Why Auckland needs to retain character suburbs

Currently, Auckland Council is consulting on proposals to change the city’s planning rulebook. This is in response to central government’s demands for greater housing density.

In this instance, it comes in spite of the fact Auckland has already been through a long and expensive process to increase density and supply across the region relatively recently.

There are numerous aspects to these proposals but one, in particular, stands out — the potential loss of a quarter of what remains of Auckland’s “special character” areas.

These are areas where current planning rules help maintain a sense of history and place for older residential suburbs by limiting building heights and density, and in many places, requiring a resource consent to demolish existing character buildings.

In the past, Auckland hasn’t been all that impressive in preserving its history. Yet now we stand to lose a quarter of what little remains of our special character housing in the one fell swoop.

Northcote and Birkenhead are good examples of what’s being proposed across the Auckland region. Together, they comprise two of Auckland’s only three historic marine suburbs (Devonport is the other one).

They are defined by many older houses dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries — Victorian and Edwardian villas grouped together along with historic shops, churches and community buildings from the same era.

They are an important part of Auckland’s heritage, not just for the residents who live there now, but for all of us.

We’re told it’s necessary to in large part remove the protection for such historic suburbs in order to supply more housing, yet Auckland’s current Unitary Plan already enables over 900,000 dwellings to be built on residential-zoned land (in fact a lot more than this when the city centre and future urban areas are taken into account).

Contrary to popular belief there’s actually no shortage of land to build houses on for the next 30 years and beyond.

The other rationale being advanced rather hopefully is that this will somehow help build more affordable homes. Unfortunately, this will almost certainly not happen in these special character suburbs.

The immediate consequence will be to escalate the value of the land as a result of the increased development potential.

The notion that poor families or young couples shut out of the housing market will suddenly be able to move into a new townhouse on Northcote Pt is cruelly misleading.

Instead, one historic villa will be demolished and, in places like Birkenhead and Northcote, it will be replaced by three equally expensive and unaffordable dwellings (or as close as makes no difference).

In reality, this is political windowdressing of the worst kind.

Kay Saville-Smith, a social scientist who specialises in housing research, has previously highlighted the dramatic decline in the construction of low-cost housing in New Zealand.

In the early 1960s, 32 per cent of all new homes were in the lower quartile but by 2012 the figure was barely 5 per cent. This dramatic decline reflected the withdrawal of government capital assistance to low-cost new builds which had plummeted to virtually zero by the 1990s, prompted by the earlier Douglas reforms that slashed government assistance.

New Zealand went from being a country that built a lot of modest but decent homes to one that didn’t and has never got close to recovering since. Instead, it opted for policies such as the current suite that tinker around the edges but offer no substantive reform to restore the construction of significantly lowercost homes.

To date, Auckland Council’s response to these proposals has been to dutifully detail all the numerous practical shortcomings associated with these poorly conceived policies in submissions and then do nothing — other than, in my view, meekly surrender to the Government’s demands despite knowing, like other experts in the field, the policies are fundamentally flawed.

In this specific instance, it can only be hoped that Aucklanders themselves prompt their council into action. Otherwise, significant parts of what remains of our heritage will disappear before our very eyes.