17.1. The management of Auckland’s city centre and waterfront area is not just a local issue but one of regional and national importance. As indicated in previous chapters, the Commission considers that the proposed Auckland Council should have a special governance responsibility for the Auckland city centre and the waterfront area (comprising the area shown in Figure 17.1 and described in Chapter 18, “Boundaries”),1 to reflect its regional and national significance.
17.2. Specifically, the Commission considers that the Auckland Council should establish a committee to make policy regarding the city centre and waterfront area, particularly in relation to development, urban design, urban management, and planning.
17.3. The Commission recommends that there be a community board for the city centre and waterfront, with powers delegated to it by the Auckland Council.
17.4. The Commission also recommends that any future development of the waterfront area and its interface with the city centre be carried out by a city centre and waterfront development agency with the capacity to design and implement a “master plan” for the area, as opposed to the piecemeal approach taken to date, and to foster collaboration between multiple stakeholders in the area.
17.5. In this chapter, the Commission discusses the above arrangements for the city centre and waterfront area, and sets out the reasons why the Commission believes that they are desirable.
17.6. Over the past 20 years, city centres have been a major focus of cities seeking to improve their international competitiveness and attractiveness, as the role of dense and successful city centres in wider regional and national growth has become clear.
17.7. In most developed countries of the world, Governments have realised that the era of “out of town” retail centres and office parks to support sprawling populations and car dependency is an unsatisfactory model for long-term economic, social, and environmental success. It has tended to undermine city centres, directly reducing the value of existing assets and sunk investments2.
17.8. Thus, wherever major cities have gone through successful governance reform, close attention has been paid to the role of city centres. Examples include Johannesburg and Cape Town, which moved to larger metropolitan unitary authorities and immediately started to implement better city-centre management activities, including safety and sanitation, urban regeneration, improved marketing, and enhanced visitor experiences. Similar changes can also be seen in London as a result of governance reform (these changes have encouraged new business improvement districts in the city centre), in Melbourne as a result of new regional strategy, and in New York as a result of concern about business flight and disinvestment. In Toronto, the failure to address city-centre management effectively has been a weakness of reforms undertaken in 1998, and is only now being addressed over 10 years later.
17.9. In the cities visited by the Commission (that is, Brisbane, Melbourne, Vancouver, Seattle, Toronto, and London), the dominance of the city centres was very apparent. Although the Commission did not visit Sydney, the members of the Commission (and no doubt many readers of this report) are familiar with that city. Again, there is no question that the centre of Sydney is the dominant part of the greater metropolitan area.
17.10. In many respects Auckland’s city centre and waterfront area is also the dominant part of the region, despite Auckland’s more polycentric structure. It is the focus of its education sector, and of its professional, financial, business, entertainment, and creative activities.3 Many of the region’s key institutions, such as libraries, universities, galleries, courts, theatres, hospitals, hotels, and large businesses, are concentrated in this area.4 Increasingly, it is also being recognised as a desirable location in which to live, if the quality of city centre life can be enhanced.
17.11. Importantly, Auckland’s city centre and waterfront area is the focus for visitors to the region. Typically, it is one of visitors’ first impressions of the city (and, for international visitors, of New Zealand) and it has an important role to play as Auckland’s “shop window” and the source of enduring memories of New Zealand.
17.12. The significant sunk investments in a wide range of infrastructures, amenities, and facilities that the city centre houses means that there is a financial incentive for government and the private sector to support the city centre to make use of existing investments, and where possible to enhance and augment them.
17.13. The importance of Auckland’s city centre is widely recognised. In the International Review of Auckland Metro-Region prepared for the Metro Auckland Project Team in 2006, the city centre was described as the essential core or heart of any city region.5 The report had this to say:
“Places have an impact on our sense of self, our sense of safety, the kind of work we get done, the ways we interact with other people, and even our ability to function as citizens in a democracy. In short, the places where we spend time affect the people we are and can become.” There are five ‘senses’ that have been identified over the past decade as having a considerable impact on place and thus on the economic health of cities. Put differently, “making a space great is a pre-requisite to the economics of the area!”
- A sense of place – the need to differentiate and express the particularity of one’s city
- A sense of identity – cultural and physical attributes are critical to differentiation
- A sense of evolution – the physical fabric of a city must reflect its functional, cultural aesthetic and historical evolution
- A sense of ownership – a good city is one that teaches citizenship in the deepest sense of the word, and such cities are not only teachers but are themselves always learning how to be better places
- A sense of community – an acknowledgement of the obligations to and interconnectedness with all the residents
Inner Cities or CBDs have the ability to capture all of these senses while ensuring that the ‘sense of place’ which is created remains unique and rooted in the local culture. Auckland’s City Centre must seek to foster these senses through the creation of ‘place’ within the Region.6
17.14. It has been said that if New Zealand is to prosper Auckland must prosper. The Commission believes it is equally true that if Auckland is to prosper, the city centre and waterfront area must prosper.
17.15. The fact that Auckland’s city centre has developed around a beautiful harbour gives it an immediate advantage, but the potential to showcase the harbour’s natural beauty, and the functional and amenity values it offers, has not yet been realised fully.
17.16. The Commission believes that the interface between the city centre and the waterfront is one of the most important issues facing Auckland, and it has been emphasised in other parts of this report (for example Chapter 8, “Environment, Urban Design, and Heritage”).
17.17. It is essential that any development of the city centre and the waterfront be carried out in an integrated, joint manner. The international review referred to above observed,
The CBD and Waterfront are critical to the success of New Zealand and the whole Auckland region. Existing efforts and interventions aimed at revitalisation should be redoubled and the scope of support should be enlarged to make this an important national and regional project. The progress of the CBD and the Waterfront should be undertaken in tandem as a single project.7
17.18. In particular, it will be important to maximise the linkages between the two areas, to ensure better connectivity and complementarity, and to avoid potential competition between them. At present, pedestrians in Auckland’s city centre are cut off from the waterfront both physically and visually. Integrated “master planning” for the waterfront and its relationship with the city centre has proved difficult as a result of the different ownership and other interests involved, and the competing priorities of different stakeholders. The waterfront’s largest landowner is the Auckland Regional Council, through its ownership interest in Auckland Regional Holdings and Ports of Auckland. Auckland City Council owns Westhaven Marina (which it acquired with central government assistance), and it also owns or leases other smaller areas along the water’s edge. Auckland City Council also controls most of the land-based access points to the waterfront. Private entities have ownership interests in key areas of land adjacent to Fanshawe Street stretching down to Britomart.
17.19. There is no overarching governance model for the waterfront, no “master plan”, and no combined delivery model. Voluntary cooperation has resulted in some progress (for example, the America’s Cup Village and planning for the Wynyard Quarter), but voluntary arrangements are subject to obvious limitations and may prove unworkable in the long term. They are also not up to the scale of the task required in terms of urban redevelopment and urban management.
17.20. In more general terms, it is appropriate to stress the importance of the linkages between the city centre and waterfront to the rest of Auckland and indeed New Zealand. The linkages to the airport between the port and the rail and highway system, and the linkages between the city centre and the rest of Auckland, are all vitally important if the area is to thrive. These connections and linkages are essential for an effective commercial platform, for better commuter experiences, and for productive supply chains. Better connectivity will reduce congestion as Auckland grows and allow city centre living to continue to develop.
17.21. As noted in Chapter 8, the Commission believes that it is not going too far to say that a successful master plan approach to the waterfront and city centre, and the linkages with the city as a whole, is crucial to the success of the Government’s objectives for Auckland and to the success of the city itself. A master plan should be the framework for enhanced public and private investment and better management of existing amenities and assets.
17.22. The Commission recommends that there be a committee of the Auckland Council to be known as the City Centre and Waterfront Committee. The Commission envisages that in order to signal the strategic importance of this committee, it will be chaired by the Mayor and will have as one of its voting members the Chair of the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board (see below). It will co-opt to its membership representatives of the business, education, cultural, and not-for-profit sectors.
17.23. The Commission recommends that the Establishment Board for the Auckland Council prepare draft terms of reference for the City Centre and Waterfront Committee for early consideration and adoption by the Auckland Council. The functions of the City Centre and Waterfront Committee will include the development of policy in relation to the city centre and waterfront, particularly in relation to development, urban design, and planning, and the oversight of a city centre and waterfront development agency (see below). Any policy developed by the City Centre and Waterfront Committee would be subject to approval from the full Auckland Council.
17.24. The cities visited by the Commission and the advice that it has received from international experts (in particular Greg Clark, the leader of the international review referred to earlier8) suggest it is essential that Auckland’s city centre should have a broad mixture of uses and a balanced community. It must be a place that is attractive for families to live in and will therefore need to provide a full range of facilities for all sections of the community. To some extent these facilities already exist. There are primary and secondary schools either within, or just outside, the defined central city area and there is a wide range of shopping opportunities. The area must be made attractive for pedestrians. Ongoing attention will need to be given to parks, even if they are relatively small areas. Open space is essential for sustainable urban life, and can compensate for other factors such as traffic congestion, noise, and pollution, which detract from liveability.9 The open space of the harbour is a valuable asset for the future development of the city centre, but it is not enough. The creation and development of other open spaces is of vital importance as the population of the city increases. Much excellent work on the urban design of the city centre has already been undertaken by the Auckland City Council, and this can be adopted and built on by the committee.
17.25. Auckland’s population is predicted to rise substantially in the coming decades,10 and the Commission anticipates that the City Centre and Waterfront Committee will have as a priority the intensification of the population of the whole city centre area. This process, referred to as “densification”, and can be carried out in a sustainable, planned manner. It includes building high-rise buildings such as apartment blocks, as well as low-rise buildings that are more compact than houses and built closer together. Such planned development achieves the goals of being socially and environmentally sustainable, as well as preserving communities and public spaces. All these are issues that the Commission would expect to be reflected in the policy developed by the committee.
17.26. The City Centre and Waterfront Committee may also wish to consider investment mechanisms for the city centre area. These could include joint ventures with the business community, a city improvement district for rating purposes, or an additional rate levied on a negotiated basis for particular parts of the area and met, dollar for dollar, by the ratepayers in that area, to be used for agreed improvement purposes. Such mechanisms have proved to be very important in raising the investment rate in, and performance of, city centres across the world.
17.27. The likely functions of the City Centre and Waterfront Committee are set out in Box 17.1.
17.28. The Commission also recommends that there be a community board with specific responsibility for undertaking the day-to-day management of the city centre and waterfront area in the same way as local councils do in other areas. More than 35,000 people live in the city centre,11 and the number of city centre residents has increased exponentially.12 Those residents will require the full range of services expected in urban areas.
17.29. According to a policy document prepared by the present Auckland City Council,
The CBD needs to provide sufficient social and community infrastructure to meet the needs of the changing resident population, which includes the increasing number of families with preschool and school-aged children.13
Box 17.1 Functions of City Centre and Waterfront Committee
The City Centre and Waterfront Committee would undertake the following functions:
17.30. The Auckland City Centre and Waterfront Community Board should have a strong focus on delivering local municipal services and solving local problems, including monitoring and addressing small-scale “nuisance factors” such as petty crime, inadequate street lighting, inefficient waste collection, street cleaning, and noise issues.
17.31. The City Centre and Waterfront Community Board will also make recommendations on policy matters to the City Centre and Waterfront Committee of the Auckland Council, and will act as an advocate for the interests of the area.
17.32. Because of the importance of the city centre and waterfront area to the whole of Auckland, however, the Commission recommends that it be subject to much greater oversight by the Auckland Council than is proposed for the local councils. The Commission recommends, therefore, that all the powers of the community board should be delegated to it by the Auckland Council. The City Centre and Waterfront Community Board will not have the statutory powers that are proposed for the other local councils. However, the Commission expects that the Auckland Council would use those statutory powers as a starting point when considering the powers that should be delegated to the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board. It is important, as is emphasised elsewhere in this report, that the Auckland Council does not become involved in issues that are best handled at the local level. This principle applies as much to the community board as to the local councils, subject only to the need to ensure that what happens in the area is in complete accord with the policies developed by the City Centre and Waterfront Committee. In particular, the Commission would expect that the latter committee would retain a detailed oversight of resource management planning decisions.
17.33. The likely functions of the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board are set out in Box 17.2.
17.34. The Commission recommends that members of the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board should be elected at large. If election at large results in sections of the community not achieving representation, consideration could be given to dividing the area into wards at some future date. The area is, however, quite small in geographical terms and has a current population of under 40,000, so at this stage election at large would seem appropriate. The Commission recommends that there be six members of the board who will, after the election, appoint one of their number as chair.
17.35. As noted in paragraph 17.22, the chair of this community board would also be a voting member of the City Centre and Waterfront Committee. On a population basis, the area will have considerably greater representation than the rest of urban Auckland. The justification for this is
17.36. Many harbour cities around the world have recognised that their city centre and waterfront areas are strategic assets which are at the core of shaping and demonstrating quality urban design. Some cities have formed dedicated organisations to provide urban design and development leadership for waterfront revitalisation. For example, Melbourne has a regional urban development authority called VicUrban, which has undertaken the Docklands redevelopment, among other projects. The functions of VicUrban are very wide, and it has the power to
17.37. Similarly, in Chapter 8, reference is made to the joint venture company formed to undertake the redevelopment of the waterfront in Toronto. That joint venture consists of the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario, and the City of Toronto, which have joined forces to fund and manage an integrated master plan approach for the renewal of that city’s waterfront.
Box 17.2 Functions of City Centre and Waterfront Community BoardWithin the terms of the policy set by City Centre and Waterfront Committee, the functions of the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board would be
17.38. The Commission recommends the establishment of a stand-alone development agency for the Auckland waterfront and its interface with the city centre.
17.39. The way in which this agency is to be governed and managed will be influenced by the nature of the parties involved. For example, it may comprise a joint venture between central government and Auckland Council. Alternatively, it could be operated as a council organisation managed by Auckland Council through the City Centre and Waterfront Committee. Whatever its constitution, it will be essential that it works with the proposed regional economic economic development agency to ensure common objectives.
17.40. Whichever model is adopted, the key issue is the establishment of a comprehensive development plan for the whole of the waterfront (even if as a matter of practical necessity actual development will be carried out location by location). The Commission recommends that the city centre and waterfront development agency take over the work currently undertaken by Sea + City Projects Limited, which has been set up to supervise development in the Wynyard Quarter. Its brief should encompass the whole of the waterfront area from Fergusson Wharf to the Westhaven Marina including redevelopment of the Wynyard Quarter.
17.41. In Chapter 8 the Commission recommends the formation of an Urban Design Panel to review all major development throughout the Auckland region. It will have a major part to play in reviewing the work undertaken by the development agency.
17.42. The international review referred to previously in this chapter emphasised the importance of ensuring that waterfront development is not carried out in isolation from the city centre, airport, and transport links and all other infrastructure and economic developments.15 It will be important that the composition of the agency reflects such concerns.
17.43. The same review also provided guidance regarding the nature of the development itself:
Waterfront developments have proved to have major economic benefits for many cities and the further development of the Auckland waterfront is strongly supported. However, a few words of caution:
- Firstly, more attention must be paid to integrating the waterfront development with the city.
- Secondly, the waterfront mustn’t be allowed to become divisive in that it is perceived to only be catering for high-income residents and visitors. It can be a strong social integrator and provide employment opportunities for all levels.
- Thirdly, there appears to be very little commercial/retail activity within the waterfront development other than restaurants. Really successful waterfronts – Sydney, Cape Town, Baltimore, Vancouver – are characterised by a great deal of seven-day a week activity that comes from a balance and blend of cultural,
- sporting, residential and commercial activities as well as the fact that they are in themselves working harbours16
17.44. The achievement of the above objectives will be a joint enterprise between the Auckland Council, the local council, and the development agency.
17.45. Figure 17.2 shows the relationship between the Auckland Council City Centre and Waterfront Committee, the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board, and the City Centre and Waterfront Development Agency.
17A The boundary of the city centre and waterfront area should be defined as shown in Figures 17.1 and 18.7, and as described in Chapter 18.
17B This area should have the following governance arrangements to ensure that it is managed to achieve maximum benefit to the region:
17C There should be a City Centre and Waterfront Development Agency to undertake planning and any further development of the waterfront area. This agency is to be established by the Auckland Council and/or central government.
Transition17D The Establishment Board should prepare draft delegations for the City Centre and Waterfront Community Board for the consideration of the Auckland Council.
1 The area includes the central business district, parts of Parnell and Ponsonby, and Newmarket.
2 In economic terms, “sunk investments” are those which cannot be recouped or sold. In this context, it means investments in infrastructure such as roads, electricity, and water supply, and development of urban centres.
3 Auckland City Council, Blueprint: Growing Auckland’s creative industries, May 2007, p. 23 (available at www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/blueprint, accessed February 2009). Three-quarters of Auckland city’s creative sector employment is located in the city centre and fringe areas including Ponsonby, Newton, Grafton, Newmarket, and Parnell. Auckland City Council, Snapshot: Auckland’s creative industries, November 2005, p. 35 (available at www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/documents/snapshot, accessed February 2009). Auckland’s city centre alone has the same level of creative employment as the whole of Wellington City and 25% more than Christchurch City.
4 The number of people using the city centre each day is 260,000. Of these, 7% are city centre residents, 30% are students, and 5% are overseas tourists. Thirteen per cent of the employment in the Auckland region is in the city centre.
5 International Review of Auckland Metro-Region, prepared for Metro Auckland Project Team, July 2006, p. 34 (available at www.arc.govt.nz/economy, accessed February 2009).
6 Ibid., p. 34.
7 Ibid., p. 6.
8 Greg Clark is an international expert on the growth, development, and planning of cities, to ensure they attract and keep high-value businesses and people. See www.gregclark.net.
9 See information on sustainable cities at www.sacities.net.
10 McDermott, Philip, “Auckland’s Population”, in Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, Report, Volume 4: Research Papers, Auckland, 2009, pp. 39–66 (available at www.royalcommission.govt.nz).
11 This is the estimated population of the area defined by the Commission as the city centre and waterfront area. For further details, see Chapter 18, “Boundaries”.
12 Over the five years to 2008, the city centre experienced 18% growth per year in the number of residents. Auckland City Council, Auckland’s CBD Into the Future: CBD Action plan 2008–2011, February 2008, p. 4 (available at www.aucklandcity.govt.nz, accessed February 2009).
13 Ibid., p. 5.
14 Victorian Urban Development Authority Act 2003, section 7.
15 International Review of Auckland Metro-Region, p. 36.
16 Ibid., p. 35.
| Home | Help | Disclaimer & Copyright | Contact us | newzealand.govt.nz |