Comments on: The idiocy of ‘keeping your powder dry’

By: Clunking Fist

Clunking Fist — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:06:26 +0000

interesting looking new book:
“ROBERT DALZIEL, a London-based architect, has always considered contemporary housing in Britain to be deficient. After years spent researching urban housing around the world with Sheila Qureshi-Cortale, a fellow architect, the pair collected their findings in a book. “A House in the City” evaluates the various examples, new and old, high-rise and low.”
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/01/qa-robert-dalziel?fsrc=nlw|newe|1-14-2013|4609454|37405293|

By: Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 04:36:54 +0000

Dan
1. Employment in the farming sector has been shrinking for, like, ever. That’s one of the main drivers of urban drift, people wanting a job, going to a city, and getting one.
2. Bigger cities don’t pollute more *per head* unless they become industrial centers. Even then, since our farming is highly industrialized, they’ve got one hell of a long way to go before they catch up with the pollution created by the farming sector.
3. Cities are “sustainable”. Many have been around for thousands of years. They’re designed to minimize resource utilization in the delivery of things humans want, which is their very reason for existing. Even in farming communities, people made villages for a reason. They didn’t want to walk 10 miles every time they wanted to see the blacksmith, or buy some crops off someone else.

In other words, you’ve got everything exactly backwards.

By: Gregor W

Gregor W — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:54:55 +0000

Globally, people are sort of moving towards an agrarian society,.. ...or in fact, completely the opposite. "Since the world is projected to continue to urbanize, 60 per cent of the global population is expected to live in cities by 2030." Thanks UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:44:15 +0000

Globally, people are sort of moving towards an agrarian society, and as NZ has been one of the greatest farming nations on earth since the 1800′s, I can’t see why spending money on building houses in our largest city will:
1. Create employment, which is really the problem beneath it all
2. Reduce pollution, another major problem at the moment, globally speaking, and of course will affect us more if we go in the big city direction
3. Be sustainable. Jobs in cities do not generally involve farming, forestry, fishing, etc, so what happens when the global economy does not recover in a steady steep way? Are we going to be building houses for pride, or for sensibility, because sensibility isn’t really reflected in these plans.

By: Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:00:53 +0000

>There is a serious lack of these kinds of options in Auckland. I would trade in our lawns and the weekly mowing for a 1/16th share in a swimming pool in a heartbeat!

Totally. Moving from village life to city life isn’t all loss. We should have both options here, with a smooth gradation between. ‘Burbs might appeal for a while, with young children, but that’s not my whole life, indeed it’s not going to be much longer at all.

By: Richard29

Richard29 — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 00:31:05 +0000

@Strypey 12:59 am

I’m pretty sure that most of the people on 400, 800 and 1000 m2 sections are not growing their own food on that land.

@Ron
“I actually don’t know anyone that would prefer to live in so called vertical housing that Auckland so dearly wants to promote. Give me a standalone house on its own section any time. I want my own garden and trees”

Each to their own. We currently own a 3bdrm home on a 400m section on the North Shore in Glenfield but are keen to upgrade to a nice townhouse or low rise apartment in suburb close to shops or beach. When we visited our family in Sydney they had a nice place in a block of 16 apartments (4 storeys). There is a serious lack of these kinds of options in Auckland. I would trade in our lawns and the weekly mowing for a 1/16th share in a swimming pool in a heartbeat!

I think the banks lending policies are a big problem for this kind of development. From a supply side – Individuals don’t build apartment blocks it tends to be consortiums and the savings pool is not big so it tends to be borrowed money – the banks stopped lending large amounts to property developments back in 2008 with the financial crisis when they got burned. From a demand side – It’s harder for first home buyers to buy apartments because the banks demand a higher deposit (the risk of a price drop is higher because there is no land) but this has the effect of bidding up land values and incentivising people into low density.
Government could definitely act as a circuit breaker for this vicious cycle – If Kiwibuild was mostly focussed around small blocks of quality terraced housing and low rise apartments it’d be a great success.

By: Strypey

Strypey — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 11:59:58 +0000

Different people have different needs, and sometimes the same person has different needs at different times of life. It’s good for large cities to have a range of densities available, from high-rise apartments and terraced houses to quarter acre sections and lifestyle blocks. High-density living only seems to have a lower land footprint if you ignore that the people living there also require land elsewhere to to produce the food, fibre, and other products they consume, and increasingly in the future, land to grow the fuel to get it to them.

By: garethw

garethw — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 07:20:09 +0000

“our rates in Auckland went up because National and ACT (and Labour originally) imposed a ‘Supercity’ merger, so the South Akld folks are now paying more in rates to cover the huge debt the north and west brought to the party, and the backlog of maintenance Remuera didn’t spend on their sewers because they wanted low rates.”

You’re talking about small changes at the margins. I’m talking about the logically high rate bills we all face when we demand low-density, wide-sprawl property. Infrastructure (of all kinds) has to be built over larger scales divided over few people. If you want to pay that, for your single house/plot of land lifestyle then fair enough, but don’t complain when you have to…

By: kahikatea

kahikatea — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 01:07:53 +0000

“We seem to be at only the early stages of the necessary generational tipping point where home ownership of a terraced house or unit becomes acceptable. Every other “big” city in the world went through this decades ago”

Dunedin went through this in the 1870s, and seemed to slip back over the next 50 years.

By: Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 23:06:47 +0000

http://www.greens.org.nz/policy/full
http://www.national.org.nz/policy.aspx
http://www.labour.org.nz/content/labour-policy

Keir, could you direct me to where I could peruse Labour’s policy? The link is a fucking joke, I felt like I’d been spam linked into a circle jerk. As for the Greens, there’s a shitload more than 5 things there. And National seem to have got their act together since the last election, where their policy page had the equivalent of “no comment” under most of the headings.

I don’t know about “communicating policy” because I personally prefer to see something calling itself policy listed out, rather than released in a dripfeed of bumbling soundbites, followed up by talking heads discussing them. I wasn’t talking about that process, it’s something I scarcely notice since I don’t watch TV news much.