OP-ED BY DAVID HATTAM
Urban issues clearly matter to New Zealanders. We care about the quality of our towns and cities. But the level of understanding of what makes a good city is low. Nothing illustrates this better than the recent changes to resource management reform, and how they are debated.
On Radio New Zealand on The Panel (4 July), during a long discussion about housing reform, the design comments from Ed McBride can be quoted here in full:
“There’s a lot of ugly houses being built, let’s call it what it is, and it’s not just apartments, it’s also a lot of townhouses as well, and you see it in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch as well and you think who designed that. But you know if a developer is building it and has sold it before they started building it someone has actually purchased it as well”
A few things to unpack from this short exchange. Starting with the limited understanding of what makes a good development, beyond that it should not be “ugly”. I am not dismissing aesthetics, but the problems of poor housing are not simply about whether it is ugly or not, and whether a buyer is bothered about that.
Missing from the conversation is that it affects a wider population, and that it is there for 50-100 years and often degrades over time. There should be more consideration than whether it suits a particular buyer at a point in time. Especially when the buyer may be an investor who is more interested in what their spreadsheet looks like than the house they are buying.
The debate is largely driven by economists who have, over a period of years, been effective at making the case for liberalising markets to increase supply (not that I am denying the need for intensification, which as far as I can tell the planning profession has spent at least the last 30 years advocating for).
The key point made well was that NIMBY’s had too much power in the system, and that the potential future occupiers had too little. The fix for that was the National Policy Statement – Urban Development which demanded an increase in land for dense housing. However, more recent initiatives risk locking in a level of intensification the quality of which may range from good to shockingly bad.
We have been here before. A walk around the inner suburbs of any of our major cities will unearth at least some regrettable multi-unit buildings from the 1990’s with few redeeming features: Large dark undercrofts in which people could lurk, balconies staring into neighbouring private gardens, no windows facing the street, walls of garaging on the ground floor and no visible entranceways. These places aren’t just ugly, they are intrusive and dangerous for occupiers and visitors alike.
One purpose of planning should be to ensure at least a basic quality of design outcome, in particular for obvious externalities like the public realm and neighbours. Until recently this wouldn’t have been a controversial statement, but the debate has become polarised to the extent that some assume that any design requirements are a wasteful imposition in the face of a housing shortage.
It needs to be said that urban design does not need to be expensive. Thinking of it in terms of ugly vs beautiful or expensive vs affordable closes our options to the kind of outcomes possible for our communities, that would address individual and collective needs.
Whilst New Zealand’s production of dense urban housing has a level of quality best described as “variable”, there are plenty of good examples.
There is a need to explain the concept of dense urbanism better, by showing people what it could and should be, rather than what they imagine it is.
Great strides have been made recently, in Christchurch at least, with many good townhouse developments throughout the inner suburbs. This success in planning, design and urbanism is under-recognised and does invite the question – why not build this instead of the ugly development Ed McKnight describes?
We must celebrate our success and be clearer how good design contributes to this. Otherwise, the only other voice in the debate is the one that says the housing crisis is caused by planners who are mainly interested in petty rules that cost a lot and achieve little. I don’t think that’s the case.
Editor’s note: What do you think? Photos of ‘good design’ can be sent to media@urbandesignforum.org.nz
