We are all at least a little bit annoying. We all impose small bits of nuisance. Those of us unwilling to live in an off-grid hermit’s shack have to find tolerable ways of accommodating each other.
There are no perfect solutions. But surely improvements on New Zealand’s status quo are possible.
Last week, the Herald reported that Christchurch International Airport is objecting to a new residential development adjacent to the University of Canterbury. Those are my old stomping grounds. For those unfamiliar with Christchurch, it’s just over five kilometres from the airport.
The new apartments would be of obvious appeal to anyone wanting to live near the university, whether students or younger staff. The development is needed. For the 2026 school year, over 4000 students applied for under 3000 spaces in the University’s halls of residence.
Christchurch’s District Plan sets a wide ‘contour’ around the airport. Development within that area requires resource consent, with notification to the Airport. The airport does not have a formal veto over developments in the area, but objection can increase the cost of building things.
So why would the airport care about a residential development more than five kilometres away?
The Herald quotes the Airport’s spokesperson. The new development is within the airport’s ‘noise contour’. An additional 177 dwellings means more people who could complain about noise from the airport. Or, as the airport put it, the objection relates to the “reverse sensitivity implications associated with development of this nature.”
It sounds crazy. It may be hard to hear airplanes at all if you live in an apartment complex where many of the tenants are students.
The airport has been in place for a long time. It isn’t something you only discover if you hire a very thorough building inspector to investigate the property you’re thinking about buying. But that newcomers ‘came to the nuisance’ has not, on its own, been a common law defence for over a century.
And more people living in the area around the airport means more people who might object either to current airport operations or to any increase in airport noise.
As a solution, blocking people from moving to a potentially noisy place is absurd. But it deals with a real problem.
When apartment towers catering to wealthier older people go up near music venues, the new residents lodge noise complaints that attempt to run the place out of business. Even a single overly sensitive new neighbour can force existing venues to close.
It hardly seems right that people who knew about a ‘nuisance’ like a music venue when they bought a property, and potentially paid a lower price for it because of that nuisance, are able to kill the venue through noise complaints.
But the common law did away with ‘coming to the nuisance’ as a defence to these complaints for a reason. Taken strictly, a ‘coming to the nuisance’ doctrine would provide any first-mover with a property right over every one of its neighbours: the right to continue making noise that affects their properties, regardless of whether that were the best solution.
Let’s take a simple example. None of the figures here represent any realistic costs for soundproofing. They’re illustrative to show how the ‘right’ solution can change.
Suppose you owned a bar and had no neighbours. It would cost you $100,000 to install noise-proofing. But as there are no neighbours, there is no reason to worry about it.
Installing sound insulation in new apartments would cost $500 per unit. Without soundproofing, anyone moving next door would endure $1,000 in damages from your bar’s noise.
Whether it makes sense for the bar to install soundproofing, or for the new apartments to install insulation, depends on how many neighbours might show up. If less than 200 apartments go up, it’s more cost-effective for each apartment to install insulation. But insulation for 300 apartments would cost $150,000 – and it would only cost you $100,000 to make the bar less noisy.
So the problem can be solved if either the bar, or the apartments, install soundproofing.
An older-style ‘coming to the nuisance’ right to make noise would make it harder to get to the better solution as more people moved into the neighbourhood. In principle, the neighbours could chip in to pay the bar to stop making noise – but arranging that can be difficult. And some bar owners could be tempted to increase the amount of noise, in hope of encouraging neighbours to pay it to stop.
So it isn’t a great solution.
The solution we have instead isn’t great either.
‘Reverse sensitivity’ provisions in the RMA prevent more people from moving next to things that they might later complain about. So airports have to be notified about and can object to more intense development near them.
As pseudonymous twitter urban planner @nzsd points out, one part of the law allows people to complain about noise. But another part of the same law tries to stop people from complaining about noise by preventing them from building and living in places where there is noise to complain about.
A reverse sensitivity provision would protect your hypothetical bar, in the earlier example, by preventing the 200th apartment from being built. If that apartment is never built, a judge can never decide that it’s more cost-effective for you to install soundproofing – there aren’t enough neighbours to make the case for it. But the city winds up with fewer homes in places where people want to live.
And under that solution, Christchurch Airport has reason to try to stop apartments near the university. Even noise proofing requirements for apartments may not be enough when people can complain about noise they experience while outside.
Economist Thomas Sowell argued that, in a lot of cases, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
I do not have any great overall solution. But I have a few starting points.
Council could increase the threshold at which complaints about airport noise are entertained, for peripheral areas like the area around the university. Airport noise would be minor relative to general noise around student accommodations, so would not hit the threshold. But high average ongoing noise above the threshold could face a liability standard requiring compensation.
The combination of a reasonably high bar before anyone takes noise complaints seriously, and a liability standard above that threshold, can encourage better outcomes.
At the same time, councils could take advantage of central government’s push for ‘competitive urban land markets’. Central government wants councils to zone sufficient land for development that there are always ample development opportunities. When urban land markets are competitive, zoning does not create artificial scarcity.
Zoning a single ‘nightlife’ area with more liberal noise standards would be a disaster. It would mean precincts no longer compete with each other to be the place for a city’s nightlife. But having several areas where higher noise levels are tolerated, and others where it is not, offers residents and developers choice. People who love the nightlife could choose places with lots of it; those who don’t could make other choices.
Monitoring land prices over time could help signal where council has gotten the balance right. If downtown places with quiet-zoning enjoy a substantial price premium over others, council should probably zone for more of them. And vice-versa.
If it isn’t possible to zone for that much choice, Melbourne offers a different solution. There, an “agent of change” principle comes close to reinstating the older ‘coming to the nuisance’ doctrine, but applied only to live music venues. The cost of mitigating noise falls on whoever has made the change that requires it. If a new residential development moves next door to a music venue, the developer has to install soundproofing. If the venue is expanding, it has to mitigate its effects on neighbours. But zoning for plenty of choice would be preferable.
In a better world, we’d all be just a bit more tolerant of each other’s nuisances – or more willing to go and live in a hermit’s shack otherwise.
In the world as it is, the law entertains complaints about minor nuisances. Then, to avoid imposing undue burdens on critical infrastructure like airports, the law makes it harder to build housing in places that might experience those nuisances, even if developers provide every possible warning that buyers should beware.
There are no clean solutions. But there is probably room for improvement.
Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
The new apartments would be of obvious appeal to anyone wanting to live near the university, whether students or younger staff. The development is needed. For the 2026 school year, over 4000 students applied for under 3000 spaces in the University’s halls of residence.
Christchurch’s District Plan sets a wide ‘contour’ around the airport. Development within that area requires resource consent, with notification to the Airport. The airport does not have a formal veto over developments in the area, but objection can increase the cost of building things.
So why would the airport care about a residential development more than five kilometres away?
The Herald quotes the Airport’s spokesperson. The new development is within the airport’s ‘noise contour’. An additional 177 dwellings means more people who could complain about noise from the airport. Or, as the airport put it, the objection relates to the “reverse sensitivity implications associated with development of this nature.”
It sounds crazy. It may be hard to hear airplanes at all if you live in an apartment complex where many of the tenants are students.
The airport has been in place for a long time. It isn’t something you only discover if you hire a very thorough building inspector to investigate the property you’re thinking about buying. But that newcomers ‘came to the nuisance’ has not, on its own, been a common law defence for over a century.
And more people living in the area around the airport means more people who might object either to current airport operations or to any increase in airport noise.
As a solution, blocking people from moving to a potentially noisy place is absurd. But it deals with a real problem.
When apartment towers catering to wealthier older people go up near music venues, the new residents lodge noise complaints that attempt to run the place out of business. Even a single overly sensitive new neighbour can force existing venues to close.
It hardly seems right that people who knew about a ‘nuisance’ like a music venue when they bought a property, and potentially paid a lower price for it because of that nuisance, are able to kill the venue through noise complaints.
But the common law did away with ‘coming to the nuisance’ as a defence to these complaints for a reason. Taken strictly, a ‘coming to the nuisance’ doctrine would provide any first-mover with a property right over every one of its neighbours: the right to continue making noise that affects their properties, regardless of whether that were the best solution.
Let’s take a simple example. None of the figures here represent any realistic costs for soundproofing. They’re illustrative to show how the ‘right’ solution can change.
Suppose you owned a bar and had no neighbours. It would cost you $100,000 to install noise-proofing. But as there are no neighbours, there is no reason to worry about it.
Installing sound insulation in new apartments would cost $500 per unit. Without soundproofing, anyone moving next door would endure $1,000 in damages from your bar’s noise.
Whether it makes sense for the bar to install soundproofing, or for the new apartments to install insulation, depends on how many neighbours might show up. If less than 200 apartments go up, it’s more cost-effective for each apartment to install insulation. But insulation for 300 apartments would cost $150,000 – and it would only cost you $100,000 to make the bar less noisy.
So the problem can be solved if either the bar, or the apartments, install soundproofing.
An older-style ‘coming to the nuisance’ right to make noise would make it harder to get to the better solution as more people moved into the neighbourhood. In principle, the neighbours could chip in to pay the bar to stop making noise – but arranging that can be difficult. And some bar owners could be tempted to increase the amount of noise, in hope of encouraging neighbours to pay it to stop.
So it isn’t a great solution.
The solution we have instead isn’t great either.
‘Reverse sensitivity’ provisions in the RMA prevent more people from moving next to things that they might later complain about. So airports have to be notified about and can object to more intense development near them.
As pseudonymous twitter urban planner @nzsd points out, one part of the law allows people to complain about noise. But another part of the same law tries to stop people from complaining about noise by preventing them from building and living in places where there is noise to complain about.
A reverse sensitivity provision would protect your hypothetical bar, in the earlier example, by preventing the 200th apartment from being built. If that apartment is never built, a judge can never decide that it’s more cost-effective for you to install soundproofing – there aren’t enough neighbours to make the case for it. But the city winds up with fewer homes in places where people want to live.
And under that solution, Christchurch Airport has reason to try to stop apartments near the university. Even noise proofing requirements for apartments may not be enough when people can complain about noise they experience while outside.
Economist Thomas Sowell argued that, in a lot of cases, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.
I do not have any great overall solution. But I have a few starting points.
Council could increase the threshold at which complaints about airport noise are entertained, for peripheral areas like the area around the university. Airport noise would be minor relative to general noise around student accommodations, so would not hit the threshold. But high average ongoing noise above the threshold could face a liability standard requiring compensation.
The combination of a reasonably high bar before anyone takes noise complaints seriously, and a liability standard above that threshold, can encourage better outcomes.
At the same time, councils could take advantage of central government’s push for ‘competitive urban land markets’. Central government wants councils to zone sufficient land for development that there are always ample development opportunities. When urban land markets are competitive, zoning does not create artificial scarcity.
Zoning a single ‘nightlife’ area with more liberal noise standards would be a disaster. It would mean precincts no longer compete with each other to be the place for a city’s nightlife. But having several areas where higher noise levels are tolerated, and others where it is not, offers residents and developers choice. People who love the nightlife could choose places with lots of it; those who don’t could make other choices.
Monitoring land prices over time could help signal where council has gotten the balance right. If downtown places with quiet-zoning enjoy a substantial price premium over others, council should probably zone for more of them. And vice-versa.
If it isn’t possible to zone for that much choice, Melbourne offers a different solution. There, an “agent of change” principle comes close to reinstating the older ‘coming to the nuisance’ doctrine, but applied only to live music venues. The cost of mitigating noise falls on whoever has made the change that requires it. If a new residential development moves next door to a music venue, the developer has to install soundproofing. If the venue is expanding, it has to mitigate its effects on neighbours. But zoning for plenty of choice would be preferable.
In a better world, we’d all be just a bit more tolerant of each other’s nuisances – or more willing to go and live in a hermit’s shack otherwise.
In the world as it is, the law entertains complaints about minor nuisances. Then, to avoid imposing undue burdens on critical infrastructure like airports, the law makes it harder to build housing in places that might experience those nuisances, even if developers provide every possible warning that buyers should beware.
There are no clean solutions. But there is probably room for improvement.
Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was first published HERE
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