including easier access to goods and services, greater housing choices, and lower long-term infrastructure costs,” the draft strategy said.
“It also provides more opportunities to move towards a more carbon-neutral urban environment, while protecting productive land.”
The draft strategy involved inner-city intensification with apartment-style buildings up to 30m high. Development areas had also been identified west of New Plymouth around Patterson Rd, north of Carrington Rd, surrounding Smart Rd and north of Bell Block in the Puketapu area.
If the district and regional councils voted to adopt the draft strategy, it would then go out for public consultation from March 6 until April 8.