Auckland's future: Report sets out nine-point plan to prevent supercity 'dying'

Tuesday, 22 March 2022

The long road back for Auckland's Covid-19 hit centre after months of lockdowns and construction delays. (Video from January 2022)

A radical overhaul is needed of how Auckland is governed, with a focus on building social cohesion, a new report says.

The report, released on Wednesday by Koi Tū, the University of Auckland’s Centre for Informed Futures, aims to provoke debate on how to create the kind of Auckland that locals and the country as a whole need over the next two generations.

An early step suggested is the establishment of an apolitical Commission for Future Generations to break out of a pattern of decisions made to suit short-term political cycles.

“I would argue the trajectory [Auckland] is on now is, it’s decaying,” Koi Tū director Sir Peter Gluckman said.

Auckland’s future could and should look different by 2070, according to Koi Tū. (File photo)

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The 2010 local body amalgamation which created Auckland Council had become about efficiency rather than long-term thinking, he said.

Good work and good plans by good people had not been enough, he said.

Koi Tū spent a year putting the report, Reimagining Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland: Harnessing the Region’s Potential, together.

Hundreds of people were interviewed, and focus groups explored the potential Auckland could reach by 2070 and what the barriers were.

Sir Peter Gluckman at the Auckland Future Now conference in May 2021.

Declining social cohesion, and a growing disconnect between Aucklanders and decisions about their lives and futures, were considered early and fundamental challenges that needed tackling.

“The fact only 35 per cent bother to vote in a local body election says they feel the city doesn't mean much to them, or they can't engage with it,” Gluckman said.

In 2014, he said, the prime minister’s strategic risk and resilience panel included the breakdown of social cohesion in Auckland as a national risk because of the rapid change in the region’s population, diversity, and the difference between people’s lives.

Gluckman said Aotearoa had a culture of short-term thinking aided by political cycles, and in Auckland’s case there was no real alignment, planning or shared knowledge with the government and ministries.

“I can’t tell you how many times when I was in doing this report, I heard ‘Oh we don’t understand Auckland, I didn’t realise it was so different’ – I’m not talking about some young civil servant, but heads of ministries saying they don’t understand Auckland.”

Possibilities to help bridge that gap ranged from building a database common to Auckland Council and central government, a forum of MPs chaired by Auckland’s mayor, and making sure key decisions were actually made and agreed.

“Transport infrastructure – we just don’t get on and do it. How many years have we known we need a second harbour crossing – 20 or 30 years?

Making Auckland a National Park City would highlight not just scenery, but protect and enhance natural features, the report said. (File photo)

“Take the famous bike bridge – that was something out of Wellington for political reasons which bore no relation to Auckland’s plan or thinking,” he said, referring to a short-lived plan to build a $785 million cross-harbour cycling bridge.

The report proposed nine themes for discussion to build on Auckland’s strengths, such as its environment.

It floated the idea of Tāmaki Makaurau becoming an “urban National Park”.

Auckland’s universities are viewed as having a much bigger part to play in the city’s future. (File photo)

It said universities should play a bigger role in civic life and future directions, and areas such as innovation, culture and creativity should be built upon.

“We can’t become another dying city. We need to be a growing, positive, imaginative city and finding our own way of doing things, which will be different from Brisbane and Singapore and San Diego.”

Gluckman said the rest of New Zealand needed to understand why Auckland, as the country’s only global city, was important to the nation’s future.

Auckland mayor Phil Goff says he’s “broadly supportive” of the report’s suggestions of areas for transformation. (File photo)

He pointed out it generated 40 per cent of the economy, which could lift to 45-50 per cent over the coming years.

The report was commissioned by the Auckland Council’s culture and economic agency Auckland Unlimited, but chief executive Nick Hill said it was not a “council report.”

It was written by Gluckman, Koi Tū’s deputy director Dr Anne Bardsley, and research fellow Dr Dawnelle Clyne.

Gluckman hoped a more detailed report could be done on “participatory democracy”, and a trial using panels of residents had begun at the council-controlled water company Watercare.

Chris Darby, the chairman of the council’s planning committee, was involved in talks that preceded the start of Koi Tū's work.

He said the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change presented unique chances to reposition and reshape Auckland’s future.

“For two years Auckland Council has largely been grappling with Auckland’s operational response to Covid,” he said.

“The opportunity presents for a resilient, creative, cohesive and decentralised nature-integrated city of the 21st century, with a new inclusive democracy at its centre.”

Auckland mayor Phil Goff called the report a valuable exercise, but said aspirations for the future “have to be tempered by the financial realities which constrain us”.

Goff said he was “broadly supportive” of the nine suggested areas for transformation.

“We do need to explore other mechanisms for informing and involving people in their democracy,” he said.

“It is the nature of short council and parliamentary terms that the focus of elected representatives is on the short term. This does not align with the need for long-term planning and infrastructure development.”