I've got a confession to make: I'm not absolutely 100% down with the proposed mass-intensification of housing in Auckland, and think that other avenues to secure the affordability of accommodation for the future citizens of Auckland (i.e. us) need also to be considered.
The reasons for this semi-skeptical position finally crystallized in my mind last Saturday morning, when I opened my internet/newsfeed to see news percolating that beloved (dare I say 'iconic') live music venue The Kings Arms had just been designated a Special Housing area as part of something called the Newton Cluster.
Apparently, by 2019 or thereabouts, the Kings Arms will be transformed into sixty 'affordable home' apartments.
This struck me as simultaneously both amusing and terrible, because at the same time the local young activisty types are running around claiming rather loudly that "MORE INTENSIFICATION IS GOOD! OUR GENERATION NEEDS SOMEWHERE TO LIVE!" ... rampant property developers operating in concert with both central and local government are moving in to line their pockets at the cost of Auckland's heritage and amenities. The same thing (conversion into yuppie apartments) nearly happened half a decade ago to the St James Theatre on Queen St.
Now before we go any further, let me clearly and unequivocally state that the likes of Generation Zero are absolutely correct in the second part of their contention: young Aucklanders being shut out of the housing market in seeming perpetuity is a travesty. The serious thinking going on about the detrimental costs to users of continuous urban sprawl (whereby we end up paying far more in transport costs and wasted time than we save in mortgage/rent rates for choosing to live far away in deepest darkest Papakura or wherever else in the outer-outer suburbs), is also fundamentally accurate.
But what people who've decided to cast the battle for more intensification - and the squabbles over the Unitary Plan as a whole - as some sort of great intergenerational skirmish of weltanshauung between people comfortably occupying property, and those successive generations uncomfortably renting or leasing it from them often choose to overlook, are some of the manifest issues that simply packing more and smaller housing into conveniently 'available' space throughout the inner and median suburbs might actually mean in practice.
There seems to be this enduring perception (on both sides of the debate, to be fair) that what is meant by "intensification" is tearing down the spiffy quasi-quarter-acre Mt Eden Villas of the old-money upper middle class in favour of erecting in their place flash, new and ecologically friendly townhouses.
Balderdash. That might be taking place in some areas (and good on developers if they're taking the ecologically more-sustainable route with their constructions), but from what I've seen thus far the areas selected for actually-existing 'intensification' appear to be a little different:
The proposed development on top of the present site of the Kings Arms is but the most recent example. Other developments which I've seen in my lifetime include filling in green areas like the Kelly St Reserve to construct dark, grey and clustered town-houses out of keeping with the character of the surrounding area; and the mass of tasteless, characterless, rotting-teeth constructions that cover the area of the old Sawmill down by the prison and old munitions-works just southeast of Eden Terrace. That last development, in particular, screams of everything that's traditionally thought of as wrong with new-housing developments in Auckland - being constructed with substandard materials that soon began rotting (requiring an ongoing cleanup-renovation process that's still yet to be completed), in aesthetically questionable fashion, and on apparently contaminated land due to the site's previous use as a lumber-yard drizzled with preservatives (ironic considering the lack of treated timber used in subsequent developments on the area).
Prior to this, the Mt Eden Borough Council (which just goes to show how long we've been playing around with suburban intensification - that institution was around some generations ago before eventually being superseded) had itself experimented with implanting 'sausage-block' flats on various locations throughout its demesne. The results, as you can see today, are wildly overpriced granny-flats regularly fetching towards or northwards of a million dollars apiece (so not exactly 'affordable'), and simultaneous slums almost surprisingly in the same block. (As a point of interest, pretty much the first time I'd ever set foot in one of those developments was also the first time I'd ever met a 'proper' drug dealer - who promptly decided he wanted to stab my friend, thus souring our commercial relationship and causing us to want to get the hell out of there pronto. It's a story for another time, but I mention it as prima facie evidence of the sort of effect badly done apartment-intensification can bring with it)
In any case, while it's patently easy to dismiss much of the opposition to intensification "coming soon to a neighbourhood near you" as being NIMBY - 'Not In My Back Yard'-ism writ large ... it does of course behoove me to point out that one's property requires a Back Yard before it's possible to actually object to what does or does not go up therein. Many of the proposed forms of 'affordable' accommodation (such as the aforementioned sixty apartments going up at the Kings Arms) sort-of neglect outright to include anything so much as resembling a back yard, unless you count a window planter-box or balcony succulent pot-plant - which causes clear questions in my mind as to whether they're actually suitable for the young families they're supposedly being marketed at. This is particularly the case given the diminishing access to community green-space which appears to be a fellow hallmark of greater suburban intensification.
So from where I'm sitting, the question is obviously raised: if intensification is a questionably effective partial-solution to the issues at hand which often causes associated problems in its own right ... what else can we be doing to help address the dual issues of housing affordability and availability in Auckland?
One of the most obvious avenues to consider is attacking the problem at its roots. Much has been made of building more houses (or, more precisely, rezoning to eventually at some point in the future allow private property developers to build more apartments and townhouses) - and yet if we take a look at relevant figures from 2014-2015 showing migration inflows to Auckland of approximately fifty thousand people matched with housing construction of a mere five and a half thousand ... there is clearly a bit of a gap in the analysis going on here. However you choose to phrase it, it's difficult to see how we can just keep building houses in perpetuity for new arrivals - whether foreign or domestic in origin.
Further, the impact of chiefly foreign speculation through huge and expansive capital inflows cannot be ignored. Pretty much everybody agrees that the immense financial returns to be had from playing Auckland's property-bubble have lured thousands of investors to place their cash in our market ... further exacerbating housing prices as part of an exceedingly vicious, barbed spiral.
Merely building more houses does not solve these problems, and it seems that decisive action by Central Government will be required to corral the forces behind each issue, both individually and as they interlink.
The creative energies of a generation of young activists may potentially be better put to use attempting to lobby for these changes to take place, rather than engaging in pointless rhetorical shouting matches with extant property-holders and old people.
This will also involve, hopefully at least, less sacrificing of the amenities we, as young people, enjoy on the altar of questionable urban development.
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