On Thursday 5 September gatherings were live-streamed across Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington and Ōtautahi Christchurch to officially launch the Urban Design Institute Aoteoaroa (UDIA).
To mark this milestone an informed perspective on the big step being taken by the profession was given by two guest speakers: David Kirkpatrick, Chief Environment Court Judge (excerpt below) and Greg Hill, Independent Hearing Commissioner.
The UDIA website is now live at udia.org.nz and a media release was circulated this week. In addition the event slides are available here [PDF].
____________________________
EXCERPT from speech delivered by David Kirkpatrick, Chief Environment Court Judge, at
the launch of the Urban Design Institute Aotearoa, 5 September 2024.
How might your Institute best advance your discipline? I offer principles which I have found
to be helpful in seeking to understand my field in the hope that they may help you.
- Be open to possibilities. Avoid becoming, as Frank Lloyd Wright put it, an expert who has
stopped thinking because “they know”.
. - Consider the approaches to decolonising your mind. This means more than just trying to stop
thinking like a coloniser – it includes becoming aware of your biases, checking your
process for cognitive fallacies, adopting an inclusive approach to new ideas, being aware
of various dimensions resulting from human variation.
. - Be wary of turning the principles into some form of magic and turning yourselves into high
priests. One might call feng shui “building voodoo”, but one of the basic principles of feng
shui is to choose a location on a hill or mountainside facing the sun and overlooking
water. So feng shui has guided sensible development all over the world for centuries.
. - Don’t burden your analysis with discourse. Stick to the relevant principles and the relevant
evidence. If your reasoning is sound, then the briefer you are, the better. Weight of
evidence should not be measured in the number of Eastlight folders.
. - Beware of turning your analysis into scores – grading a proposal or its elements on a scale of
1 – 5, or 1 – 9, or 1 – 100. There is a cognitive fallacy that we attribute precision to
numbers even where the numbers are evidently random. Beware of false precision.
I enjoy watching some of the events at the Olympics where medals are awarded
according to scores but I don’t understand those beyond accepting that if there is only
one gold medal then you need some method to decide who gets it.
.
With a city or a streetscape or a landscape, there may be numerous options, many of
which may be described as appropriate. Do scores assist in understanding that? Is it a
winner takes all situation? Or should our focus be on reasons why we value things and
how we judge quality?Scores generally don’t help. Converting comparative words into
numerical scores without first establishing the point of comparison is just adding
uncertainty to vagueness.
. - Similarly, beware of definitions for words that are not technical jargon. And even then,
beware. Definitions can turn into rules, without the benefit of any principled or policy
basis. Choose your words and use them carefully.
– “Urban means not rural” – “Rural means not urban”. Those definitions were the
basis of the metropolitan urban limit in the Auckland Regional Policy Statement for
many years. Which turned into: “Urban means inside a line on a map drawn
several years ago”.
– Instead, identify the relevant characteristics that best describe the environment
where the effects of the proposal are experienced.
– Heritage and character. They mean different things, both in law and in the English
language. Make sure you use such words accurately.
– Minor. Less than or more than minor. Significant. Use such comparative words
carefully, as they are meaningless without a point of comparison.
. - Return to a clear and generally accepted foundation. Return to the statutory language or
the language of the relevant objective, policy or rule of the plan. Leave the explanatory
material to one side. Then apply your expertise on that basis to the circumstances of the
case. Do you share the principles of your expertise with your peers? Will the evidence of
your opposite number use the same language in the same way? Or will the statements of
evidence fail to connect in a dialogue which is helpful to the decision-maker?
