Phil McDermott: The Bed Tax is a Bad Tax

Auckland Council has introduced a tax on properties providing online accommodation services by way of a targeted rate. This a bad tax and a bad precedent. If we think about it, the only rationale must be to raise more revenue to reduce the Council’s fiscal risk (more on that below), and to protect the accommodation sector. 

Distorting the tax system

New Zealand has a simple tax system based on general income and consumption taxes and property rates. Government has long resisted targeted taxes. Yet that is precisely what this new rate is - a bed tax. It is aimed at households supplementing their income through renting spare capacity. But the income raised in this way is already subject to income tax –Airbnb and other the peer-to-peer platforms ensure that the income earned is transparent.

Phil McDermott: Auckland facing Hobson’s Choice - Expansion or Implosion?

Choosing Auckland

In 1840, the first New Zealand Governor, William Hobson, sailed into Waitemata Harbour and chose Auckland as the country’s new capital.  The harbour offered ease of embarkation and disembarkation.  Fertile coastal lands meant that settlers could grow food crops, and the local tribe, Ngati Whatua, welcomed the promise of protection and trade that European settlement offered.

Auckland’s early fortunes fluctuated.  The city could only be reached by sea from other parts of New Zealand.  It was on an isthmus divided by two harbours, crossed by flood-prone creeks and peppered with swamps.  In addition, tribes to the south resisted the sale and alienation of their fertile Waikato lands, stalling expansion of European settlement until the late 1860s. 

Phil McDermott: Breaking Through and Moving on: Beginnings of a New Plan for Auckland

The Break Through
After years of pushing the compact city fallacy and ignoring the obvious approach to solving Auckland’s particular growth problems, the city and its planners have at last begun to water down their dearly held but doomed compact city plan.  

The New Zealand Herald revealed that “the council's planning committee will consider a report to allow for 120,000 new homes at six main locations in the north, north-west and south of the city.” A range of smaller rural settlements has also been identified for further development, spread over 130km from north to south. 

Phil McDermott: Back to Basics: Planning, Housing Markets, and the Cost of Ignoring Economics

Acknowledging the impact of planning on housing

At last, economists, commentators and the media in New Zealand are recognising what has been evident in many countries since late in the 20^th century; that plans to contain city growth in urban boundaries betray the hopes of large and growing numbers of urban dwellers and job seekers.

In Auckland, an independent panel has modified the proposed Unitary Plan to allow more dwellings.  But it is too little, too late; so Auckland remains consigned to increasing social division fashioned around a new poverty, a poverty rooted in the failure of the housing market.

Phil McDermott: Planning to Fail - Wrong Assumptions, Wrong Policies

This article was first published on Phil's Cities Matter blog on Friday, November 27, 2015

A Complex and Contested Plan

Deficiencies in the vision for a compact city promoted in the Auckland Plan are apparent in the contested nature of the statutory document intended to implement it.  The Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP) has attracted 13,000 submissions and is subject to extensive hearings by an independent panel.

Phil McDermott: Just Another Stake in the Sand - Planning, Demographics, and Uncertainty

Another million or another myth?

The Mayor, Len Brown, reiterated the Council view that Auckland is facing an increase of around one million people over the next 30 years, and that planning for this level of growth is the prudent thing to do.  I cannot be so sure. 

The Mayor is pretty bullish about growth, though.  He even claimed that “our actual rate of population growth has been well above the highest projection” since 1999. 

Phil McDermott: The Unravelling of the Auckland Plan

Getting the housing equation wrong
The failure of the Auckland Plan to reflect the simple aspirations of Aucklanders for home ownership and predominantly low-rise suburban lifestyles and promote instead the lofty compact city vision held by its planners and policy-makers made its unravelling inevitable.  And now it’s started. Rationing land to squeeze the city upward was always going to create problems.

Phil McDermott: Upping the Ante - Where can we Afford to Live?

Auckland fiddles, Sydney makes its move

The Auckland Council has released a Housing Action Plan that will be an addendum to its encyclopaedic Draft Unitary Plan.  It contains seven objectives, 12 priority areas, and 32 actions.  The Housing Action Plan will now be subject to the submissions and appeal process  associated with the Unitary Plan, whatever form it takes, and presumably also subject to the red tape associated with trying to implement it.

Phil McDermott: Out Might Just be Better than Up - the Housing Density Debate is Not Over

The fall-back position - let's not be LA

New Minister of Housing Dr Nick Smith is determined to “smash the city limits”, so that Auckland grows out, as well as up.  The Mayor of Auckland responded with the claim that allowing the city to expand outward is tantamount to advocating a “flawed Los Angeles model of suburban sprawl and unbridled land availability", and that it would be a throwback to the 1940s and 1950s.

Phil McDermott: Congestion, Density, and Transit– Have we got the mix all wrong?

The compact city/transit answer to the urban sustainability question

Expensive – and usually loss-making – public transit is enjoying a resurgence in the face of uncertainty over the supply and price of oil, concerns about the proliferation of private vehicles and greenhouse gas emissions, and  questions over the sustainability of our cities.

Phil McDermott: Redesigning a City - Planning an Affordable Future for Auckland

At last some urgency ... The Government has responded to the analysis of housing affordability by largely adopting the multifaceted approach proposed by the New Zealand Productivity Commission.

My interest is in what it says about boosting the supply of houses, a necessary but not sufficient condition to improve affordability and sustain the liveability of our two largest cities.  The government response acknowledges the urgent need to boost dwelling numbers in Auckland and Christchurch, and to do so by providing for sufficient brownfield and greenfield land accessible to the market in a regulatory environment that no longer unduly impedes development. 

Phil McDermott: The Answer Is Urban Consolidation – What Was The Question?

Perpetuating the Myth

The Green Party is perpetuating the claim that development beyond Auckland’s “city limits” imposes a high cost on ratepayers.  A spokesperson claims that the current Auckland plan which allows for some new development outside the current urban area, “will cost ratepayers $42b billion to 2042, an annual levy of $200 per ratepayer”  according to a report in the New Zealand Herald.   

But is just so happens that  study on which these calculations are based is a flawed commissioned report rather than a peer reviewed academic study.[1] 

Phil McDermott: Irresponsible inner city behaviour

The latest in urban design - new public spaces for the dispossessed

In my last blog I raised the question of whether purchasing land for a possible rail link through the city would reduce the attractiveness of the inner city living by laying waste to a corridor cutting through it – shades of the motorway madness of the 1950s and 60s.  I suggested that this will increase the anti-social behaviour after dark that so worries CBD residents and visitors.

So it was interesting to see in the New Zealand Herald today the concern over the use of vacant city sites as places of refuge for people deemed anti-social and particularly as sites for binge drinking.

Phil McDermott: From Connection to Dispersal - urbanisation in the 21st Century

Trade, transport and city growth: Commentators have long studied connections between cities and how these influence their development.  The city is the natural focus of trade-based theories of growth.  Exporting a surplus, based on local resources and specialisation was – and is – considered the way  to city wealth.

In this world, transport is the key to the trade portal.  The cities that dominated world trade in the 19^th and 20^th centuries were those best connected, initially through their ports and sea links complemented later through strong ties over the airways.  Mega-ports and airport hubs were  marks of city success.

This blog raises the possibility that this model is changing, and we need to change our thinking about the future  of our cities with it.

Phil McDermott: Rethink the Link ...should Auckland pour money into a hole in the ground

Anchoring the CBD, or Sinking it?
A cornerstone of the Draft Auckland Plan is implementing an underground inner city rail link.  At an estimated $2.3bn this is the single most expensive new commitment in the plan, and accounts for around 15% of capital spending identified. This seems a big price to pay to transform what is already a perfectly functional CBD with adequate and improving public transport (PT) arrangements. And unless it makes a substantial difference, it could become a major fiscal anchor on Auckland’s development.  This posting considers the prospects.

Why?
So why do we need the inner city rail link?

Phil McDermott: Getting past the words

The Draft Auckland Plan is a daunting document – both in ambition and in presentation.  It covers a range of fields.  In what started out as a spatial planning exercise, Auckland Council boldly sets thirty year priorities for central government in areas like transport, health, and education; spells out what industry might do and how it might perform;  and promulgates its own long-term agenda in the areas of land use, urban design, and infrastructure.

So when we get past the vision, the photos, the charts, the the strategies, the principles, and directives, what does it all boil down to?