Kia ora ki te whānau UDF
As demonstrated this week through the update from UDF Aotearoa’s RM working group, a core purpose of our UDF website/ blog-space continues to be to act as an information hub for the community of interest around urban design in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Thank you to UDF member Yvonne Weeber for her feedback message, letting us know via the blog comment option that the update from the RM working group was useful. Yvonne wrote: “[RM reform] is very confusing for everyone, and there has not been much publicity about it in mainstream media. Keep up the good work and look forward to hearing more”.
In a move to revisit how best to gather and share news and information of regular relevance to members, this post is a collation of four items for your working week:
- New reports and news reports in case you missed them – with links
- Featured item: Christchurch Conversations – a long item on the ‘Steps to a Walkable Ōtautahi’ event held yesterday evening
- Latest research and recommended reading
- A UDF communications call out
New reports and news reports
CLIMATE ADAPTATION
On 9 July the Ministry for the Environment made the final report of the Independent Reference Group on climate adaptation available at https://environment.govt.nz/news/independent-climate-adaptation-report-released/
On-the-day coverage by RNZ was headlined No climate change buy-outs in future, expert group tells government
INFRASTRASTRUCTURE PLANNING
An opportunity to have a say on the Infrastructure Commission’s latest iteration of a 30-year draft National Infrastructure Plan is closing fast. To put forward feedback you have until Wednesday 6 August – and the page to do that is here.
For the geeks amongst us ‘Urban’ turned up 22 times on a word search of the 164 page document, but nothing on “urban design” or “urban planning”.
Examples of media coverage are available to read on Stuff and The Spinoff.
MINISTER GOES TO THE USA
The Government’s current ‘Minister of Everything’ Chris Bishop has returned from a trip to New York and Texas for a range of meetings across housing, planning, urban development and transport – as announced in a media release on 4 July.
This travel included taking part in the New York-based Urban Design Forum’s Global Exchange Programme in a panel discussion alongside Geoff Cooper, Chief Executive at Te Waihanga, the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission, in a session titled ‘Lessons from Auckland: Upzoning and Density in New Zealand’. The UDF is requesting a copy of their respective speeches/ presentations from that event held on 8 May.
Featured item: Christchurch Conversations – 15 July 2025
The beginning of the Christchurch Conversations series for 2025 set a brisk pace last night on the topic of ‘Steps to a Walkable Ōtautahi’.
Through the committed steerage of Jessica Halliday and Te Pūtahi’s team, this well-branded and exceptionally well-run series was set in motion in June 2017 and has now, by UDF’s count, clocked up 27 appearances – with strong support from the Christchurch City Council and other sponsor organisations such as the Transportation Group New Zealand.
Last night’s full, booked out event can be viewed already on YouTube here. We last did some cheerleading at UDF for the Christchurch Conversations event held in August last year on apartments – see here.
The event was opened by Joseph Hullen’s reflections on what walking signifies for him in his rohe, an introduction by Jessica, and two ten-minute presentations from, first, Carina Duke, an executive member of Living Streets Aotearoa, and second Jeanette Ward of Abley.
The event then moved into a panel discussion joined by public health advocate Dr Anna Stevenson with facilitation from Ekin Sakin, a Principal UD Advisor at CCC and UDF national committee member, and concluded with a poem titled ‘I’m still walking’ from Melanie Dixon (with an introduction by Ciaran Fox).
Some brief bullet point highlights from the event sent to us by a UDF member include:
Questions arising from Carina Duke’s presentation
- Given pedestrians are most vulnerable in the roading network, and roads are the biggest barriers, what are we doing for the most vulnerable?
- Do we even know what the priorities need to be for all pedestrians – footpath users? If we don’t know, how do we find out?
Questions arising from Jeanette Ward’s presentation
- What does best practice in creating a walkable city look like?
- What steps are taken around land use planning and urban form to support walking and (non-car) mobility?
- Are we as individuals in our neighbourhoods doing enough to report on issues that adversely impact walkability in our urban environments? (eg. taking photos on our phones and alerting councils)
THE PANEL DISCUSSION
Dr Stevenson raised an impending onset of even greater levels of diabetes in our communities as a compelling reason to champion walkability – both as a preventive measure to mitigate against the rise of diabetes and as a treatment once people get past reasons they might have not to walk or walk more.
As she put it, this is a “win, win, win, win” – taking into account all the other known benefits of walkability and improved streetscapes for wellbeing, mental health and a combined alignment to actions for adapting to climate change.
Interestingly, though not oddly, having an abundance of access to free parking within city environs came up as a disincentive for people to give preference to walking routes or more use of public transport. The retrograde pulling back of funding by Central Government for active transport modes was also noted.
By their nature our cities, and too often our suburbs as well, are hotspots for what Ekin neatly framed as “space allocation tensions”. In response Carina expressed a “wouldn’t it be great” wish for planning and designing for footpaths first and roads second.
There was an acceptance of the hurdles to work around in terms of unavoidable demands placed on arterial routes for peak hour traffic, and the issue of navigating unsafe intersections that are noticeably prevalent across parts of a notably car-centric Ōtautahi and that put lives at risk. (For a national picture of safety statistics see the Ministry of Transport site).
Jeanette sounded out the need to show people what good looks like, and commented on how she was finding it more useful to make more selected use of examples from Australia (being closer to home and less prone to rebuff reactions like “we’re not Denmark you know”) as well as NZ exemplars.
To quote Carina: “When we do it well we do it really well”.
Dr Stevenson agreed there are a growing number of good stories happening and pockets of best practice. She cited how using perceptions of a place like Amsterdam where the will to flick a switch on outright car dominance triggered a tipping point to the hero-ing of cycling and walking – achieved through major public-driven calls for change in direction made there in the 1970s.
There is hope, be that giving a voice to people and some surety they’re being both listened to and heard, through to the act of joining with peers and colleagues to identify sites where improvements are happening too slowly.
To borrow from the challenges and sense-making contained in Melanie Fox’s poem: All problems can be solved by walking … if we keep walking.
On that note a big mihi is well and truly due to the Te Pūtahi Centre for Architecture and City Making for its ongoing contribution to urban design discourse in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Now is a good time to save the date for the following Christchurch Conversations, which start at 6pm: Tuesday 19 August on the topic of effective climate change communication and Tuesday 23 September for a conversation on the local impacts of unmitigated climate change. There will be a further dive into climate change adaptation on a yet-to-be-announced date in October – a busy month for city given the hosting by the University of Canterbury and World Adaptation Science Programme of the 8th international Adaptation Futures Conference (AF2025) from 13-17 October.
Latest Research & Recommended Reading
If you have seen some ‘hot off the press’ research or good pointers to reading on urban design that you can send us a note about to share, please let us know via media@urbandesignforum.org.nz
- From Nicki Williams: UDF members will recall the lunchtime webinar delivered on 6 March by PhD candidate Nicki Williams on the topic of her research into the ways that urban design and transport systems shape the daily lives of women and girls. This coincided well with International Women’s Day and gained some wider coverage. Most recently Nicki has had an article published in the Journal of Transport Geography titled ‘Applying a relational lens to the work travel experiences of diverse women’.
- UDIA: A recent blog post on the Urban Designers Institute Aotearoa site featured a pointer by Yu-Ning Liu to the NYC’s Principles of Good Urban Design
- LAA: If you’re not part of an overlap with Landscape Architecture Aotearoa (published under the NZILA) you may not have seen recent articles about the Urban Design Awards programme in Australia and AILA Chapter Awards. The latter have a category for Urban Design, with two awards made: One in Queensland for the Future South Bank Master Plan and one in Victoria for the Sunshine Energy Park Vision Plan.
UDF communications
As mentioned at the start of this post, our small UDF tīma is busy sizing up ways to best improve our communications game and to identify the needs for changes through the remainder of this year. There’s an awareness that we’re not alone on the ‘urban design paepae’ in focussing and promoting attention on how good quality urban design is understood, appreciated and discussed more widely.
It’s a shared space with UDF Aotearoa retaining a key point of difference in forming a nationwide overview and scope, potential for building helpful networks and an ability to amplify the work being done across various related interest groups on vitally important topics and issues. Topics and issues that need the benefit of more people ‘thinking and speaking and advocating out loud’.
From the depths of winter this currently means revisiting the website’s functionality and past attempts at newsletters (such as the ‘Bluefields bulletin’ trialled in September 2024 – one and two).
As a light ‘readers survey’ it would be very helpful if you could send manager@urbandesignforum.org.nz any brief feedback or thoughts on the content of today’s bulletin.
There will be a call to action and a call to respond. Ngā mihi nui.
