RE-POST: “Sprawl” versus “intensification”

It's been nearly twelve years since I first posted this piece, and sadly the question of "sprawl" versus "intensification" is still bloody topical. The most high-profile pillock promoting "out not up" is Chris Bloody Bishop, the housing minister, talking up the benefits of "greenfield" development over intensification.  The latest high-profile pillock to promote building "up not out" is Ockham's Mark Todd, talking up Ockham's book of highly-marketed apartment building (and blithely unaware that increasing supply anywhere lowers prices everywhere).  Like the little Mexican girl in the ad I ask, yet again, why not both?

The debate over affordable housing is already being framed as a facile debate between “sprawl” and “intensification”—a debate between those who wish to release (just a little) the planners’ ring-fences around NZ’s major cities to allow new homes on “greenfield” sections, versus those who insist we build with more intensity within the ring fence on so called “brownfield” sites.

The latter group characterise the former as being in favour of “sprawl”; the former characterise the latter as promoting the construction of the slums of tomorrow. 

Both are right, and both are wrong.

What’s missing here is choice.  In talking about about development on either “greenfield” or “brownfield” sites, both advocates insist that folk do things their way. They completely ignore the fact that people have the right to choose where and how they live, particularly if they own the place on which they choose to settle down.

Let people live where they wish to, as long as they bear the costs. And let those choices themselves—choices based on people’s own values for which they are prepared to pay the cost—organically reflect the way the city develops.

Ironically, it’s the very promoters of intensification, the planners themselves, who have done the most to make decent intensification more difficult.  Here are just some examples of a few urban housing types that are enormously popular overseas, but could barely be even contemplated here…...

• Linked home units (e.g. 'sausage' blocks) 
• Semi-detached housing units 
• Four-storey walk-up apartments 
• Multi-storey apartments with elevators 
• Community housing, with shared courtyards, shared kitchen areas and the like 
• Two, three, and four-storey terrace housing 
• Courtyard housing, and courtyard clusters 
• Mews housing 
• Mixed-use four storey walk-ups 
• innovative medium-density housing (such as Rotterdam's 'pole houses,' Frank Lloyd Wright's Suntop Homesand Crystal Heights apartments, San Francisco's Fulton Grove 'alley housing,' and Moshe Safdie's Habitat) 
• Single family home on an eighth-of-an-acre section 

These are only some of the many, many housing types possible that may grace a city (some pictured below), and that’s not to mention some of the other innovative types that might be dreamed up (like Moshe Safdie’s ‘Habitat’ project at left, or Rotterdam’s ‘pole houses.’) 

Now, with all these types of urban housing available, most of them enormously popular overseas (and some of them once very popular here), ask yourself how many of them a land-owner would be allowed to build on his typical bit of land in a typical NZ city...

If you guessed "not many," you'd be dead right.

The answer (with rare exceptions) is that for most bits of land in most NZ suburbs, all of the housing types listed above that make the least use of scarce urban land are allowed, and all those that help increase the number of housing units that can comfortably work in a city -- and that are enormously popular overseas -- almost all of these urban housing types are disallowed.

Is this smart, do you think? People who complain about the number of single family homes that are built on eighth-of-an-acre sections right across NZ cities (which is mostly what NZ District Plans are written to protect) should direct their ire at those who ensure this is the only thing people are allowed to build: at the planners and the Resource Management Act that gives the planners their power.

District Plans drawn up by planners place enormous restrictions on what one can do one one's own land, restricting choice and trampling over property rights -- but it's been going on for so long and with so little protest that most of these restrictions and the "right" of planners to impose them are simply taken for granted.  

Planners have placed restrictions on the height of what you can build, on the setbacks of new buildings from the street and from boundaries, and most importantly restrictions are place on the density of new building -- on the number of housing units one may build on one's own land.

It is the restrictions on density that exert the biggest stranglehold on our cities. At a density similar to some of the better parts of London for example, with which many NZers are familiar, the population of Auckland could be easily fitted on the ishthmus, with plenty of land left over for parks, and plenty of land left over outside the isthmus for decreased densities if people so wish.

Instead, the planners have ensured the city spreads slowly out into the country-side one relaxation of the ring-fence after another, creating the very "carpet sprawl" that so many supporters of the Resource Management Act claim they dislike, and removing the chance of genuine country living for those who do really desire it.  

In some parts of some NZ cities, even further restrictions have been placed on land, protecting the cold and archaic early twentieth-century housing that still disgraces so much of the early urban landscape.  By which I mean those dark, damp, disgusting villas which need all the villa-ness removed in order to make them liveable, but which planners have made virtually  impossible to touch.

Taking the power they’ve been given  under the Resource Management Act and coupling it with the Utopian dreams handed down to them in Planning School, planners have almost single-handedly stuffed up our cities and restricted the supply of urban land, making building land even scarcer than it needs to be, and restricting the housing choices that New Zealanders are allowed to make to a one-size-fits-all bland-and-blander straitjacket, making urban space duller and even scarcer still.

What's wrong with choice? 

Why do we give these people such power? 

We let them ring-fence the city and stop people heading out and building away from the city when they want to -- "sprawl!" is the all-too hysterical cry -- and then we let them stop other people building higher density urban housing when they want to. Instead of leaving people free to choose, we have these boring "halfway houses" that some people like, but that many simply accept because that's all that's available, and they don't know any better.

When there's just so much available, so many great housing types  from which to choose, it just doesn't make any sense.

“Sprawl” or “intensification”? That’s a false dichotomy. I say let people be free to choose.

That’s the path to genuinely liveable cities, and to affordability.

"We got into this stupid housing mess because the 'Let's protect Precious Agricultural Land' people teamed up with the 'Let's protect Precious Neighbourhood Amenity' people and banned anybody building anything anywhere." Bonus #QotD

"We got into this stupid housing mess because the 'Let's Protect Precious Agricultural Land' people teamed up with the 'Let's Protect Precious Neighbourhood Amenity' people and banned anybody building anything anywhere.
    "I get depressed when a government that came in promising to fix the housing crisis screws this stuff up."
          ~ Eric Crampton, from his post on 'Precious Arable Land'

[Hat tip Mitchell Palmer]

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End carpet-sprawl by removing the city limits [updated]

 

Ever since Labour’s housing spokesman came out yesterday in favour of removing the planners’ ring-fence around Auckland, otherwise known as the Metropolitan Urban Limit, there has been any amount of ill-informed commentary in response – most of it opposed to “sprawl.” [UPDATE: One of the ill-informed is the present housing minister who in his two-faced way says ‘It would be counter-productive to ditch [his present] work at this time with a simplistic approach of just abolishing city limits.”]

There is a great deal of ignorance over urban sprawl, much of it on display in an interview this morning with Gary Taylor of the Environmental Defence Society (the luvvies’ favourite NIMBY group).

Taylor purported to recognise the need for more housing, but reluctant to allow it on his watch. He eventually conceded he could be happy with “shifting the currrent limit” rather than removing it, but insisted he remained unhappy with “untrammelled urban sprawl.”

Duh!

Is he not aware that the very best way to encourage speculative land-banking and encourage untrammelled “carpet” sprawl –two things to which Taylor is adamantly opposed -- is precisely to keep shifting the current limit bit by bit by bit, each time rewarding those who had landbanked just beyond the boundary, and filling up the newly-“opened” land with the very carpet sprawl he claims to despise.

This has been precisely the policy followed by enthusiasts for the misnamed Smart Growth school of planning, and precisely the result.

Owen McShane explained the process in a presentation delivered a few years before he died (pdf), of which this the briefest of excerpts:

WHY SMART GROWTH DELIVERS CARPET SPRAWL.
Smart Growth delivers Carpet-Sprawl because even the most rigorous Smart Growth city eventually has to extend its Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL) to provide more land for residential, commercial and industrial use.
In [2006] the Mayors of both Waitakere City and Manukau City have pleaded for extensions to their MULs. Even Smart Growth planners acknowledge these “adjustments” will be necessary from time to time.
The sequence of events is as follows:
• The MUL is initially set to allow for the next period of growth to take place within the existing “urban form”.
• Eventually this enclosed area fills to the point where there is essentially no zoned land left for further growth or it has become so expensive that no one can afford to use it.
• In the meantime many activities have simply leap-frogged into territory outside the Smart Growth planners’ jurisdiction, which is why Northland Region is now growing so rapidly.
• Open space inside the MUL is sacrificed to high density carpet development to “save” open space outside the MUL.
• At some point the situation becomes intolerable and the people and their representatives demand an extension of the MUL to enclose some piece of surrounding rural land.
• Once this “bulge” is made legal then development and intensification begins again until the new “bulge” is also full of high density carpet development and some relief is allowed in some other part of the city.
Obviously, as this process is repeated the city expands into the rural area as medium or high density “carpet sprawl.” The only difference from the post-war sprawl is that there will be a greater variety of housing types because the market demand is more varied and regulations covering section sizes and housing types have been relaxed since the sixties, and the overall density will be higher.

I'd be interested in hearing from supporters of planning, zoning and so-called 'Smart Growth' how they feel about producing the very thing they say they oppose.

In the meantime, perhaps they might contemplate that the effect of removing the ring-fence altogether (as Twyford proposes) rather than just to shift it (as Taylor reluctantly allows) is not to deliver sprawl at all, but to open up the possibility of a network of small satellite “rural hamlets” or “managed parks” appearing around the outside of the present city limits in areas of most value to those who might live there, with low-impact land engineering and onsite water treatment reducing the impact and encouraging plant growth, and the reduced infrastructure needed paid for by the Municipal Infrastructure Bonds Twyford proposes, and that have worked so well overseas.

A Managed Park (Green Growth) Hamlet designed by
Owen McShane for the Mangawhai Catchment

 

Couldn’t that be exciting!

Much more than a combination of carpet sprawl, ten-acre blocks, and land-bankers being handed risk-free profits.

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Mayoral candidate says housing should grow ‘out’

 

Great to see an Auckland mayoral candidate recognising that if house-price inflation be tackled, then the city has to be ready to grow out.

Auckland mayoral candidate John Palino is calling for the removal of the urban-rural boundary to improve housing affordability.
    The boundary, known as the metropolitan urban limit, was restricting land supply in Auckland and driving up house prices for ideological reasons, Mr Palino said today.

And he’s right, you know, it does, and is:

• Land just inside this “urban fence” costs around ten times land just outside. For virtually identical land. Nothing else so demonstrably highlights the effect of regulation, nor gives some idea of what might be achieved by relieving it.
• And the reason for the “urban fence” is completely ideological – both “new urbanists” and te apostles of “sustainability” preach higher densities for their own separate reasons, but mostly for reasons of control.

My own position is that to promote affordability the city needs to grow both out and up – which recognises home-buyers have the right to choose, and land-owners have the right to build.

‘Out and Up’ should be the mantra.

But at least one mayoral candidate is loudly saying ‘out.’

[Hat tip Stephen Berry from Affordable Auckland, the only mayoral candidate saying ‘Out and Up.’]

RELATED POSTS:

• “So Auckland can’t grow out, because Auckland’s ‘planners’ and public-transport advocates say so.
      “And it can’t grow up, because councillors voted last night that they say so: Auckland Council voting 13-8 to pull new 'denser' maps from the Unitary Plan process.
      “So what are would-be home-owners to do who are trying to afford their own home in a seriously unaffordable city?
      “And what are property-owners to do who wish to build and sell to those desperate to get on the property ladder?”
  Up or out? From both sides council says NEITHER! – NOT PC
• “It is not primarily the fault of land developers that the American suburbs are thought to be dysfunctional and mundane. The blame belongs largely to the influence of boiler-plate zoning regulations combined with design consultants who seek the most minimum criteria allowed by city regulations.
      “Yet for all its problems, decade after decade 80% of new home purchases are not urban, but suburban. Some (architects, planners, and university professors) suggest we should emulate the dense growth of other nations not blessed with the vast area of raw land within our country, yet most of those countries as they prosper strive to emulate our American suburbs.
      “The planning of our cities is about design. Yet, for the past quarter century a highly organized group consisting mostly of architects (acting as planners) have pushed a New Urbanist agenda that is as much about social engineering as it is design.”
  Designing suburbs: Beyond 'New Urbanism' – Rick Harrison, NEW GEOGRAPHY
• “Auckland Mayor Len Brown’s fear of Auckland sprawling “like Los Angeles” is unfounded, pictures of the city’s growth over the past 30 years suggest.
      “A timelapse image of Auckland produced by Google shows New Zealand’s biggest city barely grew out at all between 1984 and 2012 (see pictures), despite its population increasing from 850,000 to more than 1.3 million during that time.
      “This is in stark contrast to many cities elsewhere, including the US where the likes of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta have expanded rapidly.
      And critics say this footage undermines mayor Brown’s claim that Auckland is a sprawling city that needs to be contained.”
  Google busts Len Brown’s Auckland ‘sprawl’ claims – Niko Kloeten, NBR [via Whale Oil], 2013
• “What’s missing here is choice.  In talking about about development on either “greenfield” or “brownfield” sites, both advocates insist that folk do things their way. They completely ignore the fact that people have the right to choose where and how they live, particularly if they own the place on which they choose to settle down.
      “Let people live where they wish to, as long as they bear the costs. And let those choices themselves—choices based on people’s own values for which they are prepared to pay the cost—organically reflect the way the city develops.
      “Ironically, it’s the very promoters of intensification, the planners themselves, who have done the most to make decent intensification more difficult.  Here's just some examples of a few urban housing types that are enormously popular overseas, but could barely be even contemplated here…...”
  “Sprawl” versus “intensification” – NOT PC, 2012
• “Sprawl is good. Sprawl is choice. The opponents of sprawl are not just against sprawl, they're against choice -- the proof of this is that if people wanted to live in the way the enemies of choice wanted, they wouldn't need to be forced into it, they'd be doing it anyway.
      “The enemies of sprawl are the enemies of choice -- they simply use the power of government and the powers that the Resource Management Act gives local government to force people to live in the way that they prefer, rather than the way the people themselves wish to live. They're just another brand of interfering busybody who want to force their own predilections upon others.
      “The result in New Zealand is severe restrictions on building and development, and the result of that is some of the most unaffordable housing in the world.”
  Envy is making houses unaffordable – NOT PC, 2007
• “But my point here is that not everyone wants to live that way, and forcing people who would rather live otherwise into the planners' favourite cookie-cutter solutions removes any possibility of their planning their own future the way that they would like to; it removes their ability to make their own decisions based upon long-term considerations; and it's causing something no-one could really celebrate. And that's really the whole point, isn't it?
      “When it comes to housing, let's all be Pro-Choice.”
  More sprawling arguments – NOT PC, 2007
• “Most of the planners in New Zealand's major cities have imposed what's called a Metropolitan Urban Limit around the cities. This is sometimes called an 'urban fence,' inside which development proceeds (in theory) according to the planners' whims …
      “Outside the urban fence, development only proceeds to the extent that land-owners outside the fence can dodge the planners' desire to make a rural museum of the area surrounding the cities, and to the extent that developers who have built up land banks around the city can encourage their chums on council to relax the zoning, or to release the urban fence just a little. You might call this a sort of 'informal' public-private partnership…
      “The sameness and the sprawl that many people object to in our present-day suburbia are in large part due to these regulatory measures that the anti-sprawlists themselves favour. Specifically, the "carpet sprawl" that would have few explicit defenders is created by the very 'Smart Growth' policies considered so progressive by so many planners. Owen McShane explained the process … ”
  Message to planners: "Don't fence me in!"- NOT PC, 2007

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Up or out? From both sides council says NEITHER!

So Auckland can’t grow out, because Auckland’s ‘planners’ and public-transport advocates says so.

And it can’t grow up, because councillors voted last night that they say so: Auckland Council voting 13-8 to pull new 'denser' maps from the Unitary Plan process.

So what are would-be home-owners to do who are trying to afford their own home in a seriously unaffordable city?

And what are property-owners to do who wish to build and sell to those desperate to get on the property ladder?

The collective answer to both that is coming from across all floors of the mega-council is this: “Fuck you.”

* * *

If last night’s vote to ban building up was a victory for anything, it was a victory for NIMBYism—for Not-In-My-Backyarders who successfully clubbed together to lobby councillors to stop their neighbours intensifying.

Make no mistake, last night’s vote to throw out the intensification proposed by the proposed Auckland Unitary is certainly not a victory for property rights. This proposed plan represents one of the very few times that council’s planners have actually and actively looked to allow property owners to increase the density on their land. Last night’s vote represented the antediluvian reaction to that: from those neighbours fearful of what effect that intensification might have on them.

It is true that everything someone does on their property may have an effect on their neighbour. It is also true that the proposed Unitary Plan does little to reflect the valid fears that neighbours of intensification might have.

But it is not beyond the wit of man to develop gudelines for minimising the effect of three-storey housing on a neighbour (three-storey housing being virtually all the intensifiation proposed). Indeed, it was not beyond the aegis of common law in ages past to recognise that if intensification is to proceeed while respecting property rights, then rights to light, to air, to support and so on must be protected.

I see little reason why those same protections cannnot be formally recognised today.

Instead, we have the worst of both worlds.

We have a city in which folk can’t build either out or up, in which would-be home-owners continue being locked out of their city – and in which the unsustainable bubble continues to bulge tumescently.

It is not a matter of young folk needing to buckle down and do what their older generations once did--buy a small house on the outskirts and save, save, save. It is a fact that house prices have risen well beyond what is actually affordable, and even able to be saved for, precisely because of the very rules those older generations have put in place.

* * * *

The house-price-to-income multiple is a simplified, yet internationally recognised measure of housing affordability … defined as the ratio between median house price and median annual household income, otherwise known as the median multiple.
    The World Bank also says this ratio is "possibly the most important summary measure of housing market performance, indicating not only the degree to which housing is affordable by the population, but also the presence of market distortions."
    Based on this official work, it seems to have become accepted that a median multiple of 3.0 times or less is a very good marker for housing affordability. [Interest.Co.NZ]

Historically, New Zealand’s house prices hovered well below a median price-to-income ratio of 3.0,making houses for most of New Zealand’s history very affordable. This was the era in which previous generations bought their homes.

Since the mid-nineties however (curiously, at almost the precise time as National’s Resource Management was introduced), that ratio changed radically – and is now all-but out of control.

Source: Demographia: 12th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2016

There are many reasons for the rocketing rise in Auckland’s housing unaffordability, from the way new money is loaned into existence in the form of new mortages (in a process invented and maintained by monetary ‘planners’), to the way Auckland land has been kept off the market (in a process over which town ‘planners’ maintain a stranglehold over Auckland property-owners’ land). I don’t intend to relitigate them here (burrow into the archives if you can bear to). I simply wish to talk about choice.

Would-be home-owners have no choice.

They are being priced out of their city.**

And now it is clear home-owners have no choice either. They can’t build either out nor up.

This is not a recipe for a liveable city. It is certainly not a recognition of property rights.

I don’t say that we should be “pro-sprawl.” I don’t say that we should be “pro-intensification. I say, and I’ve been saying it for time, WE SHOULD ALL BE PRO-CHOICE!

The latter group characterise the former as being in favour of “sprawl”; the former characterise the latter as promoting the construction of the slums of tomorrow.

Both are right, and both are wrong.

What’s missing here is choice.  In talking about about development on either “greenfield” or “brownfield” sites, both advocates insist that folk do things their way. They completely ignore the fact that people have the right to choosewhere and how they live, particularly if they own the place on which they choose to settle down.

Let people live where they wish to, as long as they bear the costs. And let those choices themselves—choices based on people’s own values for which they are prepared to pay the cost—organically reflect the way the city develops. …

We let them ring-fence the city and stop people heading out and building away from the city when they want to —“sprawl!” is the all-too hysterical cry — and then we let them stop other people building higher density urban housing when they want to. Instead of leaving people free to choose, we have these boring “halfway houses” that some people like, but that many simply accept because that’s all that’s available, and they don’t know any better.

When there’s just so much available, so many great housing types  from which to choose, it just doesn’t make any sense.

“Sprawl” or “intensification”? That’s a false dichotomy. I say let people be free to choose.

That’s the path to genuinely liveable cities, and to affordability.

If only anyone truly gave a shit.

---

* And let those folk who think National’s Nick Smith is serious about improving housing affordability reflect that as Environment Minister in the mid-nineties the very same Nick Smith administered the Resource Management Act for many years, and did precisely nothing at all to change it.

** Let the NIMBYs reflect at least that many of these folk are their own children and grandchildren, who they may be driving out of the place they grew up.)

RELATED POSTS:

• “'Smart Growth' fan Tom Beard challenged my encomia to sprawl the other day. As I summarised at the end of last week, my argument was essentially that in lifestyles and the places where we live, we should be Pro-Choice…”
  The sprawling argument continues. – NOT PC, 2007
• “Last week I put out a post on possible mechanisms to enable groups of neighbours to protect their interests in their own and each others’ properties, while allowing the flexibility for them, rather than councils, to determine what, if any, and when changes in the land use rules affecting that group of properties would be put in place.”
  An interesting approach to urban land use property rights – CROAKING CASSANDRA, 2015
• “Libertarian blogger Peter Cresswell, author of the Not PC blog, says Auckland sprawl is a myth peddled by planners and politicians.
      “’The only uncontrolled sprawl is in their heads.  Auckland’s ‘sprawl’ has been contained, constrained, ring-fenced and ringbarked—and the dreams of would-be first-home buyers with it.
      “’What Aucklanders need is not to be told by planners where and how they live—either in high densities or in quarter-acre sprawl or in small hamlets or country houses miles from the city centre.
      “’What they need in their housing is choice – the ability to choose where and how they live based on their own values, their own desires, and the often limited ability of their bank accounts. What they don’t need is to be told by planners, who are just out of school, that their choices are illegal.’”
  Google busts Len Brown’s Auckland ‘sprawl’ claims – NBR [via Whale Oil], 2013
• “Those against increasing the urban limit are not just saying they don’t want to live further out – but they want to effectively ban others from doing the same.  They don’t want people to have choice – they want everyone in an inner city apartment.”
  Housing affordability – KIWIBLOG, 2012
• “Ironically, it’s the very promoters of intensification, the planners themselves, who have done the most to make decent intensification more difficult.  Here's just some examples of a few urban housing types that are enormously popular overseas, but could barely be even contemplated here…...”
  “Sprawl” versus “intensification” – NOT PC, 2012
• “There will be no innovations in NZ’s high-cost labour-intensive building techniques until innovative systems such as this can be painlessly introduced and exploited—perhaps only when councils themselves are taken out of the chain of responsibility for policing building standards…”
  Government finally plans to address unaffordable housing. But… – NOT PC, 2012

‘Big Garden,’ by Mark Wooller

Few artists choose to celebrate suburban values, suburban gardens. With his new collection of paintings (opening tonight in Newmarket), North-of-Auckland artist Mark Wooller is one.

The once traditional quarter acre Auckland section is now almost a distant memory. In my new series of work I have expanded the lush gardens to cover the whole section – totally surrounding or “safeguarding” the houses… “The once traditional quarter acre Auckland section is now almost a distant memory. In my new series of work I have expanded the lush gardens to cover the whole section – totally surrounding or “safeguarding” the houses… classic houses [highlighted here] with stylish Victorian Villas, Californian Bungalows, and Art Deco houses featuring prominently in many of the paintings.

In age of centralised intensification, his new paintings celebrate some of the pleasures of decentralisation.

RELATED POSTS:

• Decentralisation, and those who oppose it – NOT PC
• Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City – NOT PC
• “Sprawl” versus “intensification” – NOT PC

Windfall profits for some at the expense of affordable housing for others

Here is how the housing market works under John Key’s crony capitalism: he and his housing minister and the council’s planners have between them just made around half-a-dozen land-owners around Auckland rich beyond their wildest dreams.*

In announcing the “Housing Accord” with the Greater Auckland Council, planners and politicians failed to understand the power of Mr Market.

Announcing out of the blue some land allowed to slip through the council’s zoning net, the land-owners quickly discovered their land formerly zoned rural by planners now had the politicians’ and planners’ tick to build houses – and the value of said land immediately went through the roof.

Some have put land up for sale soon after gaining designation as a Special Housing Area, achieving prices up three times higher than previous valuations.
    In one case, adjoining rural properties valued three years ago at $4.5 million sold for nearly $11 million, after being approved for fast-track housing development.
    A property developer has sold large blocks in the Huapai Triangle, valued three years ago at $8.65 million, for more than $20 million.

By locking up land and releasing it only in dribbles – favouring some land-owners over others, particularly those with pull – planners generate not only the carpet sprawl they claim to despise, but windfall profits for some at the expense of affordable and reasonably priced land for others.

The solution is to shoot the planners – or at least to make them unemployed – and let people exercise their own choice over where and how they live.

---

* National cronies? No, I don’t know either  (a good job for a good journalist that, discovering the details), but if they weren’t before, you’d think they’d certainly be supporters now. Because that’s how public-private partnerships roll, baby.

Auckland’s uncontrollable sprawl

Auckland has been “wedded to a 1950s vision of uncontrolled sprawl,” says Labour Leader David Shearer.

“Auckland's mayor is standing firm against urban sprawl,” say commentators.

“Auckland’s sprawl is unsustainable and must stop,” says virtually every planner everywhere.

And yet … what uncontrolled sprawl?

Here’s Auckland in 1984:

Here’s Auckland in 2012:

How’s that “uncontrollable sprawl” working out?

Fact is, New Zealanders’ fear of urban sprawl is wholly misplaced.

PS: The pictures above come from a really neat Time Lapse visualisation of the world here.  Use any of the pre-programmed settings—click on Las Vegas or Shanghai if you really want to see sprawl!—or just click on “Explore the World” and play.

“Sprawl” versus “intensification”

[Welcome Kiwiblog, Herald and NBR readers. Please also see my more immediate reaction to National’s proposals: “Government finally plans to address unaffordable housing. But…”]

The debate over affordable housing is already being framed as a facile debate between “sprawl” and “intensification”—a debate between those who wish to release (just a little) the planners’ ring-fences around NZ’s major cities to allow new homes on “greenfield” sections, versus those who insist we build with more intensity within the ring fence on so called “brownfield” sites.

The latter group characterise the former as being in favour of “sprawl”; the former characterise the latter as promoting the construction of the slums of tomorrow.

Both are right, and both are wrong.

What’s missing here is choice.  In talking about about development on either “greenfield” or “brownfield” sites, both advocates insist that folk do things their way. They completely ignore the fact that people have the right to choose where and how they live, particularly if they own the place on which they choose to settle down.

Let people live where they wish to, as long as they bear the costs. And let those choices themselves—choices based on people’s own values for which they are prepared to pay the cost—organically reflect the way the city develops.

Ironically, it’s the very promoters of intensification, the planners themselves, who have done the most to make decent intensification more difficult.  Here's just some examples of a few urban housing types that are enormously popular overseas, but could barely be even contemplated here…...

Unaffordable housing? No wonder!

ONCE AGAIN BERNARD HICKEY offers the insalubrious example of a commentator who knows something is wrong, yet knows nothing about how to fix it. Nothing that is beyond yelling “Something Must be Done!” And by “something he means “someone.” And by someone, he means the government.

First, the problem:

Auckland and Christchurch now have massive shortages of waterproof and undamaged homes that regular families can afford to own…
    The Department of Building and Housing forecast this month that New Zealand needs to build around 20,000 to 23,000 housing units a year over the next five years to keep pace with population growth. Meanwhile New Zealand has been building at a rate below 15,000 a year for the last three years…
    The crisis has intensified since 1999 with the introduction of the Metropolitan Urban Limit and the revelations that an entire generation of homes is leaky and will have to be either reclad or rebuilt…
    This crisis is playing out in a variety of ways.
    There is, of course, a rise in homeless numbers. But the more obvious increase is simply in the price of homes and rents. Both are rising quicker than the wider inflation rate and price rises outside of Auckland and Christchurch. There is an inevitable reaction to this, which is for young Auckland and Christchurch workers and families, those who are not property owners, to simply give up.

He is right that rents are rocketing and new homes are becoming less and less affordable.  The annual Demographia study has shown for years that even during this Great Recession house prices as a proportion of income in New Zealand’s cities are among the highest in the developed world—and increasing*. And the Productivity Commission (from whom Hickey got his figures) point out that “for younger people and those on lower incomes there is a missing step on the property ladder, particularly in Auckland. The chances of them ever purchasing their first home are decreasing.”

He is right, too, that while would-be home-owners burn, governments in Auckland and Wellington continue to fiddle—with train sets in Auckland, and with a pathetic, partial, poorly-done privatisation programme in Wellington.

The problem then is this: what is to be done? And the problem with Hickey is, he has no bloody idea.

So like every simple statist who Wants Something Done, he simply cries that Gummint Should Do Something!

“Government-owned land would need to be opened up and town planners overruled,” says Hickey, getting it half right, before heading down the route of statists immemorial in calling for “taxpayer money … to be invested and lots of it.” Presumably building those affordable houses that the government has made it unprofitable for private builders to build, using resources that will cost more than the sale price.

It’s the same “solution” put forward by Fran O’Sullivan (left) a few months back when she called for private land to be nationalised—expropriated outright by the grey ones—newly stolen land on which the Gummint Should Do Something.

Like O’Sullivan, Hickey is a business columnist. Yet just like her he has no idea how business works.

And they both write and talk about politics. But neither apparently have any conception of how politicians have caused the very “market failure” they describe. Because while calling for government to fix the problem by doing more, they never even bothered to ask themselves this fundamental question: whether it is government activity itself that has largely caused the problem.

And it has.

IN A NUTSHELL, THE big problem is that government has gone beyond right: it has passed laws giving the Reserve Bank the power to print money, bureaucrats the power to prescribe the methods and materials by which houses are built, and  planners the power to control and restrict people’s land.

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Houses getting less and less affordable despite the bursting bubble

Despite New Zealand’s parlous economic conditions, New Zealand housing is no more affordable now than it was before the economic wheels started falling off. In fact, according to the latest annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey housing in New Zealand is still severely unaffordable.

Author Joel Kotkin notes that even after the bursting of the housing bubble, the ratio of incomes to housing prices in most cities (what the researchers call “the median multiple”) has shown a steady increase.

The survey gave New Zealand a median multiple of 5.3 for housing affordability, which is above the historic norm of three.
    All major [cities] in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Hong Kong, were judged to be severely unaffordable. Of the 325 [cities] the survey covered, 115 were affordable, 94 were moderately unaffordable, 42 were seriously unaffordable and 74 were severely unaffordable.
    All of the affordable [cities] are in the United States. The most affordable  is Atlanta, with a median house price of $US129,400 ($NZ170,485). Hong Kong was the least affordable major [city], with a median multiple of 11.4, Sydney second with a median multiple of 9.6 and Vancouver was 9.5.
    New Zealand's housing was [rated as] affordable in the early 1990s, with a median multiple of under three, the survey said.
    Auckland now has a median multiple of 6.4, with Christchurch on six and Wellington on 5.5, which is regarded as severely unaffordable. Tauranga-Western Bay of Plenty was again the least affordable market [in the country], with a median multiple of 6.5.

The reason some cities’ houses remain severely unaffordable while others do not (median house price of just $US129,400 in Atlanta!) remain the same, and may be described very simply: cities in which town planners have been given powers to seriously restrict house-building are generally the least affordable; those in which they have the least power are generally the most affordable.

In other words, the more “sustainable” a city is and the more power its “planners” have, the less affordable its housing.

Now you might have thought that Prime Minister John Boy might have been working since his election to turn around the dire situation in which even hard-working New Zealanders are finding it increasingly difficult to buy a house. But you’d be wrong. Instead, Smile and Wave’s local government minister Rodney Hide just spent the last two years working night and day not to remove power from the smug self-anointed vermin who have made life worse for would-be home-owners, but instead (as a model for councils across the country) to give Auckland’s town planners even more power to make the city even more severely unaffordable.

What a creep. What a disgrace. What a tragedy.

NB: You can download the detailed survey and related commentary at the Demographia website, from whence graphs and tables like these two below are sourced.

RELATED POSTS:

• ‘Smart Growth’ and the coming ‘Housing-Led Recovery’ – or, to put it another way: ‘Oxymorons for Morons’ – Oct 2009
• House price inflation on the rise again? – Aug 2009
• Tauranga planners' spin spiked by housing researchers  - NOT PC, July 2008
• Why Houston housing has avoided boom and bust – NOT PC, May 2008
• WARNING: White noise on housing  - NOT PC, Feb 2008
• Message to planners: Don't fence me in! – NOT PC, Feb 2007
• 'Smart Growth' is not Green – NOT PC, Oct 2007
• 'Sustainable' cities are unaffordable cities – NOT PC, June 2007
• More sprawling arguments – NOT PC, Feb, 2007
• Envy is making houses unaffordable – NOT PC, Feb 2007
• Some Auckland mayors realise ring-fencing the city is 'unsustainable' – NOT PC, Aug 2006
• Sprawl: A compact history- NOT PC, June 2006
• East Germany in East Auckland – NOT PC, June 2005
• Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City – NOT PC, Nov 2005
• Decentralisation, and those who oppose it – NOT PC, Dec 2006
• Sprawl is good; regulation is not – NOT PC, Nov 2005
• Building slums while banning growth – NOT PC, June 200

Task Force to clear the way for more affordable homes [updated]

I’m almost speechless. Here’s why:

    “Environment Minister Nick Smith has announced two new taskforces to look at Resource Management Act (RMA) reform, issues surrounding urban design, metropolitan urban limits and housing affordability. . .
    “ ‘I don’t think we have the incentives right for developers to do the best urban design in our largest cities. There are also questions about the policy of metropolitan urban limits, the effect they have on section prices and the negative flow-on effects to the broader economy. . . ,” he said.

See what I mean?  I’m astonished.

After seventeen years of having to endure the Resource Management Act, after a decade of evidence showing that restricting the supply of urban land is sending house prices through the roof, there’s finally a “taskforce” to “look at” it.

Slow progress.  But progress.

    “The Urban [Task Force] will be chaired by barrister Alan Dormer and includes planning consultant Adrienne Young Cooper, research economist and consultant Arthur Grimes, architect and urban designer Graeme McIndoe, Chief Executive of the Property Council of New Zealand Connal Townsend and Ernst Zollner of the New Zealand Transport Agency. It has a report date of 31 March 2010.”

I don’t know much about the others on that group (anyone able to shed any light?), but Alan Dormer and Arthur Grimes have both been upfront about their opposition to the RMA and to metropolitan urban limits respectively—Dormer’s submission on the original RMA Bill back in 1991, for example, was a cracker, and Grimes’ Centre for Housing Research has said very cogent things on housing unaffordability and the reasons for it.

That’s astonishing.  So something might even come of this.  Not RMA repeal, it’s still too early for that, but this could be a very good baby step.

So I’m excited. Excited in a guarded fashion, because this is being announced by the same chap who calls the RMA “far-sighted environmental legislation, and who said just before the election that he intends to “review” the Resource Management Act to, quote, “look at how companies win the right to take private land.” 

So while I’m still getting my composure and my breath back, and wondering whether to be excited or concerned, read a little about the issues from previous posts to see what’s at stake:

• ‘Smart Growth’ and the coming ‘Housing-Led Recovery’ – or, to put it another way: ‘Oxymorons for Morons’ – Oct 2009
• House price inflation on the rise again? – Aug 2009
• Planners still stitching up home-owners: NZ cities world’s second-most unaffordable  - NOT PC, Jan 2009
• Tauranga planners' spin spiked by housing researchers  - NOT PC, July 2008
• Why Houston housing has avoided boom and bust – NOT PC, May 2008
• WARNING: White noise on housing  - NOT PC, Feb 2008
• Message to planners: Don't fence me in! – NOT PC, Feb 2007
• 'Smart Growth' is not Green – NOT PC, Oct 2007
• Cactus is wrong – NOT PC, Aug 2007
• 'Sustainable' cities are unaffordable cities – NOT PC, June 2007
• More sprawling arguments – NOT PC, Feb, 2007
• Envy is making houses unaffordable – NOT PC, Feb 2007
• NZ Housing affordability "in crisis" says report – NOT PC, Jan 2006
• Some Auckland mayors realise ring-fencing the city is 'unsustainable' – NOT PC, Aug 2006
• Sprawl: A compact history- NOT PC, June 2006
• East Germany in East Auckland – NOT PC, June 2005
• Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City – NOT PC, Nov 2005
• Decentralisation, and those who oppose it – NOT PC, Dec 2006
• Sprawl is good; regulation is not – NOT PC, Nov 2005
• Building slums while banning growth – NOT PC, June 2005

All posts on Urban Design here and here.

UPDATE: Owen McShane suggests we not take anything for granted, that we all need to give assistance to Alan Dormer, Arthur Grimes, Connal Townsend and Stephen Selwood in any way we can, including by making submissions to the Select Committee in support.

  And he offers a warning:

    “The [advisory]  groups are stacked to give Gary Taylor’s Environmental Defence Society (EDS)what they want.
    “Townsend and Grimes will be outvoted.
    “Alan Dormer Chaired the [advisory] group for the first round but everything was hugely diluted in the Select Committee by submissions from EDS etc.
    “So I am not so optimistic - much as I would like to be.
    “If he was serious why put Adrienne Cooper on BOTH groups.
    “Subject: The Cooper History
    “It is worth noting that when I wrote my report for the Reserve Bank in which I predicted all these negative outcomes; the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) appointed Hill Young Cooper ‘to prove it wrong.’
    “They accepted the commission and Adrienne Cooper and David Hill wrote a truly disgraceful report.*
    “She has been a strong supporter of Smart Growth ever since.
    “From the Business Roundtable document ‘Turning Gain into Pain’:

The Growth Strategy recognises that with intensification house prices would
be higher than otherwise. This acknowledgment seems to be an about-face by
the ARC and other councils that previously dismissed Owen McShane's view
that restrictions on the supply of land for urban development were putting
upward pressure on house prices.**
Policy-induced increases in house prices lead to higher interest rates and distort consumption and investment patterns.
The policy would adversely affect housing options available to people,
particularly those on low incomes and with few resources, and is inequitable.
It could be expected to accentuate overcrowding and reliance on
accommodation provided by caravans and garages.
3.6 For these reasons, the Growth Strategy provides an unsound basis for the Transport Strategy. In particular, the emphasis placed on urban intensification and reliance on passenger transport services is mistaken and should be reconsidered by the Forum.

**Cooper, Adrienne Young and Hill, David (1996), A Local Authority Response to the McShane Report, a report commissioned by the Auckland Regional Council, Auckland City Council, Franklin
District Council, Manukau City Council, North Shore City Council, Rodney District Council
and Waitakere City Council, Hill Young Cooper Ltd, Newmarket.

** McShane, Owen (1996), The Impact of the Resource Management Act on the 'Housing and Construction' Components of the Consumer Price Index: A 'Think Piece', a report prepared for the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Wellington.

    “Papakura (with their ACT Mayor David Hawkins) refused to contribute to the Hill Young Cooper report, the saying surely the ARC should ask for a review, not instruct the consultants to prove me wrong.
    “The report does not turn up on the web - on the wrong side of the Digital Time line.
But Arthur Grimes should be able to get it from the ARC library.”

Planners still stitching up home-owners: NZ cities world’s second-most unaffordable [updated]

Despite the recession, houses in New Zealand cities are as unaffordable as they’ve ever been – that’s the conclusion of the fifth annual survey [pdf] by international organisation Demographia, who’ve found that the average price of houses in NZ’s eight major cities are still more than 5.7 times the average household income in that city.

In the parlance of the study, this makes the New Zealand housing market seriously unaffordable – just as it has been for the last decade. The survey of English-speaking countries finds that UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand have no affordable major urban markets, while Canada has 10 (of 34) and the United States 77 (of 175). There are no moderately unaffordable urban markets (at and below 4 times household income) in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United Kingdom.  Reports NBR:

    The 2009 Demographia study of international housing affordability found Australia has the most unaffordable housing at 6.3 times annual household earnings.
    New Zealand was second on 5.7. Ireland registered 5.4, the United Kingdom 5.3, Canada 3.5 and US 3.2.
    None of the eight urban markets in New Zealand covered by the survey are considered to be affordable. Seven were severely unaffordable and Palmerston North was considered seriously unaffordable.
    A figure above five is regarded as severely unaffordable.
    Auckland is the least affordable larger market, with a median multiple of 6.4, while Christchurch (6.1) and Wellington (5.9) are also severely unaffordable.
    Tauranga-Bay of Plenty was the least affordable market, with a median multiple of 6.6. Out of the eight New Zealand markets only Palmerston North is not severely unaffordable on 4.9.

Just to clarify what this degree of unaffordability means, this is unprecedented both historically and geographically – so simply saying that young couples need to hunker down and save like their grand-parents did is not even the beginning of the whole story.   Outside the current period, at no other time in NZ’s history has this price-income multiplier been so high.  And outside New Zealand, only Australia has a higher price-income multiplier.

The reasons for contemporary NZ cities being so seriously unaffordable compared to other cities (and to other times in NZ’s history) can be deduced, if you’re smart enough, from the policies of those cities at the upper end of the Demographia survey. 

The reason for some cities being more unafforable than others is not just the excessive demand created by loose credit in recent years, since that loose credit operated across all markets; it’s not just the increased cost of construction in recent years (although that hasn’t helped the level unaffordability), since (especially across the US) those increased costs have been imposed across all markets; it’s not just the increasing attractiveness of these unaffordable cities, since domestic migration figures for most of these cities are showing either strong outflows or decreasing inflows from (and to) these cities; and it’s not like some of the world’s most unaffordable cities are running out of land: there’s no shortage of land in the likes of British Columbia, California, Victoria, or the deserts of Western Australia (and nor is there in NZ).

No, to see why some cities are more unaffordable than others you have to look at the differences between those cities, and the biggest difference is in how the cities regulate land. 

In Tauranga, for example, 'planners' have enthusiastically embraced the anti-development 'sustainable' philosophy of so called 'Smart Growth'. At a multiplier of 6.6, Tauranga has the country's most unaffordable houses. At a multiplier of 6.4, Auckland has the second most unaffordable housing – and for years Auckland’s planners have rationed the land supply, ring-fenced the city, and restricted the range of urban housing.  No wonder.  If you ration supply while demand stays the same (or increases), then you’re going to ensure prices go through the roof.

And in the most unaffordable places land is being rationed.  Ring-fencing cities to slap down “sprawl” is squeezing the supply of land in those cities; heavily regulating land-use and subdivision in cities is squeezing the supply of land in those cities.  The fact is, as I’ve pointed out before, that the world’s most unaffordable cities are almost without exception those cities who cite themselves as being the most “sustainable” –- another example of the price of fashion.

But in this case the fashion victims are us.  And even as the followers of fashion defend their advocacy of land-rationing – an imposition that all of us get to feel --  the evidence from around the English-speaking world is clear: that "smart growth" cities are unaffordable cities.

Frankly, both ring-fencing around cities and enforcing lower densities within them are the twin causes of the problems (and it’s the state giving planners power to do both that needs to be expunged).  

There's no problem with “sprawl” if the ring-fencing were relaxed: New Zealand's urban areas account for less than 1 percent of the total country, one quarter of that in the Auckland region. If all of NZ's 1,471,476 existing households were to be rebuilt on an acre of land -- which was the sort of thing proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright in his Broadacre project-- we'd all fit in an area less than one-quarter the size of the Waikato , and just think how easy it'd be to thumb a lift out to Raglan!. 

And there's really no problem with higher densities within cities if the planners are muzzled, if the private sector gets to offer buyers what they want, and if the state is barred from building the sort of thing the state always likes to build -- which is building the slums of tomorrow.

What it comes down to is choice.  If people were only left free to live in the way they wanted -- however apoplectic that made all the many enemies of choice -- the problems of housing unaffordability would disappear overnight.

For further information, read all PC’s posts on …

Why Houston housing has avoided boom and bust

Here's a lesson that town planning advocates everywhere should note.  While most of the American housing market has experienced boom and bust in the face of expansionary Federal Reserve policies, housing in Houston has remained relatively immune -- even though it's been at the epicentre of rapid economic growth due to the commodities boom.

The reason?  While most of the western world is under the thumb of town planners, with the result that housing in much of the western world has become seriously unaffordable, the city of Houston remains unzoned, and its housing among the most affordable anywhere.

Even the Federal Reserve has noticed the phenomenon, and has begun to realise that zoning and regulating land is destructive.  Says a new report by the Dallas Fed, the more unregulated US housing markets have weathered increased demand not with price appreciation, which is how it has played out in most western markets, but largely with new construction.  This is essentially because it's very much easier to build new homes in Houston. If it had been set up as a laboratory experiment to prove the failure of zoning, it couldn't have been done better:

       Given that Houstonians had access to the same new types of mortgages as the rest of the country and that Houston has had greater population growth than other large metros, we might expect price appreciation to be stronger in Houston than elsewhere. However, the opposite has been true.
    Houston’s large supply of land means that demand growth primarily results in more construction, not higher prices...
    At $155,800, Houston’s median house price is the third lowest among the 12 largest U.S. metropolitan areas and is less than half the average for these cities (Table 4). Houston’s median price is lower than even the national average, which includes inexpensive rural areas...
    By comparison, the median house price in metropolitan San Francisco, where zoning laws and building codes are very strict, is $825,400.
    This result—more zoning bringing higher prices—is a robust one. Economists Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko find that house prices across the country are positively related to the degree of zoning and regulation...  But with plenty of unzoned neighborhoods remaining [in Houston], Houston house prices, on the whole, are restrained near construction costs.

You would think that news like this would attract the attention of everyone struggling to come to terms with the crisis in affordable housing.  You would think that even the most enthusiastic advocate of giving power to town planners might at least pause to reconsider their zeal.  That is, if evidence and affordability actually mattered to them more than political power.

Housing affordability: It's regulation, stupid

Since the news of New Zealand's leading position in the field of housing unaffordability is finally being digested, but unfortunately still with so many indigestible misconceptions, I thought I'd repost this concise summary of the reasons for rising housing costs produced by Pieter Burghout of the Master Builders Federation. He naturally overlooks the expected cost increases due to the senseless certification of builders and designers, but since planners, regulators and Alan Bollard have yet to focus on the real causes of that unaffordability, it's important that we do. I've retained my original introduction to the piece.

Demographia's worldwide survey of housing affordability demonstrates clearly enough that since all housing markets studied have similar tax and credit regimes but distinctly different policies on land regulation, the crucial factor in housing affordability is land regulation, not new taxes.

The problem in those markets experiencing serious unaffordability (those in which average house costs around six to seven times the average income) is overregulation of land use. Conversely those cities enjoying more affordable houses (those in which average house costs around three times the average income) is minimal regulations on land use. It costs more than twice an average household's income to buy a house in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch for example, around which "planners" have imposed artifical "urban walls," than it does in Houston, which is unzoned.

An editorial in the NZ Master Bulders' magazine Building Today highlights the problem perfectly with points keenly summarised in the graphs below (click on them to enlarge): over the last five years material costs have increased by twenty-five percent and labour costs by fifty percent (much of that due to the green-plated new building regs). Over that same time consent fees have increased by fifty percent, land costs have doubled, and levies and compulsory contributions levied by council have increased by ten times!

In dollar terms, the biggest increase is in the inflation of land costs due to regulation. In percentage terms the biggest increase is in infrastructure levies and fees. If that doesn't leave you incensed, then you're probably part of the problem. And if you think either are susceptible to interest rate increases then you must be Alan Bollard.

Because of its brevity it's worth reading Master Builders' CEO Pieter Burghout's piece in full (or nearly enough), so here it is:

Housing affordability -- it can be fixed!
...0ne of the recent, big public issues has centred around housing affordability, with nearly everyone jumping on the bandwagon and suggesting how it can be fixed.
...For certain, Kiwis have aspired, and probably always will aspire, to own their own home — their own “quarter acre section of paradise”. And that’s entirely how it should be.
...Unfortunately, the lift in house prices over the past five or so years has put the average home out of the reach of the average Kiwi family, which is not good. […]
...The construction industry, and New Zealand as a whole, benefits from having an affordable housing sector, and we believe there are a number of measures that can be taken to improve housing affordability.
...The main points we made in our submission to the [Select Committee Inquiry on Housing Affordability] are noted below. Our research, within New Zealand and offshore, validates that the key drivers of the housing affordability issue have been, in order of priority:

• rises in land cost,
• rises in local authority infrastructure levies and fees,
• increasing compliance costs, and
• increased labour and material costs.

...This analysis is shown in the graphs at right.
...And as the prices of new homes have risen, so have the prices of existing homes — because that’s how the market worksl
...If these are the cost drivers behind house price increases, then what are the things that need to be done to fix them and make houses more affordable again?
...First, the biggest factor affecting land cost is supply, and central and local government need to consider what measures can and should be taken to free up land availability, particularly in the main centres.
...Second, the biggest percentage increase in cost has been burgeoning increases in local authority infrastructure levies and fees. These should be better assessed and monitored to ensure they are fair and reasonable — rather than the “laissez faire” approach that applies currently. [It’s worth noting here that the Libertarianz submission on Sandra Lee’s expansion of local government powers pointed out at the time that good objective law allows individuals the right to do anything except that which is specifically prohibited while restraining governments to acting only on that which is specifically permitted, and that Lee’s Local Government Act reverses this important principle. The explosive consequences for the cost of local government that we’ve seen since the Act’s passing are entirely due to that reversal.]
...The construction industry can and should pay for those extra infrastructure costs that it imposes, but it’s not fair that new home owners pay inflated infrastructure levies to subsidise existing home owners who otherwise have lower rates to pay
...And third, the next largest significant increase has been in the area of compliance costs. Some of these costs are reasonable as the industry lifts overall quality levels since the leaky building saga, but some are unreasonable, and steps should be taken to reduce them, particularly:

• consent process delays (consent, inspections and code compliance certificates),
• consenting uncertainty and variability, and
• producer statement uncertainty and variability.

...There have been increases in labour and material costs but, in our view, both of these are subject to strong competitive pressures across the industry and across the economy as a whole. We are generally comfortable with where these costs sit in perspective against the other cost drivers noted above.
...The final point we made in our submission to the Inquiry is that similar housing affordability issues apply in other countries, and New Zealand should take heed from the remedial measures being proposed in those countries to adopt what is applicable here.
...In nearly all the cases we researched, the three factors we have highlighted — land prices, infrastructure levies and compliance costs — are at the top of the list of things to fix. And so it should be in New Zealand, too.
...The problem won’t be fixed overnight, but it can be tackled, and we strongly encourage the Government to do so.

* * * * *

Burghout makes the point abundantly clear, don't you think? A commenter here at Not PC prescribed the solution just a few months ago:

Here's the solution: get rid of fiat money, get rid of zoning, don't fight so-called sprawl and let people free to develop according to demand, and let development "end the divide between rural and urban areas" by having the council-imposed 'Urban Wall' removed.

Good luck getting either this Government or the planners responsible for the problem interested enough to care.