UDINZ
Urban Development Institute of New Zealand
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Opinions

 

18 October 2024

City & Regional Deals - Insights from offshore

The publication of the Coalition government’s much anticipated Regional Deals Strategic Framework was a welcome step forward, providing some certainty regarding how government intends to move ahead with this commitment.

There is a deep history of deal making overseas and real opportunities to get under the skin of overseas experience and consider what lessons they provide, and the extent to which these lessons are transferable to the New Zealand context.

The New Zealand experience will clearly be different. Our unique regulatory, policy and financial settings, along with our smaller scale and greater levels of centralisation, mean our local government sector has a narrower range of functions. In New Zealand, it is also important to consider Te Tiriti o Waitangi and how any Regional Deals uphold the principles of Te Tiriti.`

In this UDINZ Member Voice Article Patrick McVeigh, Technical Director-Economic Development Advisory from, Urban Development Institute of New Zealand UDINZ member, Beca focusses both on housing and the important connections between housing and the other initial priority objectives of Regional Deals.

Patrick recently delivered a webinar for us on the same topic and kindly agreed to distil his thoughts down into this article.

4 July 2024

Paying for Growth in the Water Sector

Urban Development Institute of New Zealand UDINZ seeks to elevate the voice and expertise of its members and has established a UDINZ Register of experts for when we get queries from the media on particular topics. We also maintain a UDINZ Resource Library which is a repository for reports and other published works our members have authored.

We also partner with members on articles and longer thought leadership pieces.

There is significant focus right now on the way as a nation we pay for infrastructure and much discussion on Development Contributions, Infrastructure Growth charges and mechanisms like Targeted rates - all of which also have some impact on projects being undertaken by the development community.

Earlier this year we asked Ilze Gotelli of member KPMG New Zealand to collaborate with us and prepare a white paper/report examining how we pay for growth both in a brownfields and greenfield context in the case of water infrastructure. This is particularly relevant as the Government is preparing further legislation for the water sector that will include a focus on financial sustainability for water services and on funding and financing tools.

Ilze has some practical experience of dealing with such mechanisms over the course of her career and has remained abreast of developments in other jurisdictions. She and her fellow contributing authors Joey Shannon (KPMG New Zealand) and Cato Jorgensen (KPMG Australia) have worked with our CEO to pull together a report that examines the problem, outlines difficulties and inconsistencies and some potential solutions as well as poses some questions that need to be answered as we move to provide for growth in our towns and cities across Aotearoa.

30 May 2024

“Frozen Land” and the NPS HPL: Can a landowner speed up the process?

The tension between urban land use expansion and protection of rural productive land is well known.

The ‘cure’ put in place by the previous Government was the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land 2022 (NPS HPL). However, the ‘cure’ isn’t a quick one and in the meantime, whilst Regional and Unitary Councils make up the medicine, urban land use extension may well be frozen by the interim definitions imposed.

Recent decisions have identified how the interim definitions are to be interpreted and importantly make clear that whether land is Highly Productive Land (HPL) is effectively ‘frozen’ at the point the NPS HPL commenced, 17 October 2022.

The current Government has plans to modify the cure and, although these may be implemented soon, the ‘freeze’ is likely to remain in place for a while longer.

Todays opinion piece, by guest contributor Barbara Mead of Tompkins Wake, discusses those decisions, a little background on the ill the cure intended to address and the changes yet to come.

#whereindustryandinsightmeet #NPSHPL

22 March 2024

World Water Day 2024

For World Water Day 2024 we asked Iain White, Professor of Environmental Planning at the University of Waikato, for his thoughts on an issue water-related that in his opinion would make a difference to our future cities and towns.

Iain has been working closely with Graham Haughton, Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning at The University of Manchester. Graham's research interests include sustainable urban development, urban regeneration, regional development, and water.

Iain and Graham have penned an article for us on their thoughts on the importance of increasing permeability within our cities.

They highlight the challenge is to move beyond discussing how to manage flooding and embed the various flood reduction practices that we know are effective in national and city-scale policies. They argue what is lacking is not ideas, but a clear strategic approach to application, funding and targets. They propose a 10% target for increased urban permeability to help prevent flooding, reduce the number of homes at risk, and help our insurance and drainage systems to cope with more extreme weather patterns.

#WorldWaterDay2024 #urbanpermeability #publicdomain #privatedomain

7 March 2024

The Challenges and Opportunities of Build to Rent Housing

The coalition Government confirmed yesterday it will make changes to the Overseas Investment Act 2005 to better support Build to Rent housing developments by making it easier for overseas investors to invest in that asset class in New Zealand.
 
We asked Malcolm McCracken and Joey Shannon from Urban Development Institute of New Zealand UDINZ member KPMG New Zealand to give us their thoughts on the challenges and opportunities presented by the emerging build to rent typology. 
 
#whereIndustryandInsightmeet
#buildtorent #MemberVoice 
#privatecapital

16 OCTOBER 2023

NZ General Election Member voice series

We’ve been publishing a series of Member Voice opinion pieces (thought leadership pieces from Individuals within our membership) in the lead up to the 2023 General Election. They were thoughts on various policy announcement, predictions on outcomes or advice to an incoming government.  There are ten in total and they can be accessed here:

8 March 2023

Everyday life: a lens to better shape urban form

By Belen Iturralde

Imagine a city seriously capable of looking after its inhabitants. One that allows them to build meaningful relationships and care for each other. A city that supports equitable living arrangements, where the physical environment encourages co-responsibility, and does not exclude people or put them in boxes. The ideal is an urban planning culture that acknowledges the interconnectedness of life and designs cities that support all spheres of activities, without bowing to the commodified ones. A place where democratic policymaking creates room for a plurality of voices and stories to shine through.

2 February 2023

When is wet land a wetland?

By Natasha Garvan, Bell Gully

Wetlands have been a source of much angst in recent years. In 2020 the Government prohibited most development within natural wetlands – wetlands that weren’t constructed, created by geothermal activity or subject to pasture improvement. Left broadly defined, what constitutes a natural wetland has since been hotly debated in court and caused uncertainty for those who develop or use the land.

3 December 2021

A Better view

By Ian Pike, courtesy of Build magazine 187, BRANZ

In 2020, theUrban Development Institute of New Zealand (UDINZ) collaborated with the Greater Christchurch Partnership to understand what Greater Christchurch could look like in 30 years.

11 June 2021

Thinking. Density done well

By Haylea Muir, Isthmus

More homes are needed in all corners of Aotearoa. Isthmus Principal Haylea Muir argues that housing density is something that we need to embrace even in our smaller towns and cities and offers 10 tips on how to embrace this change.

26 January 2021

Sleepyhead’s dream answer to the housing crisis

By Jonathan Milne

Sleepyhead is chopping and changing its ambitious plan to build a super-factory and a community of 1100 medium density houses on a block of farmland in the north Waikato.

16 DecEMBER 2020

We all want the same thing so why the disconnect?

By Penny Pirrit

Look at any growth council’s planning documents, any residential/mixed use developer’s glossy brochures and a range of urban development websites – when it comes what we want our urban areas to be they all say very similar things – well designed, robust urban areas that are healthy, sustainable, accessible, affordable, linked to public transport, cycling and walking and well serviced by both hard (3 waters pipes, roads) and soft (parks, recreational facilities) infrastructure. In a nutshell we all want great neighbourhoods and great communities, so what is stopping us working better together to achieve that outcome?

9 NOVEMBER 2020

Where we went wrong: calculating the costs of development mistakes

By Jasnish Gujral

The newly completed Alfred Residences at 93 Alfred Street Onehunga were developed by Nest or Invest Developments in 2020, a feat considering Covid and all the restraints and issues that came with the lockdowns and the global supply chain issues.

30 OCTOBER 2020

UDINZ applauds Government’s urban development policy statement and proposed RMA reforms

The new Government’s is expected to push fast-forward on its recently released National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS) and proposed RMA reform agenda. This can only be a good thing for New Zealand’s cities, urban development and our communities, according to the newly formed Urban Development Institute of New Zealand (UDINZ). The NPS came into force on 20 August 2020.

03 september 2020

Frankie - Industrious Property Software

Interview with Georgie Fenwicke

UDINZ board member Andrew Crosby talks to Georgie Fenwicke, CEO of TellFrankie.com about her ‘guardianship’ software to reduce lifetime costs and make life easier for those managing properties.

 28 July 2020

How did your neighborhood rate during Covid-19?

By Ian Pike

UDINZ Chief Executive Ian Pike took to the streets of his neighbourhood Lower Hutt during lockdown to find out what makes for a liveable neighbourhood. A place he describes as sometimes ‘wrongly’ maligned as a poor cousin to its more cosmopolitan big brother, he undertook his own urban design analysis to find out the good and the not so good of his neighbourhood’s public realm.

25 May 2020

Reimagining New Zealand’s urban centres post-COVID

By Lisa Hinton

Six forces are converging in a post-COVID New Zealand that will fundamentally change our urban centres. Left unchecked, these forces could add untenanted building stock and distressed landlords to the now age-old housing affordability problem afflicting our younger generations.

But with development industry foresight — and councils and Government helping to front-foot — an alternate reality could see the rise of building stock repurposed as mixed-use vertical communities, creating new models of sustainable urban living…

May 2020

COVID-19 - Where to from here for UDINZ?

By Fran Wilde, Chair UDINZ

As a newly minted membership organisation still in the early stages of recruitment, we don’t have the resource to be able to provide you with in-depth analysis of what’s happening at present. Many others are doing that and we hope you are connected with them.  We have instead been focusing on thinking about what happens after the lockdown. How relevant will UDINZ be?  

Our organisational purpose is “to be the champion for great urban development, providing a platform for collaboration in order to achieve resilient, affordable, healthy and sustainable communities for all New Zealanders”. How do we best realise that ambition in the post-Covid-19 environment?