New figures reveal changes to population growth projections underpinning proposed housing developments
Sunday, 4 October 2020
New figures have thrown into doubt population growth forecasts being used to encourage high-rise housing developments in Wellington.
The city council said when releasing its spatial plan in July it was expecting an extra 14,000 people to flock to the city’s inner suburbs by 2050.
It is proposing changing building regulations in order to provide up to 5400 more homes to accommodate those people, mostly through medium and high-density housing.
But a report published on the council’s website showed that figure was now dramatically lower, with a maximum of just 4731 people expected to move to the city’s inner suburbs over the next 30 years.
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That would require between just 1083 and 1895 new homes to be built.
Public feedback on the plan, which includes the original figures, closes on Monday.
The new report, Our City Tomorrow – Draft Spatial Plan for Wellington City – stated population growth would be distributed differently than what was originally signalled.
There were no changes to the predicted rise in the central city population, which stood at 18,000, but a predicted growth of about 42,500 people in the city’s outer suburbs had been revised to between 32,424 and 44,890.
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster said the new figures were only “crystal ball projections” based on educated assumptions.
“When the assumptions change, the figures will change.”
In relation to release of the report, Foster said it was a public document.
“I know that some people are already aware of it. However, it is something we probably all need to get our heads around [to determine] what it actually means.”
But Mt Victoria resident Penelope Borland said the lack of publicity about the new report “calls into question the validity of the consultation process”.
“To release it two weeks before the consultation ends, it really does call into question the process because people really need the full information when they are being consulted with.
“It just sort of appeared on their website and it’s so highly relevant to the consultation and the spatial plan, you would think [the council] should have drawn attention to it.”
Mt Victoria Historical Society convenor Jo Newman said despite signing up for email notifications about the spatial plan, she had not received any revised documents.
A lot of information had been found “accidentally”, she said.
“Once you start a consultation process, you assume all the information is on the website. You don’t keep going back every week or every day to see if it has changed.
“There is this huge concern that people are expected to give informed opinions on something when they just don’t have the information.”
The new report said the revised figures provided a more “granular” explanation of the required housing supply, and did not change the proposals signalled in the original plan.
“We always intended to model what the estimated growth distribution figures would look like for the draft spatial plan. So once council agreed to put the content of the draft spatial plan out for consultation, we started work on these figures.”
Factors such as changes in construction and land costs, and the willingness of property owners to sell or redevelop land, would continue to change figures over time, it said.