Monday 15 April 2019

Effects and Urban Design

The Goal

The following is my first tentative start (and likely to be a heroic failure of an attempt) at developing a framework around effects rating under the RMA, with reference to urban design outcomes.

I’m giving this a go as there is so much variation as to describing effects in RMA processes, let alone what is an urban design effect.

Identifying effects, their scale and consequences is at the heart of RMA processes. Whether an activity causes a big or little effect is very important. The RMA is often about future effects, which further complicates things.

I will start with the basics and build up to the main issue – what an urban design effect is and how it might be rated.  What is an urban design effect is itself a big task. Is urban design normative (how the world should be) or is it positive (this is, just the way it is?). Is urban design evidence-based or is it just a bunch of nice ideas? There are many sets of urban design principles and lots of overlap with other RMA effects (like urban amenity, landscape, transport, ecology). There is also the confusion between urban design being focused on positive things to include rather than things to ‘avoid’ or ‘mitigate’. Urban design also has a big element of human behaviour to it, well at least I think it does, which complicates cause and effect.

So rather than get lost in what is an urban design effect, I will begin with  how effects should or could be rated. Then onto urban design. The two issues – what is an urban effect and how it should be rated – are connected and not easily subdivided, but you have to start somewhere.

Examples of effects ratings

Before getting into the detail of a possible rating system, it is worthwhile looking at some examples of effects ratings.  First up is the following scale that the Quality Plan website provides:
  • Nil Effects:  No effects at all.
  • Less than Minor Adverse Effects: Adverse effects that are discernible day-to-day effects, but too small to adversely affect other persons.
  • Minor Adverse Effects: Adverse effects that are noticeable but will not cause any significant adverse impacts.
  • More than Minor Adverse Effects: Adverse effects that are noticeable that may cause an adverse impact but could be potentially mitigated or remedied.
  • Significant Adverse Effects that could be remedied or mitigated. An effect that is noticeable and will have a serious adverse impact on the environment but could potentially be mitigated or remedied.
  • Unacceptable Adverse Effects:  Extensive adverse effects that cannot be avoided, remedied or mitigated.
There are six levels of effects, from nil effect to unacceptable effects, which gives a range. This is not a bad list, but it does tend to mix up a number of things:
  • There is reference to effects that could be mitigated.  Just saying that they might be able to be mitigated doesn’t really help. Most effects can be mitigated to one extent or another. The real question is by how much and by what means. 
  • Some effects are described by the opposite – a minor effect is not a significant effect, for example. Not much help.
  • There are three types of effects hovering around the ‘minor’ threshold: less than minor; minor; more than minor. But then we skip to ‘significant’.  
  • At what point do you transition from ‘more than minor’ to ‘significant’? Is there room for moderate effects (or are they ‘more than minor’, but not ‘significant’)? 
  • The last effect – unacceptable effect - begs the question of unacceptable to whom?  
  • There is a mix between people and the environment. A less than minor effect is an effect that doesn’t affect another person? But what if the effect is an effect on the environment, not people? 
It is not surprising that there is so much confusion as to how to describe effects as the RMA and related plans use the term 'effects' in so many different ways.

What does the RMA say about effects? 

The most common references in the RMA are to ‘minor’ effects and ‘significant’ effects, for example:

Assessment of environmental effects – schedule 6:
  • an assessment of the actual or potential effect on the environment of the activity:
  • if it is likely that the activity will result in any significant adverse effect on the environment, a description of any possible alternative locations or methods for undertaking the activity.
Sec 95 -notification:
  • a person is an affected person if the consent authority decides that the activity’s adverse effects on the person are minor or more than minor (but are not less than minor).
  • activity will have or is likely to have adverse effects on the environment that are more than minor.
Section 104 Assessment of consents:
  • any actual and potential effects on the environment of allowing the activity
Section 104D non complying activities;
  • the adverse effects of the activity on the environment will be minor

There are other references. Section 142 relates to Ministerial Call In. One factor can be whether irreversible changes to an environment are being contemplated.

As others have noted, there is a distinction to be drawn from the above between threshold tests and evaluation inputs. The thresholds generally relate to process tests: ‘if that type of effect is likely to occur, then this or that process is to be followed’. The thresholds determine which process route you head down, such as for notification and non complying activities. But they don’t tell you how to make the overall assessment.

So from a procedural or threshold test point of view, any rating system needs to be able to identify what is:
Less than minor,
Minor
More than minor
Significant
In terms of
people and/or the
environment,
to help wade through the procedural issues.

But it doesn’t stop there, as once you are into the section 104 process of assessing effects of a resource consent then it is helpful to have a more graduated set of effects than just minor or significant. Section 104 just refers to effects, as does schedule 6, and Part 2.

Once into evaluation, a graduated effects rating becomes more important and useful. Of course saying that an effect is only minor or no more than minor helps in that evaluation as there is probably no need to assess the effect in any more detail.  But saying an effect is more than minor is not helpful. A consentable activity can have effects that are more than minor. It all depends.

Here is another example of effects rating, this time from landscape assessment:
  • EXTREME Total loss of the existing character, distinctive features or quality of the landscape resulting in a complete change to the landscape or outlook
  •  VERY HIGH Major change to the existing character, distinctive features or quality of the landscape or a significant reduction in the perceived amenity of the outlook 
  • HIGH Noticeable change to the existing character or distinctive features of the landscape or reduction in the perceived amenity or the addition of new but uncharacteristic features and elements 
  • MODERATE Partial change to the existing character or distinctive features of the landscape and a small reduction in the perceived amenity 
  • LOW A slight loss to the existing character, features or landscape quality 
  • VERY LOW The proposed development is barely discernible with little change to the existing character, features or landscape quality 
  • NEGLIGIBLE The proposed development is barely discernible or there are no changes to the existing character, features or landscape quality
This list has a more reasonable graduation of effects ratings, from extreme to very low. There are three effects above the moderate effect and three below. This feels logical, although you might say that it is introducing a bit of a trap in that it depends upon what is “moderate”.  I think this is called anchoring – you establish some sort of artificial reference point and everything above or below this point is good or bad, depending upon your perspective. Having said that, the words used help a bit – slight loss versus a major change, for example.

But how useful is the above list in working out what is more or less than minor, what is significant in terms of the threshold / procedural tests?

I guess you could try the following:

Rating
Extent of ‘Minorism’
Extent of Significance
Extreme
More than minor
Significant
Very high
More than minor
Significant
High
More than minor
Significant
Moderate
More than minor
?????
Low
More than minor

Very Low
Minor

Negligible
Less than minor


Is a low effect a more than minor effect? Minor is supposed to mean  “it is not likely to matter if that effect occurs”.

Is a ‘moderate’ effect a significant effect?  Most people will say that a high effect is an effect that is more than minor and significant.  But a moderate effect – is that more than minor, but not significant?

Setting aside the threshold test issues, perhaps more importantly for the evaluative functions of the RMA, the rating leaves some questions. The rating is based on the extent of loss or change from the current environment, you might say this is the magnitude of the change. That may be appropriate for some resources (like landscapes), but it tends to emphasis the loss rather than the gain.

And what about the extent of the change, is it to just a small area or a big area?

I should imagine that in getting to a rating, then things like the ascribed value of the landscape, the extent of change and the magnitude of change are all important.

In a ‘dynamic’ urban environment, the receiving environment will always be changing. How much change is reasonable to take into account? The RMA process allows for (yet to be developed) permitted activities and unimplemented resource consents to be considered to be part of the environment. But is this too narrow?

Does the rating scale also need to work for positive effects, as well as negative effects? There seems to be a move towards more of a balancing of negatives and positives. If the scale is to work for positives, can you have an extreme positive effect?

Having said all that, a rating which goes from negligible to extreme is probably a better scale for effects assessment under section 104 than trying to conjure up a rating scale that is driven by section 104D or notification tests. However any rating system would need to show the links to those thresholds.

What is an effect?

Time to look at the RMA and its definition of “effect” and whether that helps with how to rate effects.

The following is the definition in the RMA. As we all know, it is a wide definition.

In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, the term effect includes:
any positive or adverse effect; and
any temporary or permanent effect; and
any past, present, or future effect; and
any cumulative effect which arises over time or in combination with other effects regardless of            the scale, intensity, duration, or frequency of the effect, and also includes—
any potential effect of high probability; and
any potential effect of low probability which has a high potential impact.

Interestingly, I never really thought what the words ‘unless the context otherwise requires’ at the start of the definition mean. Are those words saying that there could be other types of effects that are not listed?

The different components of the RMA definition of effects can be expressed in a yin/yang kind of way, I guess:

Positive or negative
Temporary or permanent
Present or future
Cumulative or singular
Actual or potential.

The last binary choice – actual or potential – is not directly stated as such in the definition. The term is used in various sections, such as 104. It is a useful term though, given that the last two types of effects listed in the definition are ‘potential’ type effects, namely:

High probability
Low probability but high consequence.

These effects relate to the same quality – namely the probability that an effect may occur. Some effects are certain, some effects may be highly likely, or they may be unlikely.  Of course being unlikely may still be a big problem if the consequences are bad.

I think the probability bit of any effects assessment needs to be its own step and urban design effects assessment probably needs a stronger element of probability to it (think of the dose-response relationship in medicine: give people this amount of drug and x%  recover. Change the environment in this way with that design and 70% of people are likely to be worse off, or something like that).

Perhaps a different way of saying the same thing is the degree of certainty that the effect will eventuate. In many cases, there may be 100% certainty that the effect will occur. In other cases it may 80% or 20%.

Are urban design effects ‘future’ effects, or are they always ‘present effects’? Bit hard to know what a future effect might be. Is a future effect an effect that is delayed in its operation – does the effect only manifest itself after 5 years - a bit like climate change, carbon emitted today means warmer temperatures and seal level rises in 50 years time? A blank wall to the street is going to slowly erode the sense of amenity when walking along the street which may only become apparent in two or three years time. Alternatively, or in addition, is a future effect a lost opportunity?

If we then say that urban design effects are mostly about permanent effects that are present or future effects, then we could summarise the task as:

Urban design effect = a permanent, present or future effect to an urban environment multiplied by the probability of that effect occurring. 

But this feels a bit truncated. Does the RMA definition leave somethings out? Is the definition in the RMA up to the job, given it was developed 20 years ago and may not have given much thought to urban areas?

Three things that come to mind in an urban context are:
Systemic effects
Longevity of effects
Reversibility of effect.

Taking each of these in turn.

Systemic effects:

Cities are systems. Change one thing and something else can change somewhere else. In medical terms systemic effects have been described as:

Consequence that is either of a generalized nature or that occurs at a site distant from the point of entry of a substance. 

Systemic effects are a bit like cumulative effects. They exist, but it is jolly hard to pin them down.  Conceptually, consideration of the magnitude and extent of an effect could take into account systemic effects. Perhaps there needs to be some explicit assessment of ‘indirect or second order effects’ arising from an activity.

Longevity of effect and reversibility are more to do with the persistence of an effect. Do some effects have a half life – does their impact decay over time to something more benign? In a city that is constantly changing, do some effects just wear off after or a while or just blend into the background?

Reversibility is also an interesting issue: urbanisation is generally irreversible. Building a tall building is irreversible, but not completely so. Changing uses tends to be reversible at some point.
While effects can be temporary or permanent, there is not much of a graduation between these two ends of the spectrum, when perhaps there should be in an urban context.

Possible effects rating equation  

What I'm thinking about is whether getting to a rating of an urban design effect (setting aside what the effect is) requires at least 7 steps, namely:

Rating equals: Persistence of effect * magnitude of effect * extent of the effect * probability of the effect * consequence to receiving environment * possible mitigation (reduction) * plan weighting.

This is my working hypothesis:
1. Persistence of effect refers to the longevity of an effect, is it permanent, or will it reduce             overtime?
2. Magnitude of effect refers to whether, to put it simply, there is a big or little effect?
3. The extent of effect refers to how much of a receiving environment is affected (large area or small area?)
4. The probability of the effect recognises that there is no certainty around, persistence, magnitude and extent of effects.
5. The existing and future receiving environment is recognition that things can change (as allowed for by the plan), as well as the sensitivity of the environment to change. This brings in consequences.
6. Possible mitigation refers to the extent to which the magnitude, extent, probability or consequences of the effect could be reduced
7. Plan weighting refers to the importance or otherwise that the plan ascribes to the effect. The plan may allow for the effect, say that significant effects have to be avoided, or effects mitigated. There is a wide range.

You may debate whether the last two steps are part of the rating. ‘Plan weighting’ is a matter for the  planner to work out. But if the plan provisions are ignored in the urban design analysis, then effects may be over or under rated.

You can also debate whether mitigation should be in there. Should effects rating be before or after mitigation? However going through a long process of rating effects, but then saying ‘while this is a nasty effect, it can be mitigated” is a bit unhelpful. By putting mitigation into the equation, it should be made more explicit as to how much of the effect can be mitigated.