Tuesday 2 March 2021

Urban planning and the reform of the RMA 2


RMA reform proposals have taken another step with release of the programme for the reform and associated Cabinet papers. The press release that accompanied the programme says that the new Natural and Built Environment Act will be more focused on natural environmental outcomes and less on subjective amenity matters that favour the status quo. Better urban design will be “pursued”. 

What that means for urban environments is not clear.  

The image below is snipped from the Cabinet paper on the reforms. It is part of the proposed section on "outcomes". The new Act will all be about achieving positive outcomes.  

Reference to the features and characteristics that contribute to urban quality is crossed out. So too is sustainable use of the built environment. Outcomes for the built environment are listed as:

  • Sufficient development capacity
  • Housing supply and choice.

Will urban design just be tacked onto the calls for more land and greater housing capacity ?  But well functioning urban environments are not the same as well functioning land and housing markets that produce lots of nice looking houses.

To put it somewhat differently, a market economy is not the same as a market society. To borrow someone elses words (see Note 1):

The difference is this: A well functioning market economy is a tool—a valuable and effective tool—for organizing productive activity. A market society is a way of life in which market values seep into every aspect of human endeavor. It’s a place where social relations are made over in the image of the market.

What is needed to ensure well functioning land markets is increasingly redefining what is a well functioning urban environment. But where do qualities like all neighbourhoods providing mixed uses, accommodating mixed incomes, providing accessible and safe open spaces and streets, fit in? We may moan about terms like character and identity, but these subjective qualities are vital to a modern city  where most jobs are involved in services (including tourism and events), creativity and 'technology'. These qualities will not spring forth from a well functioning land market. In fact they are qualities that can easily be eroded as markets seek to devour the public realm. 

Why such a focus on market-based processes to defining urban outcomes? Part of the appeal of markets is that they don’t pass judgment on the preferences they satisfy. They don’t ask whether some ways of valuing goods are higher, or worthier, than others. 

To this could be added that markets do not arbitrarily pick winners and losers through administrative decisions; markets also collect and process lots of information quickly.   Back  to the article quoted above:

This nonjudgmental stance toward values lies at the heart of market reasoning, and explains much of its appeal. But our reluctance to engage in moral and spiritual argument, together with our embrace of markets, has exacted a heavy price: it has drained public discourse of moral and civic energy, and contributed to the technocratic, managerial politics afflicting many societies today.

While a bit strong perhaps, somehow we need to draw a line between the urban economy and urban society. Urban planning and urban design is not just about ensuring efficient urban economies, it is also about supporting well functioning urban communities.

We live in cities because of the social and economic benefits that they bring. It is easy to let slip the conditions that support social benefits and focus on the economic. Granted, lack of affordable housing is a social issue as much as it is an economic issue, but rendering down of urban planning to the one act of ensuring sufficient supply of housing opportunities presents a very bleak view of urban planning and urban communities.  Are urban communities so dysfunctional that they shouldn't be given tools to help shape the social life of  cities? 

Does the RMA reform proposals take forward the debate about where the boundary is between well functioning urban economies and well functioning urban communities? Will the new Act support the type of planning needed to deliver the patterns of urban land use set out in the National Policy Statement on Urban Development - 6 storey apartments close to centres and transit lines? That level of urban intensity needs good, detailed design and a strong 'partnership' between public and private space.  It also requires a degree of 'micro-management'. Urban environments are all about small incremental changes - positive and negative. Will  the Act allow for consideration of these cumulative effects?

Firstly, under the new Act, it looks like urban environments will need to operate within bio-physical limits. The Cabinet paper states that environmental limits have become ‘bio physical’ limits. These limits cover freshwater, coastal waters, air, soils, biodiversity, and terrestrial and aquatic habitats. Bio physical limits help support well functioning urban environments. But this is just a stronger articulation of the bottom line approach to management of the natural environment  that was part of the RMA. It is not a new approach. 

Long-standing social constructs of outstanding landscapes, historic heritage and coastal environments are to be recognised in the new Act.  But these constructs result in limits on urban development and expansion.  This is section 6 of the RMA re-housed.

Is the call for ‘outcomes’ a recognition of the need for something more than a well functioning urban land market that operates within bio physical limits? But what are these outcomes to be achieved?

Management of the built environment seems to be stripped back to ‘more housing options, more quickly’ . The Cabinet paper explains :

The Panel recommended listing as an outcome the enhancement of features and characteristics that contribute to the quality of the built environment’. While it was not the Panel’s intention, I consider the inclusion could perpetuate subjective amenity values hindering development. This has therefore been removed from Appendix One. 

However I do recognise that urban design considerations do contribute to well functioning urban areas. These matters are more appropriately addressed at a lower level in the NBA such as through the National Planning Framework. 

Hopefully, this statement means that urban design is not seen to be a bunch of subjective assessments of amenity. This is a step forward, but perhaps urban designers better quickly redefine what they mean when they refer to character and identity’. Of course it is possible to jazz up ‘character’ to refer instead to the scale, massing, grain and rhythm of the built form, or something similar. 

Is the reference to well functioning urban areas (rather than markets) a hint of a wider scope for planning and urban design? But will outcomes extend down to the small scale matters like front fence heights, building set backs and front doors being visible from the street, features which contribute so much to the quality and functionality of neighbourhoods?   

Finally, the strategic integration of infrastructure with land use is basically the same as Sec 30 of the RMA: “the strategic integration of infrastructure with land use through objectives, policies, and methods”. That injunction hasn’t got us very far. There is always the fear that anything too directive about ‘integration’ will mean that land use development will be held up by slow infrastructure roll-out, rather than infrastructure supporting fast roll out of urban development.  

So is the end result more market and less society?  Feels that way. 

Note 1: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isnt-for-sale/308902/