Featured image: Midland Park, Lambton Quay Wellington
Image credit: Urbanhub Aotearoa
A discussion on amenity is called for in the context of the RMA reform as it could end up being lost from our understanding of the values that are needed in the built environment.
Amenity conveys the value that feeds the human spirit when we look out of our windows and walk our streets.
Often people think about assets such as toilet blocks or carparks as amenity in a utilitarian or tangible sense but we also need to understand the less tangible value it protects in the built environment.
Amenity is a value that we stand to lose if we do not name and recognise it.
Today, in Aotearoa New Zealand ‘amenity values” are referred to as:
.. those natural or physical qualities and characteristics of an area that contribute to people’s appreciation of its pleasantness, aesthetic coherence, and cultural and recreational attributes.
(s 2 RMA) Resource Management Act 1991
Who are the beneficiaries of amenity?
Everyone benefits from these values, from people taking weekend walks to workers commuting to their workplaces or eating their lunches outdoors, people at home looking out of their windows or having a barbecue, teenagers listening to music outdoors or skateboarding and children playing and exploring.
Why is not amenity being promoted in the Natural and Built Environment (NBE)?
Amenity in my opinion, is to be able to walk, play and socialise in a private/communal, shared or open space while feeling safe.
I personally consider public amenity and public space as the ultimate expression of democracy. I am really interested in that mobility component or ‘right for movement’ embedded in the concept of amenity (particularly for ‘active transportation’).
I must confess that I am fascinated by the social component of public space or the right to mingle for the not so active modes. I personally see amenity as the facilitator for social interaction in public spaces.
I understand public amenity as that comforting sensation when looking out the window and seeing hills and street trees with their green tops, but also as having access to spaces for social interaction and personal enjoyment at a walking distance from my residence.
Could access to reliable and affordable public transport be considered amenity?
I will use my personal experience to explain why in my opinion, it should.
I was born and raised in Gijón, a 400,000 people compact village in northern Spain. I grew up living in an apartment block. I walked, cycled and took public transport (PT) everywhere because it was cheap and convenient. For trips outside the urban areas, I had to take a bus and collect my car that was parked in a (paid and monitored) covered carpark in the ‘outer suburbs’. I never thought of it as annoying or as a personal effort, it just made sense. It was when I moved overseas when I started appreciating PT as public amenity. When I migrated to Ōtautahi, New Zealand I was left with no choice but to drive a car. I was not feeling safe cycling or walking and PT was expensive and not so ‘efficient’.
I am not sure if differentiating between public or private amenity adds an extra layer of complexity but it may be worth looking into it as the word public space has been neglected in the NBE bill and it is a very important part of the built environment.
Amenity in a medium density development could be understood in a different way though, the different shades of public and private realms (semi-private, semi-public) and the benefits of communal open spaces, accessible areas and gates.
Going back to the basics of the bill, the Te Oranga o Te Taiao concept is to be extended to the built environment (the well-being of people and communities).
I question how Part 3 of the Act (which deals with the National Planning Framework or NPF) will set out provisions to direct outcomes in ecological integrity, greenhouse emissions, urban areas, housing supply, infrastructure services and natural hazards and climate change. I am excited to see there will be provisions driving these outcomes however I wonder how prescribing qualitative environmental limits will provide the outcomes we have understood as amenity when they become regulations.
environmental limits may be prescribed qualitatively or quantitatively
Item 12 (2) Environmental limits of the Contents of NPF in the NBE bill.
To summarise the above as a question,
which provisions would the NPF provide for a qualitative environmental limit to direct outcomes in urban areas related to well-being of people and their communities?
Or to say it differently, could well-being be a substitute for that word … ‘amenity’?
This article was published on July the 23 of 2021 at Urbanhub Aotearoa’s blog.
The notion of the social value and joy of public space the author expresses is a dimension relatively unaddressed in the planning profession in New Zealand . In fact it can be said that any social and individual human benefits, experiences and values gained from populated public space are characteristics not to be trusted and people who take pleasure in these spaces, although fun, should also be viewed with suspicion.
In NZ, good human values and experiences are to be gained in the rural sphere. In rural environments you gain human characteristics of self reliance, honesty, reliability and physical and mental strength. You become a person who is loyal to your close family and, by default, your few friends as you rarely have acquaintances or meet with strangers.
While these characteristics cannot of course be realised by the majority of the population they can be attained in our predominantly suburban life. For us slightly more urbanised folk this experience can be manifested in the attainment of a ‘ lifestyle block’ or, for the majority who have not toiled so diligently, we can at least have a good amount of private green space to experience nature. In NZ , I hear these opinions still uniformly expressed.
In conclusion therefore I suggest the authors argument of a lack of recognition for public amenity space, especially urbanised public space, can be partly explained by the argument above. Even the RMA and the reason for its initiation and those responsible for its implementation tended, and still do, focus on the decline and/ or preservation of natural resources and the cost of this, which is a real cost of course, but to the expense of the human value and benefits of public urban space. The only possible value of urban public space is economic, it encourages shopping.