Well Done, Kiwis! New Zealand Delivers Big Planning Policy Reforms — Blogs

This blog post was writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Stu­art Dono­van, prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant of Trans­port Advi­so­ry and Eco­nom­ics at Veitch Lis­ter Con­sult­ing in Bris­bane, Aus­tralia.

Many good things hap­pen when house­holds live in com­pact homes locat­ed in mul­ti-modal urban neigh­bor­hoods. Com­pared to con­ven­tion­al urban fringe devel­op­ment, res­i­dents of com­pact, mul­ti-modal com­mu­ni­ties:

Giv­en these wider ben­e­fits, there is a press­ing need to tack­le plan­ning reg­u­la­tions that the devel­op­ment of com­pact, mul­ti-mod­el neigh­bor­hoods. While con­sumer sur­veys indi­cate many more house­holds do want to live in such com­mu­ni­ties, a lack of sup­ply often makes this dif­fi­cult and expen­sive. Every­body ben­e­fits from pol­i­cy reforms that help sat­is­fy this latent demand, includ­ing motorists who enjoy less traf­fic and con­ges­tion, and reduced crash risk, when their neigh­bors shift to non-auto modes.

Recent urban pol­i­cy reforms in New Zealand pro­vide a mod­el that, we hope, can be copied around the world. Some may scoff at the sug­ges­tion New Zealand could be a leader in urban pol­i­cy. A recent New Times arti­cle, for exam­ple, described New Zealand as a “… rur­al nation of lone­ly strug­gle.” Such descrip­tions are, how­ev­er, mis­guid­ed: New Zealand is—and always has been—a high­ly urban­ized coun­try where 87% of the pop­u­la­tion live in cities and towns, many of which are grow­ing fast. Rapid pop­u­la­tion growth has col­lid­ed with restric­tions on hous­ing sup­ply, plus geo­graph­i­cal and infra­struc­ture con­straints, to cause hous­ing unaf­ford­abil­i­ty prob­lems. The Econ­o­mist’s Glob­al Cities House-price Index indi­cates that house prices in Auckland—New Zealand’s largest city—have grown 80 per­cent more than San Fran­cis­co since 2000.

New Zealand’s Nation­al Pol­i­cy State­ment on Urban Devel­op­ment (NPS), released last Thurs­day, responds to these issues. Notably from a Smart Growth per­spec­tive, the NPS—in one fell swoop—virtually elim­i­nates off-street park­ing min­i­mums in urban areas (except­ing spaces for peo­ple with mobil­i­ty impair­ments) and sets height lim­its of six-sto­ries in areas acces­si­ble to exist­ing and planned rapid sta­tions. These bold ini­tia­tives sit along­side a suite of com­ple­men­tary poli­cies designed to enable more com­pact and afford­able infill devel­op­ment.

These poli­cies do not require six-sto­ry build­ings or elim­i­nate all off-street park­ing, rather they allow devel­op­ers to deter­mine the park­ing sup­ply and build­ing heights that is appro­pri­ate giv­en demand. The empha­sis on address­ing reg­u­la­tions that act as bar­ri­ers to com­pact devel­op­ment has enabled the changes to attract sup­port from a diverse coali­tion, show­ing how well-designed Smart Growth poli­cies can attract broad sup­port. The Direc­tor of the pro-mar­ket New Zealand Ini­tia­tive, for exam­ple, penned this recent opin­ion piece endors­ing the removal of park­ing min­i­mums.

How did the nation­wide removal of park­ing min­i­mums come to pass? The short answer is that these changes rep­re­sent the cul­mi­na­tion of years of exper­i­men­ta­tion, research, and advo­ca­cy. Key devel­op­ments include:

  • In the 1990s, New Zealand’s two largest cities—Auckland and Wellington—removed min­i­mum park­ing require­ments from their city cen­tres as of com­pre­hen­sive efforts to sup­port city cen­ter rede­vel­op­ment.
  • In 2008, a team of trans­port researchers com­mis­sioned by the NZ Trans­port Agency — includ­ing the now Asso­ciate Min­is­ter of Trans­port Julie Anne Gen­ter – drew on the sem­i­nal work of Pro­fes­sor Don Shoup to pro­duce this research report rec­om­mend­ing nation­wide removal of park­ing min­i­mums
  • Cir­ca 2010, Auck­land start­ed to exper­i­ment more wide­ly with tri­als of demand-respon­sive park­ing pric­ing in the city cen­ter. By care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ing the suc­cess of these tri­als, and learn­ing from the SFpark tri­al, Auck­land was able to cre­ate an evi­dence base to sup­port the expan­sion of priced park­ing into new parts of the city. Around this time, Auck­land also began to active­ly research the eco­nom­ic effects of park­ing min­i­mums. This study, for exam­ple, found the ben­e­fits of remov­ing park­ing min­i­mums exceed­ed the costs many times over.
  • In 2016, and after a lengthy plan­ning process com­plete with com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tion, Auck­land pro­posed to remove park­ing min­i­mums from large areas of the city. Dur­ing the plan­ning process, a civ­il soci­ety group con­cerned with issues of cli­mate change and hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty ran an active cam­paign to build pub­lic sup­port to “bin the mins”, that is, remove park­ing min­i­mums more wide­ly from across the city.
  • In 2016, Auck­land Trans­port also for­mal­ized their approach to on- and off-street park­ing man­age­ment in this park­ing strat­e­gy. Check out this video as an exam­ple of the invest­ed into pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the strat­e­gy.
  • Over time, oth­er cities in New Zealand, such as Christchurch and Rotorua, also sought to remove min­i­mum park­ing require­ments from their city cen­tres and adopt demand-respon­sive park­ing man­age­ment prac­tices.

: binthemins fb 01 copy%5b1%5d

As well as pro­gress­ing these devel­op­ments, var­i­ous pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions engaged wide­ly with rec­og­nized park­ing experts to talk about why and how to ratio­nal­ize park­ing poli­cies. When Auck­land pro­posed to remove park­ing min­i­mums, for exam­ple, pro­fes­sion­al engi­neer­ing and archi­tec­tur­al orga­ni­za­tions sub­mit­ted in sup­port of the pro­pos­als.

While the expe­ri­ence of Auck­land and oth­er cities high­light­ed the effec­tive­ness of changes to park­ing poli­cies and height lim­its, it also high­light­ed the rel­a­tive­ly long time-frames and high costs asso­ci­at­ed with pro­gress­ing changes to plan­ning schemes for indi­vid­ual cities and towns. In this con­text, a key plank of the New Zealand reforms is the will­ing­ness of cen­tral gov­ern­ment to step in. Rather than leav­ing such changes up to indi­vid­ual cities and towns, cen­tral gov­ern­ment took action to ensure poor qual­i­ty and restric­tive plan­ning did not stop New Zealand cities grow­ing up rather than out. Urban Devel­op­ment Min­is­ter Phil Twyford, for exam­ple, observed such poli­cies had “… up the price of land and hous­ing, and been a big dri­ver behind the hous­ing cri­sis. When over­ly restric­tive plan­ning cre­ates an arti­fi­cial scarci­ty of land on the out­skirts of our cities, or floor space because of den­si­ty lim­its in our city cen­tres, house prices are dri­ven up and peo­ple are denied hous­ing options.” In mak­ing these com­ments, Twyford stood on a sol­id and diverse base of evi­dence and sup­port, care­ful­ly con­struct­ed by peo­ple work­ing over the course of a decade in a wide-range of orga­ni­za­tions. And by mak­ing these changes at a nation­al lev­el, New Zealand’s reforms go fur­ther and faster than most.

: image001 24

North Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ties Reduc­ing Park­ing Min­i­mums

What comes next? Well, while most aspects of the changes, such as height lim­its, apply imme­di­ate­ly, the removal of park­ing min­i­mums has been deferred by 18-months to allow cities and towns time to scale up their park­ing man­age­ment poli­cies. The com­ing months pro­vide an ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty for urban plan­ners to engage with and address com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns and mis­con­cep­tions about the changes. Evi­dence shows, for exam­ple, that res­i­dents of com­pact hous­ing with reduced park­ing sup­ply locat­ed near tran­sit sta­tions gen­er­ate far few­er vehi­cle trips (about half) than they would in con­ven­tion­al, auto­mo­bile-ori­ent­ed neigh­bor­hoods. There is also a need to gath­er new evi­dence: By doc­u­ment­ing the effects of these changes on land use and trans­port out­comes, New Zealand can help lay the foun­da­tion for fur­ther pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives, both local­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly.

For More Information

Bak­er and Brad Leib­in (2018), “Toward Zero Park­ing: Chal­leng­ing Con­ven­tion­al Wis­dom for Mul­ti­fam­i­ly,” Urban Land.

Paul Barter (2016), On-Street Park­ing Man­age­ment: An Tool-kit, Sus­tain­able Urban Trans­porta­tion Tech­ni­cal Doc­u­ment #14, GIZ and SUTP (www.sutp.org).

James Bra­suell (2019), How Park­ing Reform Could Relieve the Hous­ing Cri­sis, Plan­e­ti­zen.

James Bra­suell (2019), Every­where, Signs of Demise for the Plan­ning Sta­tus Quo, Plan­e­ti­zen.

CNT (2016), Stalled Out: How Emp­ty Park­ing Spaces Dimin­ish Neigh­bor­hood Afford­abil­i­ty, Cen­ter for Neigh­bor­hood Tech­nol­o­gy.

The Econ­o­mist (2017), “Park­aged­don: How Not to Cre­ate Traf­fic Jams, Pol­lu­tion and Urban Sprawl. Don’t Let Peo­ple Park For Free,” The Econ­o­mist.

Ríos Flo­res, et al. (2014), Prac­ti­cal Guide­book: Park­ing and Trav­el Demand Man­age­ment Poli­cies in Latin Amer­i­ca, Inter-Amer­i­can Devel­op­ment Bank, (www.iadb.org).

William J. Gribb (2015), “3‑D Res­i­den­tial Land Use and Down­town Park­ing: An Analy­sis of Demand Index,” CityScape, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 71–84.

David Gut­man (2017), “The Not-so-Secret Trick to Cut­ting Solo Car Com­mutes: Charge for Park­ing by the Day,” Seat­tle Times.

Todd Lit­man (2017), Park­ing Man­age­ment: Com­pre­hen­sive Imple­men­ta­tion Guide, Vic­to­ria Trans­port Pol­i­cy Insti­tute.

Todd Lit­man (2018), Park­ing Plan­ning Par­a­digm Shift¸ Plan­e­ti­zen.

Park­ing Reform Net­work is a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion with a mis­sion to edu­cate the pub­lic about the impact of park­ing pol­i­cy on cli­mate change, equi­ty, hous­ing, and traf­fic.

Rein­vent­ing Park­ing is a web­site the pro­vides ideas for park­ing pol­i­cy reforms.

Shoupis­tas Face­book Page hon­ors the insights of Don­ald Shoup. 

Read More

Leave a Comment