A new whitepaper released on the the 25th of July and published by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) Aotearoa and The Urban Advisory aims to change that.

“We use the knowledge from successful community wealth building cases from across the world and show how this can be implemented in a New Zealand context,” said Gareth Hughes, Director of WEAll Aotearoa.

“We have taken the five pillars of the approach and shown how they can be localised, forming a pathway to develop community wealth building here. It is being practised here anyway, this report forms a way that we can bring structure and connection to the actions that we see on the ground already. The government is speaking about devolution and localism - here is how we can do it so it benefits us all”

The report outlines the case of Preston in the north of England. The 2000s saw a community in decline with numerous economic and social issues. In response, in 2011, Preston City Council adopted a “guerilla localism” strategy to build community wealth. Unemployment dropped from 6.5% in 2014 to 4% in 2023; living wage jobs increased  from 76% in 2015 to 88% in 2022; and anchor institution spending in the Preston economy increased from £38m in 2013 to £111m in 2017. 

“We think we can use these successful global case studies as a guide to community wealth building  in Aotearoa. These are learnings that can be applied here. The economy as we know it is not working for most; we can look to community wealth building as an alternative economic framework. Just measuring GDP is not enough, there needs to be a wider focus. CWB provides one way to do this; it is designing a new economic model that harnesses local spending and supply chains, prioritises fair employment, invests locally, diversifies ownership models and makes land and assets work for locals and the environment,” said Greer O'Donnell, co-founder and Managing Director of Urban Advisory.

The report also shows community groups that are working towards community wealth outcomes. One of these is the Porirua Wealth Pool created by Te Hiko in Porirua. The Pool consists of a group of locals who have come together to save their money collectively. The group experiences the power of having savings for emergencies, but also allows people to lend to each other within the community.

"For us at Te Hiko, these alternative economies are essential in thinking about how we can restore mana and capital back to Porirua East. For years, this community has been depleted of resources, leaving many people vulnerable and stretched just getting by. We wanted to create some infrastructure which our Porirua East community can use to keep control over their finances and push past the more common models of dependence,” said David Hanna of Te Hiko.

The report outlines how local government, organisations, businesses, and people can encourage community wealth building in their own regions.

“We would love to hear from anybody who would like to learn more or be part of this movement of change. Our environment is being degraded, there is more in-work poverty, the current system is not working, and community wealth building is an answer to these issues. It’s localism done well,” said Hughes.

In this glossary, we aim to make it easy to understand what we here at TUA mean by these terms, and maybe introduce you to some innovative urban ideas. Keep this guide bookmarked, and you’ll be able to decipher any urbanist gibberish in no time.

Accessibility: The quality of being able to be reached or entered. In urban planning and design, accessibility refers to designing and implementing infrastructure and public spaces that supports the access of a diverse range of users. Infrastructure and spaces should especially account for the ease of access of children, the elderly, people from low socio economic backgrounds, and those with a disability.

Built form: The form and function of buildings as well as their configuration and relationship to urban spaces such as streets and open spaces.

Circular Economy: As defined by the The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, it is a practice that decouples economic activity from the extraction and consumption of finite resources. It is a resilient, self-healing and sustainable practice that is good for business, people and the environment. In a circular economy, materials are never wasted, and nature is “regenerated.” This term is also known as Regenerative Practice or Regenerative Economy. 

Learn more about circular economies here.

Community wealth building/local economies: A collaborative approach that puts people back at the centre of their local economy and ensures wealth is circulated within the community. The approach is tailored to the area/communities it is implemented in, focusing on strengths and opportunities. The result is greater equity, economic resilience, and community wellbeing. 

Density: The degree of how compact or concentrated something is. In this context, we are referring to how compact or concentrated housing is by typology or by neighbourhood/residential zone. 

• ‍Density by housing typology: Refers to the number and type of dwellings on a site.‍
• Low density housing: Standalone houses, generally 1–2 storeys, on an individual section‍
• Medium-density housing: Housing that is multi-unit dwellings (up to 6 storeys).‍
• High density housing: Housing that is multi-unit and over 6 storeys.

Density by neighbourhood/residential zone: Refers to the average density of an area, generally measured by dwellings or population per acre, hectare, m² or km². These areas may include a mix of typologies up to the maximum size as per the zone rules. The categories below are defined by the Ministry for the Environment in the National Planning Standards, November 2019.

• ‍Low density Residential Zone/Neighbourhood: Areas used predominantly for residential activities and buildings consistent with a suburban scale and subdivision pattern, such as one- to two-storey houses with yards and landscaping, and other compatible activities.‍
• Medium density Residential Zone/Neighbourhood: Areas used predominantly for residential activities with moderate concentration and bulk of buildings, such as detached, semi-detached and terraced housing, low-rise apartments, and other compatible activities. ‍
• High density Residential Zone/Neighbourhood: Areas used predominantly for residential activities with high concentration and bulk of buildings, such as apartments, and other compatible activities.

Design thinking: a process in which planners study and interact with the community to gain a deeper understanding of the needs of the end user. This is a way of ensuring the final product will be fit for its intended purpose and the needs of the community. It often involves challenging common assumptions and creating innovative solutions to address existing problems. By challenging the existing process in design and planning, we can produce better outcomes because continuing to do what we have always been doing is not enough to create cities that can overcome challenges and support their communities. More may be learned about design thinking here.

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Integrated neighbourhoods: a community-focused place which provides for the diverse needs of all residents; this means a neighbourhood with varied housing options across price points, a variety of amenities that serve daily-life needs (e.g. mental health services, a supermarket, parks, social care) and other opportunities for inclusiveness and social mobility. 

Land development: The process in which improvements are made to a piece of land to make the area more useful, e.g., clearing land for agricultural use or using land for the construction of buildings.

Masterplanning: A process of visioning for a place that draws together diverse stakeholder opinions and aspirations and balances these with sustainable and other project imperatives.

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A masterplan: A planning and design document that sets out the conceptual layout for a site or area to guide future growth and development.

Mixed-use development: A type of urban development that integrates two or more uses, such as residential, commercial or retail in a development. 

Mobility: How far an individual can physically move or travel in a given time period. Mobility is also not just about having access to one mode of transport - it is about having access to a range of quality and reliable mobility options.  

Placemaking: We like Placemaking Aoteroa’s definition: “an approach where people work together to make places better, not only for themselves but for others and for the place itself”.

Place delivery strategy: A comprehensive process for delivering places, spanning across the scoping, engaging and testing, designing and refining, and delivering and activating phases of any infrastructure or development project or programme of works. It includes roles of different players across the built environment industry, and considers governance arrangements, the importance of treaty partnership and mana whenua, and the inputs required from professional services, the property sector, communities, and citizens. 

Public realm: The publicly owned places and spaces that are for everyone’s use e.g. streets, parks.

Smart cities/smart growth: A city or urban area that has become more efficient through the use and development of digital technology.

Streetscape: The appearance or view of a street (e.g. buildings, footpaths and landscaping).

‍Systems thinking: A holistic approach looking at the relationships and interactions within a system, and how they connect and influence one another, rather than focusing on the different parts in isolation. 

Tactical urbanism: A prototyping process within urban development; experimenting with or showcasing potential changes with the intention of improving local neighbourhoods and city gathering places using low-cost, temporary change to the area e.g. temporary bike lanes, pedestrian-only streets. These are often intended to pressure government organisations into installing a permanent or more expansive version of the improvement. This process can be led by residents or community organisation groups, but can also be initiated by government entities demonstrating the positive outcomes of a project that is controversial or receiving resistance from the public. 

Transit-oriented development: A type of urban development that focuses compact, mixed-use and higher-density development around or close to public transport, allowing people to enjoy easy access to jobs, services and amenities.

Universal design: The process of designing environments to be accessible to all people, regardless of age, disability or other factors. 

‍Urban amenities: Facilities that contribute to the urban experience of residents. They are linked to daily life needs, e.g., food, entertainment, health and wellness facilities, public transit, education, retail, community facilities, public spaces, etc. 

‍Urban amenity: A broad term that describes the perceived quality or character of a space or place which makes it appealing to residents. The convenience, accessibility, and design of urban amenities is only a contributing factor to the urban amenity experienced in an area. Urban amenity is also affected by environmental factors such as perceived noise levels, air or water quality, and socio-cultural aspects such as a sense of community. 

Urban economics: The study of urban environments using the tools of economics to analyse urban issues. 

Urban form: The physical characteristics and the built environment of an urban area.

Urban intensification: An urban development process in market conditions, characterised by increased housing and infrastructure provision in line with planning for projected population growth.

Urban morphology: The study of urban form, focusing on the formation of urban forms and how they change over time.

Urban regeneration: An urban development process with a large degree of transformation at its core to support improved social, cultural, economic, and environmental outcomes. It is characterised by significant intervention, a coordinated approach across government councils, community and private sectors, and new planning policy. The use of strategic partnerships and brokerage among Delivery Agents to deliver the coordinated approach required is also fundamental in order to change the economic and social geography of a place. Citizens are empowered as part of the process.

Urban renewal: An urban development process that addresses the physical urban decay or decline of an area within the existing hierarchy of planning policy. It is characterised by physical interventions – such as the large-scale replacement and provision of housing, infrastructure and amenities – usually over a shorter period of time than regeneration. Communication and engagement with the community is a priority.

Urban strategy: Urban strategy is about shaping the development of cities through a systems thinking approach. It is about bringing together different ways of thinking, improved systems and more collaborative processes to improve the wellbeing of people through interventions in the built environment.

Walkability: The ability to safely walk to services and amenities within a reasonable distance of the home. 

‍Wellbeing: The Treasury’s official definition states “Wellbeing refers to what it means for our lives to go well. It encompasses aspects of material prosperity such as income and GDP. And it also encompasses many other important things such as our health, our relationships with people and the environment, and the satisfaction we take in the experience of life.” They consider wellbeing analysis as “economics done well”  because “it creates a more complete picture of societal progress.” Wellbeing is being recognised internationally as a critical factor in economic development and is now being considered at the forefront of public policy. In 2019, the Labour-led New Zealand Government announced the first Wellbeing Budget as an effort to consider “the wellbeing of our people, the health of our environment and the strength of our communities'' (Robertson, 2022). It adopts the evolving “Living Standards Framework” (LSF) to recognise all aspects that play a role in our wellbeing. He Ara Waiora has also been developed to provide a framework helping the government to understand the Māori perspective on wellbeing alongside the LSF. The first Wellbeing report was published in November 2022 and assessed how wellbeing has changed and areas that require further effort. 

Other predecessor terms in the built environment covering aspects of wellbeing:

• ‍Liveability: The features that create a place where people want to live.
• ‍Quality of life: A person’s perception of their life satisfaction. It is a non-financial measure of happiness that factors in a person’s values and culture, as well as things like job satisfaction, health, safety, financial position, interests, achievements and relationships they have with the people around them. 
• ‍Quality of Urban Life: Related to quality of life, this is a branch off that considers the satisfaction of residents within a neighbourhood.  

‘20-minute neighbourhood’: The concept of a neighbourhood with convenient, safe and primarily pedestrian-focused access to services and amenities that residents use nearly every day and are within an approximate 20-minute walk. More may be learned about the 20-minute neighbourhood concept here.

‘15-minute city’: A concept in urban planning where all the basic things a resident needs (shops, parks, health care, schools, etc) can be accessed within 15 minutes on foot or on other micromobility (e.g. bikes and scooters).

All above illustrations done by Emma McInnes.

In this glossary, we aim to make it easy to understand what we here at TUA mean by these terms, and maybe introduce you to some innovative urban ideas. Keep this guide bookmarked, and you’ll be able to decipher any urbanist gibberish in no time. 

Accommodation Supplement: A non-recoverable weekly payment to people who are not in public housing, to assist them with their rent, board, or the cost of owning a home.

Affordable housing: A home that a household could occupy for less than 30% of their pre-tax household income, as either renting or purchasing. This includes dwellings available through a housing assistance program that provides housing below market rent, i.e., council provided housing, Kāinga Ora housing. Affordable housing includes Assisted Housing.

Assisted housing: A category on the housing continuum that includes emergency and transitional housing. This is synonymous with Supported Housing. 

Housing adequacy: A vision for, or condition of, housing that is habitable, affordable, accessible, secure and culturally appropriate, as defined by the UN Habitat goals and adopted by the NZ Human Rights Commission. This includes the concept of sustainable housing that is able to meet the needs of current and future households.

Housing choice: The revealed preferences through people’s actual housing market decisions and trade-off behaviour. Housing choice is influenced by the limitations and constraints of the actual housing environment and market conditions people find themselves in.

‍Housing continuum: A linear spectrum that categorises households into cohorts of people, and identifies a range of housing tenures available, on the basis of cost, affordability and/or ownership and management. This can be a visual tool for understanding housing delivery and intervention, illustrating the pathway from insecure housing (homelessness) through to private rental and home ownership.

Housing demand: The willingness and ability to purchase a house, or take on another housing tenure. Demand for housing is assessed at national and regional levels to ensure that public housing is provided in the areas that need it the most. 

‍Housing ecosystem: An interrelated system that encompasses the affordability continuum, its cohorts, the housing tenures and models that exist in New Zealand and internationally.
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Housing model: A comprehensive way to deliver a housing solution. This includes a clear resident formation and participation method, financial, legal and tenure structures, and design, management and governance processes.

Housing mobility: The movement of people due to a change in their usual place of residence. Housing mobility can occur due to changes in tenure arrangements, or moving from one geographic location to another for various housing, employment or lifestyle reasons.

Housing need: The number and type of houses required, related to household size and population growth. A household is in housing need if its housing falls below at least one of the adequacy, affordability or suitability standards and it would have to spend 30 per cent or more of its total before-tax income to pay a median rent.

Housing preferences: The relative attractiveness of housing, with an aspirational and long-term orientation. Preference is a relatively unconstrained vision of what someone seeks in a house, including longer-term aspirations and desires.

Housing product: A defined legal, financial and tenure structure for housing that forms part of a housing model.

Housing right/right to housing: The international standard, first recognised in 1948 by the United Nations, acknowledging access to adequate housing as a human right, not a commodity. We all have the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity. 

Housing supply: The total number of housing units in a given area. 

Housing tenure: The nature of a person’s or household’s legal right to occupy a dwelling.

These legal rights range across rights of use, control and disposal. Rental and home ownership are the most common tenure types in New Zealand.

• ‍Land tenure: The legal relationship that describes how people, as individuals or groups, own or ‘hold’ land (legal or customary).
• ‍Rental tenure: A housing tenure which offers someone who does not own the property the right to occupy a dwelling. Rental tenants agree to pay a mutually agreed rent to the owner periodically. This includes social rental, affordable rental and market rental.
• ‍Security of tenure: A legal arrangement that determines the guaranteed length or extent of housing tenure. Secure housing tenure allows residents to live in their home (or sometimes an equivalent home) for as long as they want to, whether it is rented or owned.

Income Related Rent (IRR): IRR is a rent that is subsidised by the government to make accommodation affordable for low-income households. For qualifying households, an IRR equates to 25% of their net household income, and the government pays the difference up to the market rental rate.

Intermediate housing: The market of private sector renter households with at least one member in paid employment who are unable to affordably (“using no more than 30% of their gross household income to service mortgage expenses) purchase a dwelling at the lower quartile house sale price”. This cohort generally does not qualify for social housing, and struggles to afford market rent. Also called the Third Sector.

Licence to Occupy: A short-term right to occupy or use a property for a particular purpose, with no particular right to exclusive occupation or ownership of the land or facilities. Licences to Occupy are common with retirement villages and developments on Māori land.

Housing Models

‍Baugruppen: Literally, ‘building groups’, this term describes smaller self-organised housing projects, as separate from larger, more mainstream development entities. Baugruppen focuses on group self-build or group-based design processes that align housing design to clear community needs and housing is allocated to a predetermined pool of residents (usually buyers). Baugruppen is typically high density housing; multi-storey & multi family buildings such as an apartment complex.

Build-to-rent: A property development model that delivers long-term investment and returns, from purpose-built rental housing managed by a single ownership entity. Build-to-Rent provides longer-term security of tenure for rental tenants than is generally delivered by market rentals.

Cohousing: An intentional clustering of private homes, with some common facilities and shared neighbourhood life. Cohousing communities are co-developed & co-designed by future residents, then managed and operated by the residents, supported by a hierarchy-free decision-making process. This term is sometimes misunderstood and used to describe the broader range of Community-focused Housing models. While they both build on the concept of collaboration and purpose-built housing (built for residents, by the residents), cohousing differs from Baugruppen by density; where Baugruppen is high-density, cohousing is typically low to mid-density. 

Coliving: A commercially operated form of build-to-rent housing, that offers a curated lifestyle, communal spaces, flexible tenure, and often, reduced private space. This term is sometimes misunderstood and used to describe the broader range of Community-focused Housing models.

Community-focused Housing (CFH): Describes a range of housing models that contribute to greater economic, environmental, social and cultural wellbeing of current and future generations. CFH models include Cooperatives, Cohousing, Community Land Trusts, Property Collectives and Coliving.

Community Housing Provider (CHP): A not-for-profit organisation that provides safe, secure, affordable and appropriate rental housing. These organisations provide, and largely self-fund, housing products and programmes for low-income households.

Community-led housing (CLH): A housing initiative where local people come together to solve housing problems in their community, with the purpose of providing affordable homes through construction, repairs and property management. “Community-led housing” is a term commonly used in the UK. Under this umbrella, other community or group schemes such as cooperative housing, cohousing, community land trusts, tenant management organisations, community self-build (Baugruppen) schemes, and self-help housing groups are also covered. Key components include community engagement, formal management and community benefits. Note: the group does not necessarily need to pick up a hammer themselves but depending on the skillset of the community group, some may do! The group will have an ongoing role in terms of formal ownership, management or stewardship of the homes and this is to ensure the benefits to the local area/specified community are protected. This definition was inspired by the work of Louise Crabtree et al. 

Collective Tenure Models: A community sharing land access rights to benefit from economies of scale during production, to spread risk and to avoid the costs of enforcing individual property rights.

Community Land Trusts (CLT): A shared-ownership tenure model, where ownership of the land and house are separated to provide retained affordability. Occupiers own (or rent) their home but not the land: a long-term ground lease is established for the land. A CLT acquires and manages land with the intention of holding it in trust and developing affordable housing and other community amenities.

Emergency housing: Temporary accommodation (from overnight to 12 weeks) and support for households who have an urgent need for accommodation, because they have nowhere else to stay or are unable to reside in their usual residence. This is part of the Supported Housing category.

Housing cooperative: A form of shared ownership where residents purchase shares in a corporation. In this arrangement, the corporation is the development entity and retains ownership of either the land and housing, or just the housing (with a lease over the land). The residents purchase shares in the corporation, with each share corresponding to a dwelling unit or proportion of the overall roughly equivalent to a single dwelling. Cooperatives can be developed on a single site, or across various (scattered) sites.

• Equity cooperative: This is an umbrella term to refer collectively to both limited and market equity cooperatives, a form of shared ownership where residents purchase shares in a corporation, which correspond to a dwelling unit or proportion of the overall development.
• Equity cooperative: This is an umbrella term to refer collectively to both limited and market equity cooperatives, a form of shared ownership where residents purchase shares in a corporation, which correspond to a dwelling unit or proportion of the overall development.
• Rental cooperative: A form of shared ownership where residents purchase nominal shares in a corporation that correspond to a dwelling unit that residents rent or lease from the cooperative.
• Limited equity cooperative: Where share prices are set by a formula, usually related to average median income, and not by the market, in order to retain affordability.

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Intentional communities (IC): A group of people who live together or share common facilities and who regularly associate with each other on the basis of explicit common values. Some IC are established as cooperatives as the cooperative principles can align well with IC principles.

Mutual housing / Mutual Housing Associations: A housing model which offers legal membership to tenants, service users and possibly employees, and takes active steps to promote membership and involve members in governance and decision-making. Note: The terms ‘mutual housing association’ and ‘cooperative’ are used interchangeably in the UK, under the umbrella term ‘mutual housing sector’, which can confuse discussion.

Papakāinga: A contemporary kāinga or settlement on collectively-owned Māori land that includes houses and other communal facilities, occupied by people who have ancestral connections to the land and whakapapa connections to one another. In a planning context, papakāinga is understood as – any activity which the owners of land held under Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993, that is in the traditional rohe of those tangata whenua, shall seek to undertake on their land to sustain themselves. Papakāinga may include (but not be limited to) residential, social, cultural, economic, conservation and recreation activities, marae, wāhi tapu and urupā.

‍Participatory housing approaches: Housing providers and developments which offer future residents the opportunity to participate in the planning, design and development process of housing.

Public housing: Rental properties owned (or leased) and managed by the state, Kāinga Ora (formerly HNZ), or a Community Housing Provider, that can be tenanted by people who are eligible for public housing. Also known as social housing or state housing (specifically housing provided by the state).

Progressive ownership: A collection of housing models which offer alternative entry into home ownership by reducing the financial burden of entry associated with market home ownership. Progressive Ownership can be categorised as subsidy retention or shared appreciation. This is an umbrella term which includes shared equity and rent-to-own.

• ‍Rent-to-own: A housing model administered by a third party, Trust, or corporation where tenants rent for a predetermined period (e.g. 5 years), before they are offered the opportunity to wholly or partially purchase the property at or below market value. Restrictions are usually placed on the property to ensure affordability is retained for future households. This is a type of Progressive Ownership.
• Shared equity: A housing tenure arranged between a Trust, Incorporation and/or third party, and an individual household, that share in the ownership and cost of housing, at a price point the household can afford. Shared Equity can also be called ‘Co-Ownership’ or ‘Shared Ownership’. This is a type of Progressive Ownership.

‍Property collectives: A joint venture which allows groups of people to collectively design, finance and develop a series of homes. At the completion of the development, homes are generally owned individually by households in the joint venture, with no on-going collective responsibility.

Self-organised housing models: Housing development driven by a group of individuals acting together on the basis of a shared interest or objective. Note: Self-organised housing models can include various types of cooperatives, community land trusts, and intentional communities.

Supported housing: A support programme that provides short-term subsidised housing and related support services for households with acute housing needs. Supported housing aims to help people gain safe and secure housing and offers them support to gain independence in their community. This category on the housing continuum includes emergency and transitional housing, and is sometimes referred to as Assisted Housing.

‍Transitional housing: Short-term housing (12 weeks on average) and social services for people with an immediate housing need while support is put in place to transition them into sustainable public or private housing on a long-term basis. This is part of the Supported Housing category.

‍Wāhi Kāinga: A concept derived from traditional Māori society, where collective living was focused on extended whānau and hapū based collectivism and founded on whakapapa. It is a model that adopts principles of Māori living, but is not limited to Māori people, and does not have to be associated with Māori land.

All Illustrations in this article have been done by Emma McInnes.

‍Some other urban glossaries TUA likes:

Urban Design Works: Urban Design Glossary

Urban Design Lab: Urban Design Terminology

The Mayor's Institute on City Design in cooperation with the National Trust for Historic Preservation: City Design Glossary

The paper explores the principles of Community Wealth Building, outlines the five pillars with case studies of how it has worked internationally and in Aotearoa New Zealand, identifies common challenges, and shares what people can do to get Community Wealth Building started in their area.

The white paper was launched via webinar kindly hosted by LGNZ in July, watch here.

About Community Wealth Building
Community Wealth Building offers Aotearoa New Zealand an approach to economic development that leads to more prosperous, equitable, sustainable, and resilient local economies and communities. At its heart it puts people back at the centre of local economies. It ensures wealth generated in a local economy is held and invested back into that local economy, and puts control and benefits into the hands of local people.

This research paper, funded by BRANZ, sought to understand the key barriers to delivering multigenerational housing in New Zealand. The research involved TUA's Natalie Allen and Greer O’Donnell, as well as Kate Bryson, Charmaine 'Ilaiū Talei, Jade Kake, and Jacqueline Paul. In summary, they found that multigenerational housing offers a promising solution to address the ageing population, cost of living pressures, and housing affordability in Aotearoa NZ, by enabling resource pooling, strengthening family connections, and fostering social inclusion.

Head to the BRANZ website to read and download the full piece of research HERE.

Part of this research involved developing a policy paper; designed for policymakers across the housing system in NZ to engage with and understand the implications of the research. You can read the policy paper via the flipbook below.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development's vision is that "everyone in New Zealand lives in a home and a community that meets their needs and aspirations" (2021). This policy paper provides actionable insights to achieving this goal, and a way forward in shaping a more responsive and inclusive housing future for all New Zealanders.

It is characterised by significant non-physical interventions and brokerage to maximise the social, cultural, environmental and economic outcomes and requires new policy and planning frameworks. Most importantly, citizens also need to be empowered as part of the process. Crucially, this is where urban regeneration differs from urban intensification or urban renewal. It is important to understand and recognise the differences between these approaches and the outcomes they deliver on the ground.

Urban regeneration is a more holistic approach than intensification and renewal, with a focus on delivering wellbeing as well as changes to the built environment. We’d describe urban regeneration as happening with a community, instead of to a community.

Urban renewal, and in some cases regeneration, has historically been associated with gentrification and displacement. Although usually associated with the USA, there was in-fact a global movement of large scale slum clearance, displacement of vulnerable communities, and destruction of communities done under the guise of improving the health and wellbeing of the city. Reckoning with these unfortunate and sometimes brutal histories is important as we think about urban regeneration in the 21st century. What we know now is that a top-down, opaque approach simply does not work. There will always be the need for large scale infrastructure and neighbourhood improvements in our cities -but we cannot ignore the existing social geography of a place.

This is why good urban regeneration is characterised by intersectional collaboration, visioning, and brokering. Strong frameworks and structures are needed to guide regeneration projects through fragmented processes of engagement, planning, construction, and management. At The Urban Advisory, our experience and research has guided our understanding and development of regeneration principles, models, and frameworks. Establishing these early in a development is crucial to clarify what we are talking about when we are talking about urban regeneration.

Case Study Framework: Walworth, London, United Kingdom

Cities like London, with long histories, are no strangers to urban regeneration. Through time they have constantly had to adapt to growth and various changes. The local community of Walworth was recently included in a collection of regeneration initiatives for the Southwark area, south of the Thames River. With Walworth, we really loved that this community engaged Urban Strategists to provide support to co-develop and co-deliver a framework for regeneration. The Urban Strategy team from ‘We Made That’ worked with a wide range of local stakeholders, through conversations, workshops and observations to develop the ideas for priority projects. The result of this work was the ‘What Walworth Wants’ regeneration strategy. The projects were carefully developed to co-ordinate with each other, and be delivered through an incremental and aggregated approach. It is this kind of strategic thinking that we want to see more of, where the impact of placemaking programmes, rather than individual projects, helps everyone’s investment go that bit further. The ‘What Walworth Wants’ strategy was developed to be a practical tool for the co-delivery of projects, by residents, community groups, public authorities and other stakeholders. The graphic design and structure of this document is also very user-friendly and accessible. Together, these support both the co-ownership and co-delivery of the regeneration projects. This process is a more involving, tangible regeneration framework for South London.

Before we dive too deep, we should also understand what a Regeneration Framework is. A Regeneration Framework is a holistic and actionable strategy for regeneration. It should include a collective vision, key strategies, objectives, partnership agreements and delivery indicators for a regeneration project.

In practice, a Regeneration Framework supports accountability, project delivery and performance. They provide regeneration partners, stakeholders and the community with certainty, confidence and clarity about how regeneration will be delivered.

• Working with all stakeholders to develop a Regeneration Framework connects delivery with design and ensures that the regeneration programme is co-created and co-owned by everyone that affects or will be affected by the regeneration process.
• Establishing a clear guiding framework is needed to help create certainty for the investment community and key delivery partners, This increases the likelihood that the shared vision and all the great ideas developed through community engagementcan be delivered.
• Developing a deep understanding of the challenges, opportunities & constraintsneeds to underpin all project planning.
• Strong leadership from local councils is key; investing strategically in the publicrealm (such as transport improvements or pedestrian facilities) to generate private investment provides more significant Return On Investment in line with project objectives.
• Masterplans need to be delivery-oriented, at both area-scale and site-scale.
• Resilience is built through supporting mixed uses and diverse activities and a varietyof amenities integrated throughout the neighbourhood.

Meanwhile, projects are individual interventions or actions that act as a centrepiece or catalyst for a wider regeneration programme. Design of the projects should be developed according to the broader programme’s framework, to act as a tangible example of what regeneration will look like and represent for a district. Some of the best regeneration projects are bold, creative, and symbolic for the context they occur in. These can go on to be catalysts for further investment or promotion of the regenerating district.

Case Study Project: Superkilen,Copenhagen, Denmark

Situated in Nørrebro, the Superkilen is a massive 750m linear park that has allowed communities to embed their identities in the built landscape. Oneof Copenhagen’s most diverse and impoverished neighbourhoods, the area near Superkilen facednegative social perceptions and isolation. As part of a wider regeneration programme, the Superkilen was envisaged as a ‘world exhibition’ to reflect the diverse communities in theneighbourhood. The designers and architects undertook “extreme public participation” to design the park. This resulted in three zones: a market / culture / sportszone, an urban living room, and a sport and nature green zone. Throughout the park are elements sourced from the home nations of many of theneighbourhood’s residents, including swings from Iraq, South African braai, and manhole covers from Israel.

Integrated with the cycling and walking network, Superkilen has increased connectivity and pride among the communities, being a popular place to meet, play, relax,cycle, and walk. Throughout the regeneration process, Nørrebro has undergone a change in perceptions- to the point where Time Outmagazine named it the World’s Coolest Neighbourhood in 2021.

Successful regeneration projects are built within good regeneration frameworks. So, based on successful urban regeneration frameworks and projects, we’ve compiled 10 Urban regeneration principles that we keep in mind in our work in the urban regeneration space.

Collectively, these principles demonstrate what is required to deliver the holistic outcomes of urban regeneration, consistently, across the various stages of the project.

1. Coordinated Strategic Partnerships

Well-executed urban regeneration relies on robust strategic and delivery partnerships from the beginning: between Council, Government, mana whenua, private sector and community partners. With a view toward delivery, regeneration partnership planning ensures that all the necessary players are involved and engaged in the project from day one and resources, knowledge, and skills are optimised.

2. Shared Vision & Objectives

Regeneration partners must form and commit to a shared vision for the project, with aligned values and objectives around what they aim to achieve through regeneration and how. Different partners may put greater focus and effort toward some objectives over others, but the collective vision must hold all of these in balance.

3. Delivery Tailored to Local Community & Context

At its core urban regeneration is about people and place. As such, development that applies replicable or ‘cookie cutter’ responses cannot be classified as urban regeneration. Urban regeneration strategies must be bespoke, developed and delivered as a specific and relevant response, tailored to local community needs, desires and aspirations and the unique constraints and opportunities of that place.This principle is one of the primary points of difference that sets urban regeneration apart from renewal and intensification.

4. Integrated Engagement & Participation

Community engagement and stakeholder participation is critical to urban regeneration. These processes must be woven throughout the regeneration process,from planning to delivery, engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders periodically and purposefully to verify objectives and planned outcomes. A Regeneration Framework is a helpful guiding document that can be developed with partners and stakeholder participation, to respond to local issues and integrate community aspirations into the regeneration process.

5. Performance Tracking & Accountability

Regeneration partners need to be held accountable to their stakeholders and each other, to check and reconfigure how they are performing and delivering on the regeneration objectives and desired outcomes, at each stage of the project. An independent regeneration board can support successful urban regeneration.

6. Resource Efficiency & Coordination

Successful urban regeneration understands and utilises the available resources (e.g.time, social capital, political power, financial capital, land and other assets, culturalknowledge etc) that different partners offer. Project planning should consider howto utilise what different partners bring to the table – their ability and willingnessto contribute from their particular resources, skill set and capacity etc – to deliver efficient and effective development outcomes.

7. Measuring, Monitoring & Evaluating Success

Robust urban regeneration must have clear development indicators of successthat are planned for, deliverable and measurable through monitoring over time. Successful regeneration doesn’t happen by accident, and a Framework for monitoring and measuring success makes it clear what the end goal is, and when the outcomes and objectives sought have been achieved.

8. Responsive Long-term & Short-term

Planning Capacity Urban regeneration projects are long-term, and delivery generally occurs in stages over several years, or decades even. Projects inevitably face variations and disruptions over time (e.g. changing political climate). Hence, it is important to have a suitably responsive or flexible Framework for regeneration planning and delivery that provides consistency and certainty for partners, but that can change and adapt as needed.

9. Prioritised Sustainability & Stewardship

To manage the process of change, sustainability and stewardship are critical. Ideally, communities are brought into the journey of regeneration (stewardship) and build a positive sense of ownership around the changes that occur. However, the inevitable disruption and change processes need to be dealt with by taking a deliberate approach to mitigate potentialnegative impacts and effects by working alongside the communities who live there. Sustainable regeneration seeks to serve both current and future generations,and to form a positive legacy in the built environment that endures beyond the life of the project.

10. Strong Leadership & Governance

Urban regeneration requires effective leadership throughout the entire process. A dedicated leadership team from central or local government (usually) is required to hold the vision and provide guidance and support to the regeneration delivery partners. But this team cannot be responsible on their own for delivering every aspect of a regeneration programme. Therefore,leaders must also maintain a two way communicationand engagement approach with cross-sector deliverypartners and stakeholders to enable a collaborativeapproach to leadership over the life cycle of theregeneration programme.

Urban development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Historically, too muchintensification, renewal, and regeneration has happened withoutconsideration of the geographies of the neighbourhoods they happen within.

Adopting regeneration approaches with the principles highlighted in this article can lead to strong frameworks to guide theentire programme.For communities, being taken on the journey and actively involved in regeneration programmes gives them ownership over their neighbourhoods. We can build all of the pretty buildings and parks in the world, but if the process of building them has been distressing for communities, we will never find the urban wellbeing we hope to achieve. Urban regeneration practitioners must adopt frameworks and approaches that take a long term view of the needs of communities, embed accountability, and leave room for changing and adapting.

Strong, transparent, and committed governance is required to ensure this. Before any shovels hit soil, we should know why we are undertaking regeneration, what we want to achieve, what we need to do it, and who the regeneration will impact (and invite them to the table)! Setting outcomes and robust frameworks at the start of the process is a common theme across the regeneration projects highlighted here. In the past, cities have built places which have been oppressive and unhealthy, but strong communities have still thrived within - regeneration gives these communities an opportunity to stamp their identity and vision within the built form, it is the job for the public and private sector to enable and empower.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s new coalition government has agreed to “institute long-term city and regional infrastructure deals… to fund infrastructure.” (1) National campaigned on introducing city and regional deals, following in the footsteps of other right wing governments like the UK Conservatives and Liberal Party of Australia. A relatively recent development in infrastructure financing, the form they will take in this country is still unclear. Nevertheless, it is important for Councils, iwi, hapū, and infrastructure providers to begin thinking about what these deals could mean for addressing infrastructure issues in their backyards. In this paper, we take our best shot at demuddying the waters.

City Deals are agreements between Central governments and ‘economic regions’ designed to deliver significant infrastructure (both physicaland community) projects and associated economic uplift.

City Deals are designed to increase collaboration and cooperation between central and local governments working towards a shared visionfor the ‘economic region’ - which may be part of a city, a territorial authority area, regional council area, urban growth partnerships, or some combination of these. He piki tūranga,he piki kōtuku: The future for local government report identified City Deals as a type of “placebased agreement” that would be useful to “drive long-term, large-scale wellbeing improvements at place in a way that shines light on local priorities” (2). The cooperative approach usually means decision making power is devolved from central government to local governments in the economic regions.

How have they worked overseas? Evidence from the United Kingdom and Australia shows some teething problems.

31 City Deals have been signed in the UK, with 2 being negotiated as of January 20233. UK City Deals primarily prioritise investing in Infrastructure and Job Creation to improve GVA. Manchester has one of the oldest city deals and is generally considered the most successful. Key elements of this deal are its transport focus, binding governance and decision making structure, and an ‘earn-back’ scheme which allows the local governments to recoup a portion of national tax revenue generated by the investment (4).

Benefits of the City Deal initiative include greater cooperation between local authorities who are incentivised to focus on shared benefits, the perception of improved local control and decision making, which has assisted with engagement, and more rigorous decision making process for infrastructure investment. Critics of the UK experience have pointed to opaque negotiation, decision making, reporting, and accountability processes, variable benefits resulting in unequal geographies, and central government withholding negotiations as a stick to incentivise regional government policy reforms (5, 6).

Australia’s City Deal programme is newer, beginning in 2017. Australian City Deals are predominantly partnerships between Federal, State/Territory, and Local governments who co-fund infrastructure and development projects. Initiatives typically include significant infrastructure (e.g. stadium) re/development, creation of innovation precincts, and enhancing digital economies. Key milestones and some metrics are included in City Deals, however metrics/ KPIs are often not established during negotiations, instead being developed as part of a later implementation plan. Many metrics are somewhat basic - typically population growth, economic growth, employment data, etc, with some specialty metrics like number of patents registered.

Launceston, Tasmania’s deal includes 3-yearly implementation reviews (7). The first review was primarily positive, with improvements on all-but two metrics, positive stakeholder feedback, and general economic growth. However, it also recommended refreshing outcomes, objectives, and metrics to be more meaningful. These reviews are good to show accountability and an impetus to refresh the deal if needed.

City Deals in Aotearoa New Zealand are an opportunity to further existing urban development agendas and continue relationship building. There is no need to rewrite the rule book.

There is already recognition of the need for greater regional planning and cooperation in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is seen in Urban Growth Partnerships like the GCP, WRLC, SmartGrowth etc. The short-lived RMA reforms also included the formation of Regional Planning Committees who will be responsible for developing Regional Spatial Strategies and Natural & Built Environment Plans (8).

Evidence from the UK and Australia show that transport infrastructure have often been successful projects funded by City Deals. This highlights the potential benefit of growth catalysed by GoldenTriangle rail improvements, or mass transit proposals in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

What is a clear ingredient for a productive City Deal is genuine commitment to working together, and partnership.The growth of Spatial Planning in recent years has allowed local governments to strengthen their distant planning muscles, being able to identify what key priorities for growth and urban change are in the coming decades - as more urban environments produce Future Development Strategies, the ability to partner and collaborate is also growing. Central government (both politicians and agencies) need to come to the table being prepared to accept the visions of our local authorities and all parties need to have mutual trust and confidence in each other to succeed. This will require, especially from the politicians, putting ideological aversions to certain projects to bed and keeping their promise to “reshape the relationship” with local government.

Mana whenua participation in governance and decision-making will need to be significant to meet Te Tiritio Waitangi obligations, enable tino rangatiratanga, and recognise mana whenua role as kaitiaki. While this might be difficult given some of this government’s manufactured hysteria about co-governance, it is essential so that any deal is truly representative of the long-term aspirations and vision of an area. A quick review of Australian City Deals reveals an inconsistent approach to including Indigenous decisionmakers, values, and aspirations in the agreements and governance arrangements, in some cases promising to consult on cultural matters, while others include Aboriginal representation at all levels of implementation. This ad-hoc approach simply wouldn’t fly in Aotearoa New Zealand - the government needs to be clear what commitment it is making to Māori in any City or Regional Deal programme.

Finally, integrated Outcomes Monitoring & Evaluation frameworks should be a key element of City Deals. Our public sector is accustomed to looking beyond financial & economic metrics when evaluating the success. Taking elements of a wellbeing approach, or implementing metrics from (for example) the Living Standards Framework would be useful to give life to the proposed outcomes of any City Deals.

Local and regional government should start thinking about and articulating what they might want out of a City Deal.

We still know very little about the shape and size of Cityand Regional Deals in Aotearoa New Zealand, but we think its really important to begin thinking about what they might contain. It is clear that the infrastructure financing and funding game is changing - with indications that there will be fewer grants akin to the Infrastructure Acceleration Fund, or Central Government led projects; instead authorities will be incentivised to work with the private sector to fund infrastructure and rewarded for delivering projects or presenting comprehensive delivery plans. Hopefully we’ll hear more early next year. Whenever we do, we’ll be hoping that the government is committing to a genuine partnership with councils and mana whenua, and to ensure that any dealsare embedded with strong outcome metrics.

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^{1. Coalition Agreement - New Zealand National Party & ACT New Zealand, 54th Parliament}

^{2. He piki tūranga, he piki kōtuku The future for local government: p43}

^{3. City Deals - UK House of Commons Library}

^{4. Introducing UK City Deals - KPMG}

^{5. (PDF) City Deals, Decentralisation and the Governance of Local Infrastructure Funding and Financing in the UK}

^{6. City Deals: - UK Centre for Cities}

^{7. Launceston City Deal Three-Year Implementation Review Report}

^{8. Key components of our future resource management system| Ministry for the Environment}

Overview

Retirement is a time of life that is associated with relaxation and reaping the rewards of a lifetime of hard work. However, many of the older people in New Zealand are faced with increasing stresses and insecurities with housing and the cost of living. Older New Zealanders want to live in a safe, warm, dry, secure home, within a suitable distance to essential services and facilities, and friends and whānau enabling them to maintain vital social connections.

From speaking first-hand with representatives of the older population, and reviewing key pieces of research, The Urban Advisory explains how the current system of housing is failing New Zealanders. Providing a potential solution, this report details how scaling up the delivery of innovative housing models could go a long way towards avoiding many older New Zealanders facing retired life with financial stresses, and poor housing quality and insecurity.

Overview

The prevailing development settings in New Zealand severely limit the number of innovative housing models that can succeed at present. Current regulation, legislation, finance and lending, and land acquisition and underwriting systems do not adequately address this type of housing development. This means that those wishing to pursue this form of housing have to seek and pay for (expensive) bespoke legal advice. Without bespoke legal advice on each project, they encounter barriers that undermine project viability. Additionally, a lack of political support, as well as public awareness and acceptance of these models, further impedes upon successful delivery and possibilities of up scaling.

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Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the Community Wealth Building approach for economic development. This paper covers what Community Wealth Building is, why it is of value and  shares a few case studies of local and international Community Wealth Building initiatives. It concludes with a discussion about how it could be applied further in New Zealand, with specific reference to Eastern Porirua. 

This paper has been commissioned by Kāinga Ora to support the Eastern Porirua Regeneration Programme strategy, namely to facilitate the establishment of the working group that will support the implementation of Community Wealth Building across the regeneration programme.

What is it?

“Community wealth building is about creating a fairer, more socially just economy. It is practical action, framed by progressive concepts.” 

- Centre for Local Economic Strategies UK, September 2019

Community Wealth Building (CWB) works to fight economic inequality with transformative, inclusive solutions to return wealth to individuals, families and community-based organisations (Democracy Collaborative, 2020). It is a people-centred approach to local economic development which reorganises local economies to be fairer, prevents wealth flowing out of communities and instead places control of this wealth into the hands of local people, communities, businesses and organisations (CLES, 2020). Community Wealth Building solutions for community economic development, include restoring local banks, broadening local ownership and refocusing public and private resources (Democracy Collaborative, 2020). These activities have the potential to assist with ending intergenerational poverty and creating high-quality jobs that enable local workers to support their families while stabilizing their communities and environments. 

North American research from Baird, Katz, Lee & Palmer (2019) highlights how many of the impoverished or declining neighbourhoods still have tremendous assets and unrealised opportunities that can support Community Wealth Building. Each neighbourhood has distinctive qualities and characteristics, good ‘bones’ of infrastructure such as road networks, street grids and historic properties that can be leveraged through Community Wealth Building as well as established Anchor Institutions (Baird et al., 2019). This too is true for many of New Zealand’s regional and sub-city regions. Even where there is poor infrastructure, which is common, there remains a solid foundation in community pride, strong social connections and large amounts of land in public ownership that, if transferred to the community with the adequate support, can form the basis of a Community Wealth Building approach, where residents can stay in their community through a period of change, by being involved in the process of economic development and benefiting from the investment made by the public sector. In essence, it facilitates the reverse of gentrification, mitigating the effects of major investment by spreading it among the community and involving local people in the economic development process. 

Over the past 30 years, the Community Wealth Building field has developed a broad range of models and innovations, including – various forms of cooperatives, employee-owned companies, social enterprise, land trusts, municipal enterprise, community development financial institutions, community banks, and more. These structures and models are part of a growing ecosystem that aim to improving the ability of communities and individuals to (Democracy Collaborative, 2020): 

1. Increase asset ownership; 
2. Anchor jobs locally by broadening ownership over capital; 
3. Help achieve key environmental goals (including decreasing carbon emissions); 
4. Expand the provision of public services by strengthening the municipal tax base; and 
5. Ensure local economic stability. 

Fundamental Principles of Community Wealth Building 

‍One key goal of Community Wealth Building is to create an inclusive economy, with living wage jobs for local residents to provide all families and households with economic security. This is achieved with a place-based approach to economic development. By linking employers with workers, and supporting workforce development, Community Wealth Building works to develop under-utilised local assets across the board and create local jobs for the benefit of local residents (Kelly & McKinley, 2015). Workforce training and development is focused on creating and finding jobs for those with barriers to employment. Instead of trusting in ‘trickle-down’ economics, Community Wealth Building tackles wealth inequality square-on. Supportive institutions and systems are often developed to support this new norm of job creation and localised economic development, specifically powerful Anchor Institutions function to promote local, broad-based ownership of the economy and meaningful employment.

What are Anchor Institutions? Anchor Institutions are major quasi-public locally-based institutions such as local authorities, hospitals, universities, community foundations and sometimes large local businesses which have power to influence and drive how resources are applied to support equitable economic development. CLES describe Anchor Institutions as “organisations which have an important presence in a place, usually by virtue of being large scale employers, the largest purchasers of goods and services in the locality, overseeing large areas of land and having relatively fixed assets” (2015, p. 10). Crucially, Anchor Institutions are often tied to a place by their mission, histories, physical assets and local relationships (CLES, 2020). They have a large influence over life in their communities. Guided by Community Wealth Building principles, Anchor Institutions can play a defining role in creating and reinforcing local economic ties: implementing buy-local strategies to purchase goods and services from worker cooperatives, and investing patient capital in local non-profit organisations, to keep money circulating locally (Kelly & McKinley, 2015).

The Community Wealth Building model is also built on partnerships and collaboration between various city stakeholders from foundations, anchor Institutions, unions and community organisations to progressive business networks, workers and community residents. In contrast to traditional economic development, where the demands of business drive the economic development approach, Community Wealth Building creates a ‘power shift’ by bringing community to the table alongside government and business, to demand accountability, good jobs and community benefits. The combined force of these collaborative partners can create momentous change to local economies. 

Community Wealth Building strategies are usually financed through partnerships of foundations, local banks, Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI), which contribute funding into municipal loan funds. From there, municipalities make equity investments in their communities and introduce responsible banking policies (Kelly & McKinley, 2015). For example, cities can partner with others to deliver equitable land development such as community land trusts for housing.

The Community Wealth Building model employs a systems approach, bringing partners and sectors together to build an inclusive, sustainable economy where everyone can thrive. It requires the work of many hands, built and supported by a range of stakeholders who share the vision to create a good local economy (CLES & PCC, 2019). It offers a regenerative framework for economic development, a welcome response to the clear limits of our existing economic and social systems. 

A regenerative approach means: 

• Prioritising environmental and social wellbeing
• Viewing wealth holistically, including but not limited to financial wealth
• Empowering local communities and local government to create and retain wealth

The framework for Community Wealth Building covers five areas (CLES & PCC, 2019, p. 8-9) (Figure 1)

Why do we need it?

“Traditionally, economic development involves two players: the city and the business community... The balance of power shifts when the community comes to the table demanding accountability, good jobs, and community benefits. In a potentially momentous shift, Community Wealth Building brings a powerful “third force” to the table, in the combined, collaborative force of anchor institutions, resident groups, philanthropy, non-profits, workers, unions, and locally owned businesses.”

- Democracy Collaborative, 2015

Traditional developer-led regeneration and economic development is failing to address present economic challenges and delivery for local people (CLES, 2020). Community Wealth Building offers a counter approach to the standard economic modelling approach that has controlled fiscal decision making, and instead invites developers, city managers, mayors, and other caretakers of local economies to think differently. It places control and benefits into the hands of local people, redirecting wealth back into the local economy (CLES, 2020). We have seen decades of data-focused urban economic development which seeks to understand developable space, transport demand, employment exports, metrics of amenity space, cultural spaces and housing supply; but, the richness of what people and communities bring to the table and benefit from are lost in the gathering of this data and the ‘at any cost’ economic-growth mindset (Kelly & McKinley, 2015). This approach has tended to perpetuate patterns of wealth inequality, attracting investment and development in some areas while ignoring other areas (Ibid.). The assumption that wealth will ‘trickle down’ from inward investment and that everyone will benefit from prosperity and economic growth is not true (CLES & PCC, 2019). For example, strategies which prioritise town centre development or attract big businesses to boost employment and economic growth are failing to reach many of the communities most in need of economic opportunity (Ibid.). 

Communities employing Community Wealth Building strategies have benefited from this alternative economic development approach, and the proof is easily measured. In Preston, the Community Wealth Building model had significant direct impacts (CLES & Preston City Council, 2019):

• £74m redirected back into the local economy through procurement
• £200m invested in the wider (regional) Lancashire economy
• 4000 extra employees receiving the Real Living Wage
• Reduction in unemployment from 6.5% in 2014 to 3.1% in 2017 (Compared to 2017 UK average of 4.6%)

It was also reported that by encouraging anchor institutions to spend their money locally and socially, Community Wealth Building has (CLES & PCC, 2019):

• Developed the skills of local people
• Created stable, well-paying jobs
• Reduced levels of in-work poverty
• Kept money circulating in the local economy
• Realised good local economies for people and place

How might local economies in New Zealand cities be different, if we stopped focusing on data and complex economic models and instead, focused on people and community? Namely, what does a wellbeing approach to economic development look like?

How is CWB being applied?

The Preston Model

Preston in Lancashire adopted a Community Wealth Building approach in response to the economic situation in the Preston area in the 2000s. Preston had many economic and social issues common to declining deindustrialised cities, including stagnating population growth and retail floor space, poor quality housing, unemployment, child poverty, urban decay, rough sleepers, and the highest suicide rate in England (CLES & PCC, 2019; Shaefer, 2018). The recession following the global financial crisis also brought a fatal blow to a proposed £700m mega-mall development, to be delivered by one of the world’s largest developers, that was planned to revive Preston (Ibid.). But this proved to be a turning point, where everything changed for Preston, for the better.

In 2011, Preston City Council (PCC) adopted a “guerilla localism” strategy for tackling their economic challenges: keeping money in the local economy as much as possible to boost local spending, growing local business and establishing worker-owned cooperatives. Working closely with the mancunian thinktank, The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), PCC entered into an official strategic partnership to reform the city’s public procurement processes by “harnessing the potential of public institutions” (CLES & PCC, 2019, p. 22). 

This work was inspired by successful cooperative economies in Mondragón, Spain and Bologna, Italy. On paper, CLES modelled Preston’s reform on a model of Community Wealth Building previously developed in the American city of Cleveland, Ohio, by The Democracy Collaborative (CLES, 2015). Modelling the power of collective methods of economic development, Preston has demonstrated that reliance on external investment is not the only way to support local economies (Ibid). Due to its success, this approach is now widely referred to as the ‘Preston Model’ and has inspired a wave of local authorities across the UK to take similar action (CLES & PCC, 2019).

PCC functions as the ‘place leader’ for the city, promoting the concept of Community Wealth Building to other Anchor Institutions in and around Preston and to the private sector. Working with CLES, PCC persuaded six public bodies to commit to implementing the Community Wealth Building strategy, including spending locally wherever possible, including:

• Lancashire County Council
• University of Central Lancashire
• Preston's College
• Cardinal Newman College
• Community Gateway Housing Association
• Lancashire Constabulary

CLES chief executive Neil McInroy presented this to anchor institutions as common-sense: while it defies conventional procurement strategies, “it’s practical. You say to the housing association, ‘How would you like to do more for your residents so they’ll be better off and pay their rent on time?’”(Chakrabortty, 2018). Indeed, it has taken time for the local business and local tenders to adjust to working this way. But investing locally has continued to reap rewards, with more work for local businesses and local residents. 

In 2012, Preston declared itself the first living wage employer in the north of England and later PCC established a credit union to take on the loan shops (CLES & PCC, 2019). CLES analysis in 2013 identified a £450m leakage out of the Lancashire economy from Anchor Institutions (of a £750m spend), and only a 5% spend in Preston (ibid.). From there PCC started working with CLES to apply Community Wealth Building principles in Preston. The focus of this work was on influencing local spend. An example is how Lancashire county council put a contract to provide school meals out to tender. Officials shaped the market to fit their society, breaking the impossibly large contract into manageable chunks, with hugely successful results. Local Lancashire suppliers won every contract, boosting the local economy by £2m (Chakrabortty, 2018). Whenever the local economy was unable to supply the goods and services needed by Anchor Institutions, CLES and PCC advocated for the creation of worker-owned co-operatives. These were meant to fill the gaps in the local economy, where the local economy was as yet unable to deliver the requested goods and services.

More recently, in 2018, the planned renovation of the central covered market was completed, led by a local family-owned developer who employed local contractors. In this project, the Community Wealth Building approach supported job growth and enabled more apprenticeships and jobs for local workers. In 2017, CLES reanalysed anchor institution spending, since 2013, revealing that spend in Preston economy had increased from £38m to £111m (CLES & PCC, 2019).
The policy approaches and models that make up the Preston Model form a collection of strategies which aim to make it more difficult for local financial resources to ‘leak out’ of the local economy. They aim to leverage procurement rules and investments from anchor institutions to benefit the community. In order to achieve these community benefits, the Preston Model of Community Wealth Building aims to (Democracy Collaborative, 2020):

• Increase asset ownership;
• Anchor jobs locally by broadening ownership over capital;
• Help achieve key environmental goals;
• Expand the provision of public services by strengthening the municipal tax base, and;
• Ensure local economic stability.

Within a few years of changing the local procurement processes in Preston, the city has become a model for how local economies in the UK can generate their own wealth. In times of austerity measures and budget cuts by local authorities of up to 56 percent, the Preston Model has flourished (CLES & PCC, 2019). During the 2016 UK general election, Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, praised it as a model town for economic development, and other Labour MPs began to endorse the model.

“Together, we have built relationships with the city's anchor institutions, poured over procurement data and done the hard work of knitting a new economic approach against the grain of much conventional thinking on economic development.”

- Councillor Matthew Brown, Preston City Council

The Kāinga Ora study tour with The Urban Advisory in October 2019 met with Matthew Brown from Preston City Council and Neil McIlroy from CLES. Discussions and a tour of projects in Preston provided some insights about the Preston Model for Community Wealth Building:

• For the framework to be delivered, it was essential to have an organisation that is responsible for having a broker and align function to orchestrate and coordinate deliverables.
• Major partnerships with organisations such as the Pension Fund and the Sovereign Wealth Fund provided a diversified financing pool.
• The diversity of ownership models was a key driver, and supported the goal of ‘building a democratic economy where local people are in control’.
• Three key steps included (1) building awareness and getting people to understand the framework and its value, (2) facilitating or incubating existing and new businesses, and (3) finding key partners (anchor institutions).
• There are dedicated organisations established and funded by the Council to build capability and capacity in the cooperative business sector. 
• Establish a network of people who have knowledge and expertise in the area to meet regularly, and embed champions within the relevant organization and local and central government level.
• The way in which affordable housing is changing; the definition of affordable housing is broad, the permanent rental sector is growing, the role of not-for-profit developers is increasing and the public sector is investing in them (through low interest loans and grant funding), as well as infrastructure to support the community-led housing sector.
• There is a greater degree of partnership occurring between the sectors, and interventions such as land swaps, funding for infrastructure, and the adoption of a ‘sign-posting’ mentality to direct people to the relevant organisations than that can assist with funding other support.
• Early engagement with the market has been critical; market sounding, and defining the parameters of what the city needs to be achieved gives the private sector the confidence to engage, and invest; opportunities for the private sector to make money are allowed while preserving some profit to be reinvested back into the city – “invest, support, or evolve”. 
• Identify and monitor appropriate impact measures, e.g. amount of Council spending occurring locally.

The Clevedon Model

Similar to Preston, at the turn of the 21st century, neighbourhoods around University Circle in Cleveland had some of the highest foreclosure and unemployment rates in the United States, with poor retail, services and public amenities (Song, 2014). The weakened social and spatial fabric of these inner city neighbourhoods was the product of economic globalisation and capital flight, post-war renewals, highway and road construction, suburbanisation and changing federal and municipal strategies from neighbourhood improvement to incentives and subsidies to attract private investment (Ibid.).  As a result of these economic development approaches, these communities experienced more income and wealth inequality, social insecurity and spatial inequalities around development and investment.

Cleveland’s response to this situation was a Community Wealth Building. The Community Wealth Building approach implemented in Cleveland has been so successful that it is widely referred to as the ‘Cleveland Model’ and has been adapted in cities worldwide - including Preston - to support inclusive economic development, green job creation and neighbourhood stabilisation. The Cleveland Model was and is being implemented through a partnership between the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Centre, the City of Cleveland and major hospitals and universities in the city, supported by the Democracy Collaborative. Collectively, they are implementing a new model of large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting businesses. 

The Democracy Collaborative is a non-profit, founded in 2000, that offers a range of advisory, research, policy development, and field-building activities to support on-the-ground practitioners with Community Wealth Building. They are a national leader in equitable, inclusive, and sustainable development, working to shift the majority mandate of economic development—and of the economy as a whole—toward a new system that is place-based, inclusive, collaborative, and ecologically sustainable (Democracy Collaborative, 2020). 

They work in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Employee Ownership Center, the City of Cleveland, and the city's major hospitals and universities to implement large-scale worker-owned and community-benefiting cooperative businesses. The Evergreen Cooperatives of Cleveland have become a global innovation model for creating more sustainable regional economies. Local residents earn an ownership stake as they create thriving businesses, while playing a transformational role in building vibrant neighbourhoods. We proudly partner with University Circle anchor institutions, helping create green jobs and driving economic stability in nearby low-wealth communities. Cooperatives include: 

• Evergreen Energy Solutions 
• Green City Growers
• Evergreen Cooperative Laundry

The Kāinga Ora study tour with The Urban Advisory in October 2019 spent a day in Cleveland with Jessica Rose of the Democracy Collaborative. This included a meeting with the CEO John McMicken and a tour of two Evergreen Cooperative sites. Key insights from this day were:

• A large part of the success of this model has been the not-for-profit organisation that sits behind the co-ops and has a management services agreement with each of them. This governance and management layer funds management teams with specific subject matter expertise to support the co-op management. They run the training programmes for the co-op leaders, including: job-specific training, supervisor and conflict training, communications training, and financial training. These services support the workers who own and manage their cooperative to have the right skills training to support their success.
• They describe their approach to delivering cooperatives as a “place-based strategy”, designed to have a long-term impact on neighbourhoods. They are, therefore, examples of how economic strategy and design strategy must intersect when taking an outcome-focused approach to regeneration.
• A ‘jobs first, homes second’ mission has helped to create more opportunities for their workers to be in a position where they can sustainably support paying their mortgages and working towards responsible home ownership.
• These cooperatives are also supported by the city, through support with accessing capital; this made a significant difference to the viability of these models when in their initial inception phase.

The Southern Initiative

In 2018, The Southern Initiative (TSI) was established through the Auckland Plan 2050 to help address some of South Auckland’s most pressing social and economic challenges. TSI works to champion and enable social innovation, including experimenting, learning and delivering real socio-economic transformation. Its central philosophy is strengths-based and whānau-centric, working with whānau, local social change agents, grassroots entrepreneurs, businesses, agencies and a number of organisations.

“Supporting a prosperous, resilient South Auckland where tamariki and whānau thrive.”

- The Southern Initiative

Its vision statement is supported by four operational pillars, that outline what they do, which include; ‘growing capability and capacity’, ‘prototyping and demonstrating’, ‘leveraging, influencing and inventivising’, and ‘joining up and connecting’.

The key focus areas of TSI include:

• Shared Prosperity: Demonstrating inclusive, just, circular and regenerative economic development where prosperity is shared.
• Innovation and Technology: Connecting Māori and Pacific rangatahi to innovation pathways that are future-focussed.
• Tamariki Wellbeing: Enabling whānau centred approaches to counter prolonged cumulative stress and partner with whānau, for whānau led local initiatives.
• Healthy Infrastructure and Environments: Reinvestment in environment, home and community infrastructure that helps grow and restore mauri, safety, security, health and wellbeing.

The Southern Initiative also established the Auckland Co-design Lab, which focuses on capacity building and practice development among central government agencies and Auckland Council (local government). 

TSI was developed in light of the recognition that business-as-usual practices in both the public and private sectors were not bringing about the changes needed at the pace required. In short, South Aucklanders had not shared in Auckland's economic growth and prosperity. Similar to the international model of Community Wealth Building, TSI is a place-based initiative that takes an integrated and inclusive approach to social and economic development. In this way, TSI seeks to transform South Auckland. TSI “enables local Māori and Pasifika businesses to gain access to local government and corporate supply chains that will have massive benefits for years to come. It is just one example of the unique opportunity TSI has to broker connections and collaborate with the community to unlock the region’s enormous potential” (2018, p. 3). 

For example, TSI has been involved in the establishment of He Waka Eke Noa - New Zealand’s first supplier diversity model. He Waka Eke Noa connects Māori and Pasifika-owned businesses with government and corporate clients and buyers wanting to purchase goods, services and works (HWEN, 2020). It exists to intentionally create opportunities for those disadvantaged in the labour market, including training, qualifications, sponsorship, pastoral care, mentoring and support for a range of ‘second chancers’ and others struggling to adapt to the workforce.

“He waka eke noa”

“A canoe we are all in with no exceptions.”

- Māori proverb

TSI holds a crucial point of difference, that reflects the New Zealand context: it provides space for, and reconnection to the innovation inherent in mātauranga (Māori knowledge) and indigenous knowledge systems. This work seeks to build capacity and create room for more whānau-centric approaches, including co-design, family and community-led local initiatives that support alignment with the aspirations and outcomes of South Aucklanders. To further this integrated approach, TSI works as a broker, facilitator and translator communicating across different worlds. 

Te Haa o Manukau

In 2018, a new innovation hub and co-working space - Te Haa o Manukau - opened in the heart of the Manukau CBD. Te Haa o Manukau is about furthering South Auckland’s standing as the creative capital of Aotearoa, helping to grow entrepreneurial ventures and prepare young South Aucklanders to navigate the future of work. Manurewa High School, New Zealand’s largest decile 1 secondary school, also now has a co-designed MakerSpace which exists to support rangatahi into tech entrepreneurship through developing their leadership, creativity, problem solving and risk-taking skills.

Further Application in New Zealand

“Ki te kōtahi te kākaho ka whati, ki te kāpuia, e kore e whati.”

“If there is but one stem of a reed it will break, but if they are in a bundle they will never break.”

- Kingi Tāwhiao

We can see from Preston and Cleveland how the Community Wealth Building approach to economic development had been successfully applied. These cities present a ‘proof of concept’ of how it works in practice and has the capacity to “achieve a meaningful transfer of wealth and power back to local communities” (CLEs & PCC, 2019, p. 22).

In the New Zealand context, we see the potential for Community Wealth Building models to facilitate and balance ecological, cultural, social and economic outcomes for community wellbeing in line with the Treasury Living Standards Framework. More importantly, there is significant alignment between a Community Wealth Building framework and a kaupapa Māori approach to sustainable growth. The ethos of this approach has many synergies with Māori values such as rangatiratanga (self-determination or governance), kaitiakitanga (stewardship, guardianship of taonga), manaakitanga (caring for a person’s mana), kotahitanga (unity, solidarity) and whanaungatanga (relationships and connection). Furthermore, the Māori world view values the environment, Papatūānuku, which supports human life; people hold responsibility as kaitiaki of this life-giving environment we live in. This aligns with the regenerative economic approach that underpins Community Wealth Building. 

The Southern Initiative has highlighted some ways that mātauranga Māori and indigenous values can be integrated into Community Wealth Building, as specific to the South Auckland context. TSI is in its early days however it has already begun to share what they are learning from their work. Key themes include (The Southern Initiative, 2020):

• Toxic stress experienced by whānau and tamariki present barriers and impacts the process of supporting and making change. Relieving this stress is important in this process.
• A long-term intergenerational commitment to the required change is needed and so this work will take time. The commitment must be from all sectors and the communities.
• Interest and alignment from government, service providers and philanthropic institutions in working together
• ‘Story of place’ is a strong connecting a thread that supports TSI initiatives
• To ensure shared prosperity, creating opportunities for recognition and connection to culture is an important part of building conditions for Māori and Pacific economic wellbeing.
• Support placing indigenous knowledge (mātauranga Māori) at the forefront of approaches to innovation, integrated with western science.
• Social connection and enduring relationships enable and sustain change, positive social and economic outcomes.  

Community Wealth Building strategies can be applied anywhere. However, they must be place-based which usually requires a bespoke local approach. Hence, regions and cities within New Zealand could adopt and develop bespoke, appropriate local strategies for Community Wealth Building. This is most crucial for areas where the economy has been in decline through years of under-investment, as is the case, in many places in New Zealand, including Eastern Porirua. The contextualising process should involve an assessment of local need to identify the unique economic circumstances and how Community Wealth Building might be moulded to meet these strategic challenges (CLES & PC, 2019, p.23). Thinking locally ensures partners have the opportunity to leverage local conditions, and build the approach together based on local realities, rather than a ‘lift and shift’ interventionist approach.

The Democracy Collaborative has developed a step-by-step guide to getting started with Community Wealth Building (Figure 3).

Application to Eastern Porirua

The Eastern Porirua Regeneration Programme offers a chance to kick start the development and implementation of local policies, strategies and initiatives to support Community Wealth Building, which in turn may inspire other applications within regeneration programmes in New Zealand. The mandate from the original Business Case (under the wellbeing approach taken by Treasury), has now been expanded on in the Regeneration Framework, as developed by the three strategic partners (Porirua City Council, Ngāti Toa and Kāinga Ora). The framework also considered the outputs of considerable public engagement which identified aspirations from the community, for their future, that are in line with the five principles of Community Wealth Building, providing a unique opportunity to consider its application in a regeneration context, where Community Wealth Building stands out as a compelling ethic for economic development.

Urban regeneration, in its fullest meaning*, is in its infancy in New Zealand, and understanding how it can be used as an economic and community development tool in New Zealand requires more thought. Regeneration is about more than just housing or town centre revitalisation: it requires thinking about equitable, inclusive growth and how to reorganise the economy (and built environment) for the long-term benefit of local residents. By incorporating economic drivers - investment, employment, training and worker cooperatives - alongside community focused housing models, Community Wealth Building covers a range of topics and outcomes relevant to regeneration programmes.

From the Regeneration Framework, the outcomes sought for Eastern Porirua have been defined across a wide-ranging group of domains (Figure 4).

Community Wealth Building delivers national and international benefits that directly align to these outcomes sought in the Eastern Porirua regeneration programme, including: 

• Productivity benefits: contributing to national prosperity
• Social benefits: bringing economic activity where it can produce the highest social return
• Environmental benefits: shortening supply chains

Specific, domains and outcomes which are impacted by the Community Wealth Building agenda include:

Inclusive Community Wealth

• There are opportunities to create wealth in Eastern Porirua
• People and existing businesses are included in local economic development projects
• A wide range of career opportunities are available for new and existing residents
• There are a range of mixed incomes/families in the area
• People are self-supporting and financially independent
• People visit and spend their money in Eastern Porirua

Education + Skills

• Children attend school locally and get a quality education
• The range of career opportunities available in Porirua fulfil people’s sense of purpose
• There are good quality school and professional employment opportunities, including further education and vocational training

Access + Mobility

• People have equitable, affordable and easy access to a range of health and social services and economic opportunities
• Eastern Porirua is connected to Western Porirua, Kapiti Coast and Greater Wellington

What can we do in Eastern Porirua?

“Growing an economic engine is essential”

- Sir Howard Bernstein, International Study Tour

A wellbeing led regeneration programme provides a critical opportunity for Anchor Institutions to unite around a shared understanding of their civic responsibility to produce a good local economy for the people of Porirua, Reduce generational and in-work poverty/under employment. through, for example, create stable, quality jobs with a living wage for local residents. Working with anchor institutions to create a local supply chain and pay a living wage to their employees. Implementing programmes that promote and provide meaningful employment/career opportunities, not just jobs.‍

‍1. Use Local Supply Chains

We can support locally-owned and operated businesses (existing and new), partner with the community & key stakeholders to advance social procurement and associated benefits and deliver a Capacity Building Strategy (in the framework). For example, we can partner with Anchor Institutions to prioritise spending and sourcing services and products locally, e.g. government should only buy its catering from local businesses.    ‍

2. Prioritise Fair Employment

We can develop and adopt a Living Wage or Thriving Wage and inclusive employment policy (PCC). And, engage Anchor Institutions and associated businesses in their supply chain to adopt a Thriving Wage or Living Wage policy also. We can develop or support programmes which unlock employment pathways,  develop job seeking skills, offer qualifications, mentoring and support for low-income, unemployed or ‘second chance’ workers. For example, we can deliver targeted training for people in construction, and other trades or identify residents who want to attend tertiary education and address known barriers to this. In Porirua, this could involve resourcing to help deliver the Porirua Employment and Skills Plan, including establishing a Skills Hub.

3. Invest Locally

Anchor Institutions have a key role to play in boosting local investment through spending, as well as supporting local employment and job training. Also, we can focus on business and investment attraction and incentivisation, by finding businesses, developers or investors that could benefit from being present in Eastern Porirua and work with them to understand what conditions would need to be present to enable them to participate. For example, a low interest fund could be established for community housing development with investors like Simplicity and Community Finance.

4. Make Land + Assets Work for Locals and the Environment

We can restructure the function and ownership of local assets to ensure we deliver tangible financial benefits for citizens. For example, undertake a rationalisation of community assets, their uses and a co-design an integrated approach between the community groups, local council, iwi and government departments about what assets and land are required for what purposes, and how can they be consolidated or managed differently to better optimise their use and reduce cost. The result would be improved communal facilities for community oriented activities run by the community.

5. Diversify Ownership Models

We can focus on equitable growth models to support new local enterprises, including social enterprises, which return economic power to local communities and businesses. For example, we could establish a cooperatively owned and operated café and co-working space that returns profit to the employees. We can fund and implement equitable and sustainable, community-focused housing. Supporting local people to co-design, co-develop, and co-own a range of housing types. For example, housing models such as Community Land Trusts and Cooperatives which deliver permanent affordable housing provision and economic opportunities. 

In summary

The UK Centre for Local Economic Strategies describes Community Wealth Building as “an intentional reorganisation of the local economy in order to tackle the inequalities and disadvantages that are today, so acutely felt in our homes and communities” (CLES & PCC, 2019, p.4). As a framework and driver for creating an inclusive economy, Community Wealth Building aims to organise the economy so that wealth is not extracted, but broadly held, and that income is recirculated (CLES & PCC, 2019). Overall this is about identifying the opportunities for inclusive economic development that are contextually appropriate, and that are either supported by or identified by the community, rather than these being imposed upon them.

‍

References

Chakrabortty, A. (2018) In 2011 Preston hit rock bottom. Then it took back control. The Guardian, 31 January 2018. Retrieved from:  

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/31/preston-hit-rock-bottom-took-back-control?CMP=share_btn_tw

CLES (2020). Retrieved from: https://cles.org.uk/

Democracy Collaborative (2020). Community Wealth Building. Retrieved from: https://democracycollaborative.org/content/infographics-cities-building-community-wealth

He Waka Eke Noa (2020) Website. Retrieved 11 February 2020 from: https://www.wen.org.nz/

Song, L. (2014). Evergreen Cooperative Initiative : Anchor-based strategy for inner city regeneration. Urban Solutions (4), p.50-56.

Baird, R., Katz, B., Lee, J. & Palmer, D. (2019). Towards A New System of Community Wealth. Report produced for Drexel's Nowak Metro Finance Lab, BluePrint Local and Accelerator for America. 

Kelly, M. & McKinley, S. (2015) Cities Building Community Wealth. Democracy Collaborative: Takoma Park, Maryland.

Shaefer, L. (2018) The Preston Model of Community Wealth Building in the UK. Centre for Public Impact: United Kingdom. Received from:  

https://www.centreforpublicimpact.org/case-study/the-preston-model-of-community-wealth-building-in-the-uk/

The Southern Initiative (2020) Website. Retrieved 11 February 2020 from: https://www.tsi.nz/

The Southern Initiative (2018). TSI Year in Review 2018. Retrieved 11 February 2020 from: https://www.tsi.nz/our-reports

Overview

Collective housing is innovative, community-focused housing which provides options outside of the typical renting or ownership models. Three of these models - Cooperative housing, Community Land Trusts, and Cohousing - are internationally popular tools to provide affordable, stable housing, but they are poorly understood in Aotearoa New Zealand.

To bridge the gap, The Urban Advisory (TUA) have created one-page learning guides for each of these models. These give a quick guide for people to understand the basics of what these models are and how they work.

TUA worked with Unitec School of Architecture and Design to curate the publication of the first special edition of Asylum journal for Unitec’s School of Architecture.

TUA developed the journal theme Reimagining our Future Neighbourhoods, which invites readers to challenge our typical conceptions of how we build our towns and cities in Aotearoa, and embrace new philosophies, construction methods, and amenities. The journal was published in 2023 and included new, diverse voices in the fields of architecture and urban design. A high quality physical and digital publication was produced, with TUA providing input into the design of the journal.

‍
Focusing on the theme Reimagining our Future Neighbourhoods, we curated 14 articles from innovative academics and practitioners around Aotearoa. An open submission process was conducted, which involved curation and selection of articles, as well as targeted invitations of voices who we wished to amplify in the journal.  TUA provided feedback to authors, worked on edits, and managed the submission and peer review processes.  TUA created a narrative to guide the reader through the journal TUA’s input included theming and sequencing the submitted articles.

Overview

Cooperative housing models are common across Europe, and provide an attractive “third option” for delivering housing beyond traditional rental and ownership models. Despite this, the model is not present and poorly understood in Aotearoa. The Urban Advisory (TUA) have distilled key lessons from visiting several European cooperatives in this report to show the wider potential of cooperatives and how they could work here. 

Many New Zealanders are locked out of home ownership and trapped in expensive, insecure rentals. Innovative housing models have the potential to address parts of Aotearoa’s housing crisis - the first step is understanding the potential, and how they may be delivered. This report answers six questions:

1. What is cooperative housing?
2. How do housing cooperatives work? 
3. Who do housing cooperatives serve?
4. How are housing cooperatives funded?
5. How are housing cooperatives managed?
6. What kind of typologies can a housing cooperative be? 

Using Case Studies from Europe, this report gives a short overview of how cooperatives have provided safe, affordable housing around the world and how they could be one part of the solution to Aotearoa’s housing crisis. 

This report explores how to deliver ‘en-masse’ houses that reduce initial and ongoing costs and become affordable. The report looks at ways of achieving this through better use of our physical, economic and knowledge-based resources. 

The key topics covered by the report are;

1. Co-operatives; what they are and their potential to support diversity and reduce individual costs.
2. Community Land Trusts; what they are and how they can support perpetual affordability.
3. Mechanisms to deliver affordable housing; six regulatory and non-regulatory pathways: Policy, Strategy & Leadership, Land-use Planning, Building & Planning Regulations, Funding, and Education. 

The current system and its band-aid approach to affordability is not working. Change is long overdue. The state of flux caused by the pandemic presents an opportune moment to test new ideas. A call for collaboration between the new urban development not-for-profit-sector and the government sector can emerge as being drivers for this change. Through this will emerge a resilient and equitable system for housing at scale.

Overview

How bringing back trains and investing in rail infrastructure could help revitalise our rural and regional town centres.

Transport and infrastructure has immense power to catalyse the regeneration of local neighbourhoods (being environments and communities). The challenge is to make sure that this regeneration is inclusive, economically and environmentally sustainable, and innovative. Many of Aotearoa New Zealand’s town centres could better serve the people who live and use them everyday – passenger rail could be the impetus for the local regeneration of these neighbourhoods.

People and places should be at the centre of all urban policy – we looked at the opportunity for people to have passenger rail networks available and accessible and the impacts on their wellbeing. This article outlines an indicative process for prioritising and planning rail regeneration projects. An integrated process of prioritisation, identification, visioning, investment, and ongoing support is essential for successful regeneration projects.

The shared experience of Covid-19 across New Zealand homes brought a great sense of collectivity to the surface. It also exposed the realities of the vulnerable and the issues of housing that are in need of being addressed.  The pandemic forced us to rethink the way in which we interact with our homes, our parks, local stores and businesses, and ask: Can these be designed differently? This post-covid period draws similarities to the post-war period that saw large investments into housing and urban development. The question for today is what will we do differently with the opportunity in front of us? 

This report argues for a systemic change in how we think about housing and urban development. Lessons from a 2019 study tour highlight the opportunities and challenges for how to approach this differently in New Zealand. 

The report is divided into four sections. These are: 

1. An insight into the current unprecedented opportunity for our generation to respond to the existing crisis of housing and invest in better communities. 
2. Key lessons to learn from examples we visited in the United Kingdom and the United States on housing affordability displacement within large scale development and regeneration programmes and income equality. 
3. A roadmap for transforming housing and urban development in New Zealand through partnerships and cross-sector collaboration, new approaches to governance, strategy and leadership, and prioritising equitable and sustainable housing models. 
4. A summary of how the future of homes and communities in New Zealand are changing. 

The new urban development agenda, Covid-19 and the 2020 ‘Rebuilding Together’ Budget presents a timely opportunity for New Zealand.  

In a post-covid period there is an opportunity to improve how we approach the development of homes and communities, to transform how we meet the needs of our communities and to support our collective social, cultural and economic wellbeing in New Zealand.
‍

With reference to the Eastern Porirua Regeneration Programme in New Zealand, this chapter explores the concept of wellbeing in the built environment; specifically, why it is important and how it is defined. The Eastern Porirua Regeneration Programme is the first urban development project that has been mandated and funded under the New Zealand Government's 2019 Wellbeing Budget, an important step towards embedding wellbeing in New Zealand public policy (1).

Why Wellbeing?

One of the most difficult challenges facing today’s world is how to accommodate the rapidly growing and crowding of urban populations in a way that supports and enhances inhabitants’ long-term health and wellbeing (2). The World Health Organisation (WHO) identifies worldwide urbanisation as one of the leading 21st century challenges to personal and public health. Cities have historically been a challenge for how human health and wellbeing can be delivered; they can contribute unique or intense stresses and adverse-effects to urban residents (3). Over half of the world’s population (55%) live in urban areas and this is predicted to increase to over two thirds (68%) by 2050 (4). A predicted 90% of New Zealand residents will live in urban areas by 2050, despite the fact that New Zealand is not considered to be densely populated by global comparison (See Figure 1).

Urbanisation presents numerous and varied challenges to citymakers, from population growth and social change to housing affordability, population health and environmental crises. In the context of these complex challenges, cities and governments are taking the opportunity to apply new frameworks and methodologies to address urban issues. For example, decision-makers are recognising that “the health and wellbeing of their citizens is perhaps a city’s most important asset” (7) and thus are adopting approaches that nurture wellbeing and consider both people and place. Similarly, the global emergence of ‘smart city’ approaches reflects the complexity of our urban systems today, by creating a desire and necessity to embrace innovation to address urban issues. However, smart cities are not only about data and digital technology, as it is widely understood to be, rather, it is about better governance and enabling data driven decision making that promote better outcomes for citizens.

Human-centricity and agency is crucial to inform and guide the transformative use of data and technology (8). This is especially critical with governance, data collection and working collaboratively. An example is the City of Edmonton Smart City Strategy (Figure 2), which is about “working collaboratively with citizens and partners to optimise the use of data and technology, and influence the development of policies, programs, services and innovative funding models” (9). Here, a smart city framework became the foundation for delivering wellbeing outcomes, such as health and community connectivity, across the city.

Many of the principles of smart cities transcend the framework itself. New Zealand is a leader in the emergent field of wellbeing governance. This budget was developed by integrating data around human, social and environmental capital, as well as the standard financial capital. The budget is to be used as a governance tool that better connects wellbeing assessment with the actions of the government (10). New Zealand is experiencing significant urban growth and population change, coupled with housing affordability, security and quality issues.

This situation has developed a mandate to pursue major urban regeneration projects to provide for the needs of current and future generations in local towns and cities. To achieve this, the New Zealand Government established Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities in late 2019, an urban development authority tasked with developing integrated urban communities and delivering a range of social, economic, and environmental outcomes (11). A case study of the first Kāinga Ora led urban regeneration project, informed by a wellbeing business case, is provided in this chapter to explore how the delivery of urban regeneration is intrinsically linked to the wellbeing outcomes experienced by residents.

Defining Wellbeing

Wellbeing is a broad term, generally associated with conceptions of human health, happiness and thriving - for people and communities - inclusive of the physical, mental, emotional, cultural and spiritual aspects of being (12). The concept of wellbeing is not new - it has been explored and broken down into various different constructs. Debate over the definition of wellbeing is believed to date back centuries, to the philosophers of ancient Greece whose definitions of wellbeing incorporated concepts of happiness, pleasure and flourishing. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary includes as a definition of wellbeing: “The state of being or doing well in life; happy, healthy, or prosperous condition; welfare.” The New Zealand government has defined wellbeing as “when people are able to lead fulfilling lives with purpose, balance and meaning to them” (13). Further, the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation has identified five ways to wellbeing (14): 

1. Connect, me whakawhanaunga 
2. Give, tukua
3. Take notice, me aro tonu
4. Keep learning, me ako tonu
5. Be active, me kori tonu

The collective understanding of wellbeing is still evolving. There is now growing evidence about the health and wellbeing impacts of the physical environment on not only physical, but also emotional, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of wellbeing (15). However, it has not been until relatively recently that wellbeing has gained attention in the built environment sector.

Measuring Wellbeing

To have any impact, any urban wellbeing agenda must inform and influence decision making and development outcomes in the built environment. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, introduced in 2015 under The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, lists the third goal as ‘Good Health and Wellbeing’ (16). Many governments world-wide are investing in measuring and quantifying their nation’s wellbeing. For example, Bhutan, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Wales, Australia, France and New Zealand, have variously introduced a “wellbeing approach” to their public policy and are implementing ways to measure and assess how well its wellbeing agenda is being achieved.

Wellbeing is difficult to quantify and measure. However, with its rise in popularity, numerous indexes and frameworks have been developed to define and measure wellbeing. These include the UN Development Index, Happy Planet Index, World Bank World Development Indicators database, Gallup-Healthways Wellbeing Index, the United Kingdom’s Measuring National Wellbeing Programme, and the OECD Better Life Index (17). In the context of the physical environment, there are numerous guidelines for achieving wellbeing through building and urban design. These include the The Happy Homes Toolkit (18), WELL Building Standard (19), GAPS (20) Framework, and The Community Wellbeing Framework (21). 

On reviewing these it becomes clear that, although framed in many different ways, there are consistent themes that are common to all frameworks, these are: 

• Social cohesion and community participation; 
• Access and useability,
• Comfort, image, culture and values,
• Exposure to nature,
• Joy, surprise or delight (alongside ongoing learning), and 
• Connection - connection to each other, connection to place and connection to ideas.

Wellbeing and the Built Environment

Wellbeing, in the context of the built environment, has been defined as physiological wellbeing, psychological wellbeing or social wellbeing and has implications at city, neighbourhood, and dwelling scales (22). The quality of the social fabric of the neighbourhood in which a home is embedded is directly connected to wellbeing and, further, the concept of social connection is key to urban wellbeing (23). Loneliness is acknowledged now as a public health ‘epidemic’ that directly affects physiological functions, increases risk for mental illness, and diminishes adherence to health-related behaviours (24). Sanguinetti highlights how shared or integrated services in housing developments can increase sociability and connection to nature (25). To support a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Housing and Health Guidelines (2018) highlight the importance of both the built and social or community aspects of places, and the immediate housing environment. Fundamentally, people are intrinsically linked to place: “the two central dimensions of wellbeing and the environment are people and places” (26).

Eastern Porirua, New Zealand

The current New Zealand government has adopted a broad agenda of wellbeing that commits to putting people’s wellbeing at the heart of all its policies. A 2019 Wellbeing Budget sought to broaden the focus beyond economic and fiscal policy. It adopts a Living Standards Framework as an important step towards embedding wellbeing in New Zealand public policy (27).

The Eastern Porirua Regeneration Programme is the first long-term, large-scale regeneration programme of its kind in New Zealand to be mandated by a Treasury Business Case (2018) under the Wellbeing Budget and in line with Treasury’s Living Standards Framework (LSF). This case provides Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities (Kāinga Ora) with a unique opportunity to explore different ways to deliver affordable, sustainable housing for the communities in which they work. Kāinga Ora have responsibility for leading the delivery of physical redevelopment, including master planning, land development and sales, community infrastructure projects and the rebuilding and retrofitting of state homes. The regeneration programme is designed to deliver wellbeing outcomes for the people and place of Eastern Porirua. Adopting new approaches such as Community-led Housing and Community Wealth Building align well with the intention of the Wellbeing Business Case that mandated the Programme, and the government’s shift in focus away from housing delivery, towards creating strong communities.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Development (28) has stated “there is a need to change the ways we develop our urban areas so that our cities can thrive, and this must happen at a scale and pace so every New Zealander can live in healthy and safe homes in sustainable communities.”A Regeneration Framework has been developed to guide the implementation of the Programme in line with the Wellbeing business case. It provides for wellbeing outcomes across a series of domains shown in Figure 3.

These domains are reflected in the outcomes and objectives for the programme. How well the objectives of the programme are being achieved will be monitored and evaluated at different times throughout the lifecycle of the programme, to gain a comprehensive understanding of how the activities and interventions included in an urban regeneration programme, impact the wellbeing of residents and contribute to the global discourse about how well-designed neighbourhoods, benefit their inhabitants and contribute to the economic and social success of towns and cities. The hypothesis being tested, is that ‘both the physical and social structure of neighbourhoods are critical to their success’ (29).

Conclusion

Wellbeing has evidently become an influential agenda, and human-centred priorities are becoming increasingly valued across the built environment industry globally (30). In the past the value or function of cities were largely defined in terms of their built form and infrastructure, now cities worldwide are increasingly adopting more ‘human-centric’ approaches to development, placing higher value on the people that use and inhabit their city (31). Rapid global urbanisation and its associated urban challenges supports the case for supporting wellbeing, beginning with an understanding of the interrelationship between people and place. Namely, how an individual’s personal wellbeing (“individual wellbeing”) is affected by the social fabric, or overall wellbeing of a community (“community wellbeing”) at different scales (city, neighbourhood and home) and how the two are impacted by significant changes to the built environment, is therefore worthy of further discussion. As a relatively young country, when compared to others, New Zealand has the opportunity to define its urban future, and be an exemplar for the ways cities could function and contribute to the wellbeing of the people living in them.

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^{1. Robertson, G. (2018). Budget at a Glance 2018. Retrieved from https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/glance/budget-glance-2018}

^{2. Pineo, H., & Rydin, Y. (2018) Cities, Health & Well-being. London: Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)}

^{3. Taylor, L., Hahs, A. K., & Hochuli, D. F. (2018). Wellbeing and urban living: nurtured by nature. Urban Ecosystems, 21(1), 197-208.}

^{4. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018). The World’s Cities in 2018—Data Booklet (ST/ESA/ SER.A/417).}

^{5. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2018). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision.}

^{6. For statistical purposes, urban areas in New Zealand are defined as cities, towns and other conurbations comprising of 1,000 people or more. (Stats NZ).}

^{7. World Health Organisation - Urban Health. (2020). Retrieved 18 February 2020, from https://www.who.int/health-topics/urban-health}

^{8 Tonar, R. & Talton, E. (2019). Smart Cities Are Built By Smart People, Not Smart Things. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellistalton/2019/07/09/smart-cities-are-built-by-smart-people-not-smart-things/#aa437ad75d62}

^{9. City of Edmonton (undated). Our Smart City Program. Retrieved from: https://smartcities.edmonton.ca/our-smart-city-program/}

^{10. Yates, AM. (2019). Whanake mai te mauri ora: Think piece - an expanded wellbeing framework and urban science data tool for integrated wellbeing governance. Report for Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities: Mauri ora and urban wellbeing. Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland: BBHTC.http://buildingbetter.nz/resources/piblications.html}

^{11. Kāinga Ora–Homes and Communities Act 2019. Retrieved 22 February. From http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2019/0050/latest/LMS169206.html}

^{12. Cooper, R. (2014). Wellbeing and the Environment: An Overview. In Cooper, R., Burton, E. & Cooper, C. (Eds.), Wellbeing and the Environment: Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide , Volume II (p1). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.}

^{13. Government of New Zealand. (2019). Wellbeing Budget 2019. Wellington. Retrieved from https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/wellbeing-budget/wellbeing-budget-2019}

^{14. Mental Health Foundation (2020). Wellbeing. Retrieved from: https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/home/ways-to-wellbeing/Mental Health Foundation (2020). Wellbeing. Retrieved from: https://www.mentalhealth.org.nz/home/ways-to-wellbeing/}

^{15. Pineo, H., & Rydin, Y. (2018) Cities, Health & Well-being. London: Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)}

^{16. United Nations. (2015) Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/index.php?page=view&type=400&nr=2125&menu=1515}

^{17. Yates, A.M. (2019). Whanake mai te mauri ora: Think piece – an expanded wellbeing framework and urban science data tool for integrated wellbeing governance. Report for Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities: Mauri ora and urban wellbeing. Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland: BBHTC. http://buildingbetter.nz/resources/publications.html}

^{18. https://thehappycity.com/project/happy-homes/}

^{19. https://www.wellcertified.com/}

^{20. https://www.urbandesignmentalhealth.com/mind-the-gaps-framework.html}

^{21. http://www.dialogdesign.ca/community-wellbeing/}

^{22. Janahi, H., Raman, S., & Zapata-Lancaster, G. (2018). Understanding the impact of the residential built environment design on inhabitants’ wellbeing. ARCC Conference Repository. https://doi.org/10.17831/rep:arcc%y534}

^{23. Yates, A.M. (2019). Whanake mai te mauri ora: Think piece – an expanded wellbeing framework and urban science data tool for integrated wellbeing governance. Report for Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities: Mauri ora and urban wellbeing. Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland: BBHTC. http://buildingbetter.nz/resources/publications.html Leyden, K. M., Goldberg, A., & Michelbach, P. (2011). Understanding the pursuit of happiness in ten major cities. Urban affairs review, 47(6), 861-888.}

^{24. Holt-Lunstad, J. (2017). The potential public health relevance of social isolation and loneliness: Prevalence, epidemiology, and risk factors. Public Policy & Aging Report, 27(4), 127-130.}

^{25. Sanguinetti, A. (2014). Transformational practices in cohousing: Enhancing residents' connection to community and nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 40, 86-96.}

^{26. Cooper, R. (2014). Wellbeing and the Environment: An Overview. In Cooper, R., Burton, E. & Cooper, C. (Eds.), Wellbeing and the Environment: Wellbeing: A Complete Reference Guide , Volume II (p1). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.}

^{27. Robertson, G. (2018). Budget at a Glance 2018. Retrieved from https://treasury.govt.nz/publications/glance/budget-glance-2018}

^{28. MHUD (2019) Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities Factsheet. Retrieved from: https://www.hud.govt.nz/assets/Urban-Development/709abaded2/Factsheet-Kainga-Ora.pdf}

^{29. https://www.buildingbetter.nz/research/urban_wellbeing.html}

^{30. Watson, K. (2018). Establishing Psychological Wellbeing Metrics for the Built Environment in Building Services Engineering Research and Technology, 39(2), 232–243 DOI: 10.1177/0143624418754497}

^{31. Science in the city: applying neuroscience to urban design. (2020). Retrieved 18 February 2020, from https://theknowledgeexchangeblog.com/2018/08/20/science-in-the-city-applying-neuroscience-to-urban-design/}

Overview

The complexities that our cities and neighbourhoods face require us to find new solutions and approaches to planning and building. The Urban Advisory’s (TUA) desire is to equip local urbanists, policy makers, developers and investors with knowledge and insight to support the delivery of more equitable, meaningful and sustainable cities across Aotearoa New Zealand.  

This report is based on TUA’s 2018 European Study Tour, when our directors visited London, Freiburg, Oslo and Amsterdam, and also participated in the inaugural City Makers Guild Study Tour on Collaborative Urbanism, which visited Berlin, Vienna and Zurich. 

The visited projects were examples that provided affordable, secure and quality housing, each with a strong sense of a connected community. These were established through different development models such as collectives, cooperatives or partnerships between public, not-for-profit, and private sectors. 

This report is a resource for advancing better outcomes for the future of urbanism in New Zealand by critically reflecting on lessons learned the seven cities visited. It is divided into five key sections. These are: 

1. Key forces and themes in global city-making providing an overview of the urban challenges facing New Zealand. It discusses what makes a successful city that prioritises wellbeing outcomes for people and place. 
2. Key lessons from The Urban Advisory’s European tour, from each of the seven cities visited. 
3. Ten critical themes of successful collaborative urbanism are explored.
4. The future of urban development in New Zealand is considered.
5. The challenges of collaborative development in New Zealand are considered. 

Key Lessons 

• In order to address inequality and improve the wellbeing of citizens in our country, New Zealand must move beyond solely market-led speculative development. 
• New Zealand’s housing sector will be radically transformed by pursuing collaborative, alternative and integrated development projects. Although these can be slow and face their own challenges, this is a feasible pathway to provide for the long-term needs of residents, with fit-for-purpose, quality and affordable homes within a strong and sustainable community.  

In the aftermath of COVID-19, and in response to concerns surrounding the housing ecosystem in Aotearoa, the report reveals the complex, interconnected factors contributing to the current housing crisis, and proposes a vision for a new housing ecosystem in Aotearoa.

The How We Live report creates a platform for shared understanding and consistent language for the housing ecosystem enabling different sectors to engage more meaningfully and effectively in conversations about potential solutions. Commissioned by the PIF Foundation, TUA provided key input from our extensive resource library based on previous projects, helping to shape essential content.

Set within a larger piece of work as part of the  government funded National Science Challenge 11: Building Better Towns and Cities (NSC11) programme, TUA collaborated with Dr Paola Boarin and Professor Errol Haarhoff from The University of Auckland to develop a Post Occupancy Evaluation framework based on international best practice. The framework was tested using Hobsonville Point, Auckland as a case study neighbourhood.

TUA provided a peer review of the initial literature review and developed an evaluation framework matrix informed by international tools. The framework was refined through the case study process to produce the final environmental sustainability framework in collaboration with Dr Paola Boarin. TUA also provided advice and assistance with data collection, developing the case study analysis of the proposed framework and writing the final report.

The Hobsonville Point case study tested the framework at a neighbourhood-wide and block scale. The research was considered novel for New Zealand as no equivalent analysis of neighbourhood sustainability outcomes at this scale had been previously undertaken. 

The case study highlighted how improvements could be made to a) the environmental sustainability performance of New Zealand neighbourhoods and b) the applicability of the framework overall to support urban development outcomes.

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We have a climate crisis and an emerging energy crisis, which will demand more major investment in renewable energy generation infrastructure for Aotearoa. 

There are clear public benefits of investment in major energy infrastructure at a regional and national scale through electricity generation, a tool of ‘nation building’. Power developments began to incorporate landscape beautification later on in New Zealand’s 20th century hydro-development boom, but there remained limited attention or understanding of the localised public benefits (or disbenefits) and about how public space is rendered through major infrastructure development, particularly in rural contexts.

The Urban Advisory led primary research with the University of Auckland School of Architecture to explore this knowledge gap and develop greater understanding about public spaces created through power development in New Zealand. We applied frameworks and principles from landscape, urban design and energy systems disciplines, and compared case studies from the Waikato Power Scheme (Aratiatia) and Waitaki Basin Scheme (Benmore). 

This research raised important questions about how New Zealand has previously conceived of and valued public space in rural infrastructural contexts, and how we could enhance public space and broader public benefits when planning major infrastructure investment in the future.  At The Urban Advisory, we are always interested in how to improve development processes and meaningfully deliver outcomes for people and place: the delivery of major infrastructure is no different! We have developed a framework to assess the public space elements of major energy infrastructure projects. We hope this research will benefit future planning and investment in major energy infrastructure, applying multidisciplinary knowledge and past projects into a practical framework to guide decision-making and the integration of public space benefits across the scales of major infrastructure development. 

How do we deliver quality public space through energy infrastructure projects?

While the principal purpose of major energy infrastructure projects is to generate electricity for regional or national benefits, they also provide local benefits like public space. In this research, an integrated, interdisciplinary perspective of infrastructure, landscape and public space was critical to understanding the different elements and interrelationships of public space that can emerge in major energy infrastructure projects. We considered perspectives and principles from energy systems, urban design and landscape disciplines to find the intersections and implications for the provision of public space in energy infrastructure. 

• Major energy infrastructure projects like hydroelectric power development create a transformed landscape through harnessing natural processes and modifying the natural landscape to generate energy. In our research we described the transformed landscape as the ‘energyscape’. This includes the natural landscape environment, power generation infrastructure and, through this transformation, an additional spatial typology: public space (see diagram). 
• Multifunctionality is a key characteristic of integrated infrastructure development. There are many opportunities to integrate other functions beyond energy generation, including public space and other localised public benefits. While more complex, there are numerous advantages to enabling infrastructure development that is more multi-functional.
• Context is a crucial consideration when planning major energy infrastructure. A deep understanding of social, environmental, cultural, economic contexts should be developed through engagement and applied to meaningfully provide for local public benefits. This may include prioritising public space for socio-cultural outcomes, but also encompasses Te Tiriti obligations and the role of mana whenua, environmental impact and carbon life cycle impact analysis, for example. Overall, the role of the pre-development context must inform how major energy infrastructure is created.
• Public values of the environment and energyscapes have changed over time, and certainly will have shifted since the major development period from 1950s-1980s. It’s important to understand these values through engagement, integrating urban design and landscape expertise into the engineering design process, and realising the proposed public benefits through design & delivery.

Public Space Assessment Framework for Major Projects

We developed a public space assessment framework (below) as a tool to understand public space values within energyscapes created by major energy infrastructure development. The framework was informed by systems, principles and frameworks related to spatial functions, values and interrelationships from landscape, urban design and energy systems literature. There is scope to expand this framework to provide a more comprehensive tool. However, as is, this framework offers a range of relevant criteria which demonstrate the diverse ways that public space can be rendered through major infrastructure development, while highlighting key constraints and opportunities.

Case Studies

As part of testing and refining this framework, we assessed two New Zealand case studies: Aratiatia in the North Island of New Zealand and Benmore in the South Island. These cases were chosen because of their contrasting characteristics as energyscapes and similar period of construction and completion from 1964–1965. Aratiatia has an iconic scenic location, controversy surrounding its development and an innovative design response to preserve the natural value of the site. In contrast, the Benmore has a very different landscape context with different values informing the form and scale of the intervention. 

Over time, we have seen an improvement in how environmental impacts and environmental values are considered in hydropower developments and planning, demanding more mediation of the way massive infrastructural elements are built into the landscape. However public space and public values in the local context have been undervalued in past design and planning processes for major energy infrastructure. There is room for a broader conception of public benefits from public investment.

In the future, we hope this framework can be used to evaluate and influence energy infrastructure planning, decision making and design in a way that prioritises the public space elements at the local scale of these projects. Prioritising the provision of public space can enhance the broader public values and functions at the local scale.

New Zealand will need future investment in major renewable energy infrastructure, like hydropower, solar and wind, to reduce climate emissions from energy and improve energy resilience. While the location and type of energy systems are undetermined, there will be opportunities to deliver broader public benefits through major infrastructure investment for public benefit regardless. This research has highlighted that intergenerational investment in energy infrastructure should be viewed as an opportunity to invest in both local and national wellbeing. 

This research has built new knowledge around the nature and functions of public space in major energy infrastructure projects, which provide public benefits at a local scale within these transformed landscape contexts. 

The Urban Advisory exists to support and provide more integrated thinking about urban development challenges, to create better outcomes for people and place. Major energy infrastructure projects are a critical opportunity to apply an integrated approach, from investment and planning to design and delivery. The range of public benefits and values that can be provided through major projects can be enhanced throughout the process by drawing on interdisciplinary knowledge, thinking across scales and disciplines.

Creating improved housing outcomes: Liveable medium-density housing summary report is a multi-year project aimed at understanding how livability was being achieved by medium density housing and how it could be improved, reviewing local and international strategy, policy and research documents relating to the liveability of MDH, and identify and addressing the knowledge gaps relating to liveability research in New Zealand.

The Wellbeing Budget (2019) was launched during the evolution of this project. This redefined a way for how liveability and well-being aligned with each other and was then considered in the literature review and became integral to the survey and focus group questions, and the legislation and regulation review.

TUA has further tested the methodologies of this project to gather a robust evidence base for how to deliver livable neighbourhoods in New Zealand. This is being applied in projects in Auckland (Tamaki) and Wellington (Porirua).

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Participation and partnerships have an important role in delivering successful urban regeneration. Here we’ve covered a few of our favourite urban development partnership models and their successful usage in projects that have inspired us, and hopefully you too!

Introduction

Community engagement, consultation, co-design, co-creation, citizen participation or collaborative planning – there are many terms that describe the range of approaches to engaging with and involving communities in urban development processes. This article includes five case studies illustrating a diverse range of approaches used in urban development to increase participation in the urban development processes. Different projects require different approaches to respond to the context and drivers of the project, but also in order to achieve the engagement objectives, which may differ between projects. Sometimes a community consultation programme is relevant and other times, a public-private partnership is the appropriate approach - it really depends on what the project is aiming to achieve, who it will be affecting and how it will be resourced. Each successful example, however, shares a common characteristic – a commitment to listening, and developing a mutual understanding of all parties’ perspectives. 

To achieve better outcomes for people and communities, we need smarter and more effective collaboration between all stakeholders; from councils to central government, the private sector, and community organisations.

Community Engagement & Participation‍

Community engagement, consultation, co-design, co-creation, citizen participation or collaborative planning – there are many terms that describe the range of approaches to engaging with and involving communities in urban development processes. Based around the values of inclusivity, collaboration and empowerment, community engagement allows those who are, or may be, affected by an issue to have an opportunity to influence or inform the decision making process and the end solution. 

Emerging consultation facilitation groups offer a potential solution to the issue of time limitations and lack of in-depth knowledge that can often affect Councils and Government groups. Third party consultation specialists taking the lead on community engagement can reduce the load on Councils while also collecting more relevant data that translates better to policy. Methods can include pop up stands, with freebies and vouchers to incentivise (participation), online surveys, feedback drop boxes, town hall style meetings etc. Community Engagement is an urban partnership model used globally and findings are used to guide and inform various short term and long term strategies or developments. It is an opportunity to empower communities to drive the future of their neighbourhood, and is also a great opportunity for youth engagement; getting young people involved and excited about their community, learning to be active citizens and pushing for positive social change. In a time of poor voter turnouts and resident participation, we’re excited to see innovative approaches to consultation emerging! 

Case Study 1: Conversation Caravan, City of Casey Action Plan 

Fun, effective public consultation...on wheels! 

Conversation Caravan are a team of social strategists who offer their expertise in community engagement and communication to organisations seeking to establish a dialogue with those who would be impacted or be users of their work.

The City of Casey Council wished to consult their local community to guide and inform their 2019-20 Action Plan. The Conversation Caravan was brought onto the project and in the space of a month they employed a variety of techniques to collect a pool of input that was as reflective of the area as possible. Eye-catching “Pop-Up” stands were strategically set up and offered coffee, plant and canteen vouchers as incentives to engagement.

Residents outside of the Pop-Ups weren’t excluded, with an online survey and “Conversation Boxes,” (drop boxes at key neighbourhood locations) enabling them to partake if they chose to make a direct submission. Over 1000 submissions were made.

Case Study 2: Project for Public Spaces, Gansevoort Plaza

Specialists in community engagement and activation, Project for Public Spaces were tasked with the reimagination of Gansevoort Plaza – a disused, cobblestone plaza in New York’s Meatpacking District. 

An extensive consultation process began in 2005, engaging with residents, local business owners and community leaders to establish a vision and a series of community outcomes. They dug up local knowledge, sought to understand unique neighbourhood characteristics and used photostimulation to communicate their ideas for the space to the public. This community feedback, along with traffic engineering investigations, was compiled into a document that presented PPS’s recommendations to key decision-makers. The community leaders went on to bring the community’s vision for Gansevoort Plaza into reality and the plan was implemented in 2008. Tactile urban methods of planter boxes, seating and sculptures were employed to reclaim the space but leaving it easily adaptable to future community needs as they were realised. This further improved its provided amenity and ensured it was serving the needs of its users in the best way possible.

Public Private Partnerships

Public Private Partnerships refer to a collaboration between the public sector and the private sector in order to deliver urban development projects. These partnerships are often established to resolve funding issues, whereby the private sector agrees to partially or fully deliver or fund a project on behalf of the public sector, on a set of agreed terms, generally based around future economic returns or the privatisation of the project. PPPs are characterised by shared risk, innovation and improved quality of delivery.  This type of partnership can be a useful model for large scale, or complex projects, as private companies are generally better placed to provide the resources and expertise to get ambitious projects off the ground. 

Collaborative work between the public and private sectors is bringing top professional thinkers together who are introducing us to some of the highest quality spaces. However, in some cases existing businesses have been “pushed out,” by the land use zonings changed to accommodate regeneration projects. This leaves space to question how we implement PPPs – they can be effective and innovative but not always fair and equitable. Can this type of collaboration between professional bodies be extended to include existing businesses, residents and other relevant stakeholders, and promote equity and long-term sustainability, also?

Case Study 3: Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland and Lendlease, Brisbane Showgrounds

The Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland (RNA) and Lendlease, a multinational urban development company, are partnering to deliver the Brisbane Showgrounds Regeneration, a 15-year undertaking which is to be the largest brownfield development of its kind in Australia.

The RNA owns and operates the Brisbane Showgrounds. Through this development, they aim to revitalise and establish the area as an urban village precinct, and year-round destination. The 22 hectare project will include 340,000m² of new residential, commercial and retail buildings, together with an additional 76,000m² of new development on RNA retained land. Due to the scale of this project, Lendlease have come in to assist with financing a large portion of the estimated $2.9 billion cost. Lendlease will also manage additional funding partners, as well as the development management, project management, design management and construction. Once finished, the project is expected to generate $300 million per annum and over 2,000 jobs, while ensuring that Queensland’s people and agricultural community are provided with facilities that are progressive, multi-faceted and future-ready.

Case Study 4: Panuku Developments, Precinct Properties and other partners, Wynyard Quarter Innovation Precinct

Within Panuku’s redevelopment of Wynyard Quarter is the Wynyard Quarter Innovation Precinct, envisioned by Auckland Tourism, Events and Economic Development (ATEED). It is being delivered by multiple private sector partners. The project is 48,000m² of high-quality, flexible office space, spread across five buildings. It aims to be a world-class hub of creativity, fitting seamlessly within the overall vision for Wynyard Quarter as an attractive, sustainable, wellness-focussed mixed-use area.

Precinct Properties is the leading delivery arm, with its roles including masterplanning and leveraging investment. As one of the most significant property development and management agencies in New Zealand, Precinct Properties has a broad range of resources available, a wide client reach and an experienced and diverse team. The company brought architectural firm Warren and Mahoney to the table to deliver a physical structure that supported user wellbeing and performance while also delivering on Panuku’s goals relating to identity and sustainability. As a result, Mason Bros earned a 6-Star Green rating and a 5-Star NABERSNZ rating, the first building in New Zealand to receive this award, whilst 12 Madden Street also achieved a 5-Star Green rating. Wynyard Quarter is set for completion in 2030, and should house around 25,000 workers and 3,000 residents, with the Innovation Precinct at the centre of it all.

Business Improvement Districts

Business Improvement Districts (BID) are forms of Public Private Partnership (PPP) where business and property owners agree to share the costs associated with the upkeep, development and promotion of their district. BIDs are common in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and South Africa, where they have supported revitalisation and regeneration of urban areas.These partnerships are typically more successful for commercial property and large areas.

BID are now also gaining increasing popularity in New Zealand, with a few towns and cities implementing these partnerships; there are almost 50 in Auckland, 5 and growing in Wellington, and a variety of regional centres including Kaitaia, Hastings, Nelson and Hamilton with many more councils and business association groups continuing to investigate setting up a BID in their town or area. These groups in NZ are typically funded by an additional rate which is collected by councils (in partnership with the BID) from businesses within a set area and used for services such as increasing security presence, graffiti removal, networking events, marketing and advocacy, just to name a few. The Nelson BID is run on a slightly different model where the funds come exclusively from council without local businesses needing to pay additional rates. BIDs have been successful in reinvigorating local businesses and drawing more visitors into the area to buy local.

Case Study 5: Bryant Park, Manhattan

Bryant Park was in a badly deteriorated state by the end of 1970, having been poorly maintained and its isolation in a business district attracting antisocial behaviour. In response to this degradation, the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation (BPRC), a non-profit, private management company was founded in 1980. The company was led by a group of highly successful and influential businessmen including Daniel A. Biederman, a Harvard Business School graduate and systems consultant with a reputation as an innovator in downtown management. With their business backgrounds, they believed they could do more for the park using innovative, market-based approaches, while working alongside the city council.

A Business Improvement District (BID) was formed, with the BPRC leasing the park from the city. It was controversial, some fearing introducing businesses to a public space would cause it to become a privatised area. However, a 15-year responsibility agreement was signed over to BPRC (now Bryant Park Corporation) in 1988 and an intensive restoration programme began. The budget available was six times what it would have been under city management, enabling greater interventions, in a more timely manner. In an intensive four-year restoration programme, the unattractive aspects of the park were addressed, security measures added and landscaping carried out to improve attractiveness, functionality and visual and physical connectivity. A seven-year push followed its reopening, combining supplementary park maintenance, temporary kiosks, and public events, which reduced crime by 92 percent and doubled the number of annual park visitors.

The BID has been a triumph, not only in its regeneration of the Park but also in its reinvigoration of local businesses, with the Urban Land Institute stating in an award citation that “the success of the park feeds the success of the neighborhood.” Now a focal point and source of great amenity, Bryant Park’s success has had a flow-on effect of increased rents and improved business performance.

Where we live, both the physical building and the location and community that we live in, influences almost every aspect of our lives and has significant impacts on our health and wellbeing. Designing for health and wellbeing benefits individuals and communities, as well as the wider population, and is becoming increasingly important as we spend more and more time at home.

Designing for Health and Wellbeing

Where we live, both the physical building and the location and community that we live in, influences almost every aspect of our lives and has significant impacts on our health and wellbeing. Designing for health and wellbeing benefits individuals and communities, as well as the wider population, and is becoming increasingly important as we spend more and more time at home. By designing built environments through a wellbeing lens, the ill-effects of buildings can be mitigated and spaces can be created that nurture a sense of wellbeing and actually improve health outcomes. Benefits go beyond direct health and wellbeing outcomes, to economic and operational outcomes, as shown in Figure 1 below.

The fundamentals of designing for health and wellbeing include:

• Re-integrating nature into design: natural materials, incorporation of natural elements (eg. plants), outlook/ views to nature, natural patterns and varying scales of detail in building elements.
• Designing to create or enhance a sense of community and belonging
• Design of spaces that respond to fundamental human needs: eg., spaces for both prospect and refuge.
• Design at the street-scale that supports ‘active transport’.
• Lighting design that supports the 24 hour human circadian rhythm.
• Design that allows residents to feel secure in their homes, with suitable levels of privacy, and adaptability or flexibility for when inhabitants grow and change.
• Design that allows residents to live easily in their homes: suitable layouts for good functionality, design for limited mobility, low maintenance.
• Using healthy materials and enabling efficient heating and ventilation.

Designing for health and wellbeing has synergies with principles of sustainable design, meaning that while this approach follows a people-centred view of design, it also supports a regenerative approach. The above factors have been integrated in the following sections, as a common thread within ‘good’ design.

Urban Design and Neighbourhoods

Cities and neighbourhoods are complex systems, and urban design seeks a coordinated approach to the arrangement of the physical components of urban form and create the setting for urban living.

Good urban design supports wellbeing, across scales - from our homes and streets - impacting our daily lives, our health, how we feel and connect with other people in our neighbourhoods and communities. Important urban design considerations include:

An integrated response to the site and local context. 

New development should be integrated into the existing natural and built environment context, with consideration for community, climate, character and the physical environment. Urban design responses consider the appropriate size and scale of building forms (height, setbacks, materiality), street interface, the layout of streets and provision of public spaces and amenities, within the existing context as well as looking to the future, and responding to the demand for growth and changing lifestyles and environments (e.g. climate change response, housing crisis). Low impact urban design is also important, which is an integrated hydrological and ecological approach to stormwater management.

Access and connection: well-functioning urban environments provide safe, convenient and equitable access for people for everyday activities. 

A range of viable and convenient transport modes should be provided, catering to a range of access abilities. Walkability, as separate from vehicle access, is crucial. Walkable neighbourhoods support environmentally and socially sustainable communities, including access to amenities. Dedicated cycling infrastructure is also vital, allowing cyclists to move at suitable speeds without being hindered by cars or pedestrians, and while optimising safety. Consideration of universal design for accessibility is important at the building scale too, as well as access for larger service vehicles (emergency services, waste collection).

Density, diversity and activity.

The density of built form determines the concentration of people and overall activity and vibrancy of a community, and the viability of commercial activities, community amenities and services. Density also supports a range of efficiencies with building sustainability (see below). The design of the public realm (streets, parks etc) influences how people use and relate to these spaces, and in turn, how they relate to one another. Urban design considerations like ‘bumping spaces’, a balanced provision of private and public outdoor spaces from the home to the neighbourhood can support a diversity of spatial functions, and vibrant neighbourhoods, whatever the density. 

Access to nature and amenity. 

Consideration for daylight, sunlight, and outlook through the aspect, orientation and access to private outdoor space in homes supports wellbeing (physical, mental, spiritual, cultural). Passive surveillance or ‘eyes on the street’ strengthens neighbourhood safety through the careful consideration of outlook from private spaces to the public realm (e.g. kitchen window outlook to the street or shared open space) - this is one consideration of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). As well as visual links, physical links and access to public open spaces, reserves close to home are important too, with good visibility and lighting (CPTED consideration). Landscape considerations can support privacy and amenity at home, and street trees and low impact design for stormwater support environmental resilience, wellbeing and biodiversity, balancing the integration of the built and natural environment.

Architecture and Homes

Design that gives people a sense of belonging and pride. 

People naturally want to feel settled in their environment, and feel included and as though they belong. This creates the sense of “home”. Belonging and pride can be influenced by feelings of ownership of a place, a sense of identity tied to one’s home, and interactions with neighbours and the wider community that increase overall community participation.

Design that enables some resident control, to give a sense of personal attachment and stability.

To build a sense of identity of home, people need to feel as though they have some control and ownership of their space so that they can make their home their own. This helps with feelings of stability and results in greater pride of place and respect. Allowing control can be as simple as allowing walls to be painted, or pictures to be hung on walls.

Design that is flexible/ adaptable to accommodate changes across life stages.

The longer people can stay in their home and their community, the greater the social connection and sense of community wellbeing. To cater for all life-stages, a variety of housing typologies is needed. However, by designing-in flexible or adaptable spaces, people are able to adjust their home as their family and lifestyle changes and remain in their home for longer. 

Design that incorporates nature, through natural materials, connection to green outdoor spaces, natural patterns, textures, and scales (fractals), views to nature. 

Humans have an innate desire to be in nature. We are drawn to green spaces, trees, mountains, rivers, and the ocean. While we may not always be lucky enough to experience these things directly, we can enhance health and wellbeing by incorporating nature as much as possible in design. This includes natural materials, textures and patterns, levels of aesthetic complexity and composition that mimic natural patterns, and being in, or in-view of nature as much as possible. 

Design that encourages active ways of living.

In conjunction with designing for activity at the urban scale, homes can also be designed to enable or encourage active ways of living. This can be achieved through provision of cycle storage, gardens that open out onto larger shared outdoor spaces or shared pathways, and making it easier for people to walk or cycle out of their house rather than drive.

Presence of natural daylight to help with regulating human rhythms (circadian rhythm).

Natural daylight is critical for regulating the natural human internal clock (circadian rhythm) that sets our sleep-wake cycle (and other biological cycles) over a 24 hour period. Artificial light impacts circadian rhythms by confusing the naturally anticipated light sequence of a day, and has negative effects on health and wellbeing. It is therefore important that we receive as much natural daylight as possible throughout the day.

Buildings that are healthy, with low VOCs, good ventilation, easy to heat and maintain.

An unhealthy home means unhealthy residents. While being warm and dry is paramount to creating healthy living environments, there is more that can be done to optimise health. Machine-made or artificial building materials can contain compounds (Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs) that harm both humans and the environment. By reducing these, through the use of low VOC materials, the risk can be reduced and health can be optimised. It is also important that homes have good ventilation, are easy to heat, and easy to maintain, so that they are able to be kept warm and dry in the long-term. 

Houses that are designed to have varying levels of privacy - allowing passive surveillance where needed, and interaction between neighbours, but also provides a sense of safety and retreat.

The balance between public and private (prospect and refuge) is important to get right, so that people can feel both a sense of community interaction and participation, and security and safety. This is best achieved by using a public-private gradient at both the neighbourhood and building scale. Spaces just beyond and just inside the property boundary should be created as public-private buffer zones where neighbours can bump into each other or wave over the fence. 

Variation in house typologies to give a sense of individuality, exploration and discovery, rather than a monotonous street frontage. [this links to enriched environments]. 

House types should be varied, to add to people’s sense of place and individuality, and to prevent monotonous street-scapes. At the urban-design scale, architectural variation adds interest to the street, enhances wayfinding, and encourages exploration through a neighbourhood. (This is especially important for elderly residents who may get lost in rows of houses that all look the same).  

Variation in house typologies also helps in creating diverse groupings of people (e.g., a one bedroom unit that may be inhabited by elderly, next to a three bedroom house that may be home to a family)

If you are interested in learning how your organisation can deliver more socially connected and sustainable design get in touch at info@theurbanadvisory.com

By Natalie Allen, Meredith Dale and Greer O’Donnell

Surveying and spatial disciplines are powerful and influential. Each boundary line and spatial element of a development has a tangible impact on the daily lives of people in that space. At the city scale, this impacts how people choose to live and move around, to places of work, study or recreation. Survey work creates opportunities or constraints around how people interact with their environment and each other in daily life. At the human scale, surveying and spatial design influences the happiness, health and overall wellbeing of people. These impacts are part of the professional legacy of surveying in urban environments, a legacy that will last decades into the future. In this article we will discuss the integral role of surveying and spatial design professions in rethinking our future neighbourhoods, and the emerging challenges and opportunities for building a lasting, positive legacy through spatial practice.

New Zealand is undergoing a period of unprecedented social and environmental change. Our urban centres are pressured by increasing population growth, demand for intensification and higher density urban development. Also, our society is increasingly multicultural, with diverging and diversifying household norms. On one hand, some population groups have a much younger age structure and prefer larger multigenerational households. On the other, the population is ageing, and the numbers of smaller households are increasing. In the context of land development and housing, we also need to be conscious of issues of housing affordability, rental security of tenure, home health and quality, and personal wellbeing. Some serious health issues affecting urban New Zealanders, such as obesity, loneliness and poor mental health, are linked to spatial and environmental design. A history of car-oriented subdivision and suburban development has created places of isolation, separated from urban vitality and places of work or recreation. Infill subdivision patterns, with long right-of-ways and double-garaged houses stacked one behind the other, limit opportunities for neighbours to bump into one another and form social connections. The changing nature of our communities and our evolving lifestyle preferences is necessitating new and innovative approaches to land development in New Zealand, including spatial and surveying practice. 

We need more resilient and liveable neighbourhoods, and spatial design that supports low impact, sustainable lifestyles. To understand how to respond to these present challenges, first, let us consider how past spatial design and development patterns provided for different lifestyles and communities. Roads are one of the most enduring elements of urban form. Looking at road and lot layouts we can discern lifestyle differences between neighbourhoods; for example, compare a gridded block structure with tramline arterials and wooden villas, versus car-oriented street networks from motorways to cul-de-sacs and quarter-acre sections with brick and tile homes. The latter development form describes most greenfield developments after the 1950s. These were designed to provide for suburban living, a low density development form suited to nuclear family households and European lifestyle preferences.

Today, new housing development is largely developer-led, either as infill development in existing neighbourhoods, or greenfield subdivision for new neighbourhoods at the urban fringe. With both approaches we must consider: is this business-as-usual approach appropriate and responsible spatial practice? Will it provide for the needs, wellbeing and lifestyle preferences of New Zealanders into the future? For example, the current development ecosystem incentivises the development of larger 3-4 bedroom dwellings (for maximum profit), while there is an increasing demand for smaller dwelling typologies. European models of nuclear-family housing are no longer fit-for-purpose for New Zealanders. As society changes, land development practices too must change to serve and support the future community.  

Spatial professionals are well-equipped and experienced in providing for tangible physical outcomes such as network infrastructure, different modes of subdivision (cross lease, unit title etc) or easements and esplanade reserves. But intangible outcomes, such as social wellbeing, neighbourly connectedness and good personal health, must also be provided for. Surveying and spatial design schemes of today are setting the stage for our future patterns of living. Hence, in the context of new development, they must develop spaces and places where people and communities will thrive. 

Spatial interventions that support community wellbeing could include:

• Mixed housing typologies and tenures, to encourage a varied demographics
• Planning and integration of mobility networks, not just roads
• Block structures used as a tool for connectivity
• Central community spaces, integrated with amenities
• Alternative governance structures to provide a mandate for community building
• Clustering complimentary amenities to deliver convenience in neighbourhoods

Other future trends in neighbourhood development that are emerging are outlined in Figure 1.

There is a need for a more strategic and integrated approach to urban development in order to create better places where people can live and lead healthy and meaningful lives. The development of an overarching urban strategy is required early on in the development lifecycle, not only to achieve an integrated approach to these complex urban problems, but to deliver better economic, environmental and social outcomes. Urban strategy is a new discipline grounded in systems thinking, collaborative practice and a purpose-driven design philosophy. Urban strategists facilitate collaboration between urban professions and agencies, create accessible and actionable responses to urban problems and work alongside project teams through all phases of development to achieve this. They operate at the intersection of policy, planning, design and delivery, working across scales and sectors to find new opportunities for achieving impactful, integrated neighbourhood development. Urban strategy questions the existing system of land development to help urban professions deliver more integrated projects that meet the needs, demands and lifestyle preferences of future residents. The emergence of urban strategy as a defined discipline is particularly relevant in the current New Zealand context. The new government agenda, including the Wellbeing Budget, has made it clear that the wellbeing of citizens is a priority. However, our current urban development models and approaches are not adequately supporting the wellbeing of our people, or equipped to support a changing New Zealand. 

The urban strategy approach can be explained better by through the Integrated Neighbourhood Framework; this has been developed by The Urban Advisory to assist built environment professionals to create more connected, sustainable and equitable communities in New Zealand. This Framework guides the development process away from the ‘building houses’ mindset, to a ‘thriving communities’ mindset. It aims to create places where people can undertake all their daily activities, including living, working, socialising and finding spaces that suit their needs. The Framework, outlined in Figure 2, summarises this eight-step process to deliver stronger and healthier communities, with integrated amenities and housing for all people.

Surveyors and spatial designers are critical to this integrated development approach. They are often the first specialists onboard in a new development scheme. Spatial expertise in these early stages (steps one to four), such as gathering and processing contextual data, sets the stage for developing a place strategy. While co-creation (step three) is not a common step under current development models, it is critically important. Co-creation validates whether or not a proposal meets the needs and desires of current and future residents. This might take more time and money up-front, but the potential returns (financial and social) outweigh the initial cost.

In recent decades, we have seen surveying and spatial professionals adopting new technology and innovative approaches to advance accuracy, capability and performance. There is further demand for spatial professionals to adopt and advance innovative design thinking to ensure placemaking is integral to the staging and delivery of projects as well (step 4). The foundation of integrated neighbourhoods is the delivery of appropriate urban amenities alongside housing  (step  five). Urban amenities include the corner dairy, playgrounds, parks, public transport, schools, other local shops and services. As we plan and set out developments, it is important to integrate amenities alongside housing. Can residents walk to access services and recreation, or are they dependent on a car? Perhaps a mid-block pedestrian connection or a new cluster of amenities (e.g. dairy, hairdresser, bus stop) would provide more integration for the neighbourhood? 

When integrated neighbourhoods are delivered successfully, intentional neighbouring processes and opportunities are multiplied. The next layer of our Framework integrates and reinforces intentional neighbouring in the built environment, through innovative ownership, delivery, management and operational models (step 6). The Urban Advisory defines intentional neighbouring as the process of regular and purposeful encounters which build meaningful connection between neighbours. This can begin at the visioning and co-design stage, through construction, and into everyday life. Neighbours who live near one other will naturally come into contact around shared amenities, public spaces, overlapping lifestyle preferences, values or routines to find a sense of community belonging grounded in spatial proximity. Innovative ownership, delivery, management and operational models are best demonstrated by the numerous cohousing and cooperative development projects emerging in New Zealand. Cohousing developments, such as Earthsong in Ranui, are underpinned by ongoing democratic participation in community life by residents or housing owners - long after the build is complete. The community was purpose-built with an eco-friendly design imperative and a cooperative design process. Residents share amenities such as an orchard, laundry, common house, guest house, parking area and open green spaces. The Earthsong community worked closely with consultants to develop a site layout that kept cars and parking separate from the living spaces, so that children could freely play along the path and open spaces. An example of alternative development unique to Aotearoa / New Zealand is papakāinga, an traditional Māori practice of collective living among extended whānau on iwi land.

Of course, every neighbourhood and community is different, with nuanced social, cultural and economic values, lifestyle preferences or aspirations. Thus, step seven and eight are critical elements of the Integrated Neighbourhood Framework. These measure and report on outcomes, then check, refine and validate the success of the neighbourhood strategy for its context. Ideally, we should already be bringing this type of thinking to the development process. We need to ensure that development outcomes are positive for communities and that we take opportunities to learn when they arise. By following this Framework, and engaging with the iterative learning process within and across projects, development professionals will undoubtedly find fresh innovations and improvements on existing models to create contextually relevant design and development for New Zealand communities from all walks of life.

We hope this brief introduction to urban strategy and our Integrated Neighbourhood Framework will inspire you to consider how spatial disciplines can contribute to delivering more inclusive, connected and equitable communities in Aotearoa / New Zealand. 

5.3 Re-defining the Housing Ecosystem

Given the housing crisis in NZ, it is worth considering a range of alternative models of governance, ownership and management in housing development. There are a multitude of development and ownership models that promote a more equitable and sustainable way of living. These models for development sit variably along a spectrum. This spectrum moves from traditional speculative market-led development to emergency housing (See Figure 1). At TUA we are particularly interested in the area that sits within the intermediate housing market – we’ve termed this category ‘alternative development models’. These are categorised by increased resident participation, democratic participation, limited profit, increased affordability and better design.

Each Model has a unique combination of legal structures, financing mechanisms and management or operational arrangements.

In an attempt to deepen New Zealanders’ understanding, this section introduces some common alternative development models that are used around the world. These alternative collaborative approaches can diversify the housing toolkit and guide the development of stronger, more connected and sustainable neighbourhoods.

Social-Minded Build-to-Rent / Co-Living

Build-to-rent means new housing is built specifically as long-term rental properties. These are usually unit or apartment developments owned by a third party entity, from which residents rent their dwelling. Often there are some shared spaces and some curation of community. The burgeoning co-living movement, targeted toward young urban professionals, is a variation on the build-to-rent model e.g. The Collective in London.

Long-term Rental Cooperatives

These co-operatives use a long-term rental model, funding the construction of projects, often via low-interest loans with a long payback period, typically on land leased from the city. An example of this is in Zürich where long-term rental cooperatives have provided housing options for the past 100 years e.g. LiSA in Vienna.

Equity Crowdfunded Mixed-Use Commercial and Residential

Equity crowdfunded developments raise the capital to fund the development through selling shares in the building to community and corporate sponsors. One way is to use mixed-use development managed by an incorporated society and collectively owned by shareholders, who have voting rights related to decision making around the management of the development. Investors earn an annual return based on businesses paying rents, and additional return to investors is based on the capital gain over time e.g. Collett’s Corner, in Lyttelton, NZ.

Urban strategists act as brokers and advocates across the spheres of the built environment; working with government agencies, design & development professionals, and local communities to support the development of actionable, integrated and equitable outcomes. We help people work more efficiently and effectively together, in a way that is focussed on the outcomes we all want to achieve – environments that support our wellbeing.

Property Collectives and Joint Ventures

A property collective allows a group of people to come together with a shared housing focus, such as designing and developing a series of townhouses, which are owned individually once the development is complete. Property collectives can lower related development costs and can sometimes include shared facilities, which also creates savings for the individual owners e.g. Property Collectives in Melbourne.

Zelfbouw

The Dutch word for ‘self-build’, zelfbouw refers to urban renewal housing development close to downtown areas, where individuals have the freedom to co-create their own architecturally designed home, while still cooperating with neighbours’ designs and adhering to height and width restrictions. Costs are reduced as residents often coordinate together with contractors. The new developments have the effect of an organic, eclectic neighbourhood that has been built over time e.g. Villawijk Overgooi, Almere or Monnikskapstraat, Amsterdam.

Cohousing (Investment and Resident-Led)

There are many models of cohousing but all are defined by the ongoing democratic participation in community life by residents or housing owners long after the build is complete. Houses are often more affordable to buy and economical to run because residents share amenities such as living space, gardens and other facilities. Also, developments are often purpose-built with eco-friendly or economical design imperatives e.g. Nightingale (architect-led) or Baugruppen (resident-led).

Housing and Land Cooperatives

Cooperatives are companies that own the building and/or land. The buyer purchases a share in the company and therefore the right to live in a particular unit or apartment but does not own the land or building. The initial financial costs are not as much as those required for a full-ownership house purchase and have proven successful overseas, but are not yet common in NZ.

Community Land Trusts

Community Land Trusts are not-for-profit entities that hold land in trust and enable people to own their own houses on the land. Because the land is in trust, the community has access to affordable homeownership options, as the market appreciation of land doesn’t affect the cost of housing.

Papakainga - Unique to New Zealand

New Zealand does hold its own form of unique housing model – papakāinga. It is a practice of collective living that presents an opportunity for Māori to reconnect with whānau and whenua, and lead sustainable and affordable lifestyles. Papakāinga appears as a group of homes and shared amenities for extended whānau, built on land with common ancestral connections and shared ownership. Papakāinga housing models create an opportunity to support iwi and hapu wellbeing by reconnecting the kāinga, the home, with whānau, community, land, culture and history.

However, this model faces many of the same challenges as those discussed above, including limited policy direction, funding and a poor alignment of Maori asset-holding entities and whānau and hapū-based land management entities. Despite these limitations, Papakāinga housing has and is being delivered, with projects like Mangatawa Papakainga Housing existing and Kāinga Tuatahi in the making.

While there is a growing interest in this area, there are multiple challenges facing groups wanting to develop using the principles and structures of the models outlined above. This is partially due to the lack of knowledge in the associated industries, supporting legal structures and suitable finance products, but is also due to the lack of awareness amongst people about the benefits these models can deliver. Despite these barriers, in recent years several resident-led urban housing developments have progressed, and the sector is rapidly growing.

There are a variety of definitions  given to affordable housing, typically, it can be defined as low to middle income households spending no more than 30% of their gross income on rent or mortgage costs and other essential household costs. This is generally accepted standard definition of affordable housing based around income, however appropriate tenure (assisted rental, shared equity etc) is as important as price point. When referring to ‘affordable housing’, in an New Zealand context, it can also mean housing that is delivered at or below the KiwiBuild price points, or assisted housing products delivered by Community Housing Providers (CHPs) to households that are not eligible for social housing or KiwiBuild and cannot afford more expensive market priced housing. There appears then, to be a broader and flexible definition of affordable housing than solely focusing on 30% of income spent on housing cost.

Considering a broader definition of affordable housing is critical because the intermediate housing market defined as “private renter households with at least one person in paid employment, unable to affordably purchase a house at the lower quartile house sale price for the local authority area at standard bank lending conditions” (Mitchel, 2019) is growing at an increasingly rapid pace.

This group of people are becoming increasingly ‘stressed’. “Stressed” households are those paying more than 30% of their gross household income to service rent or mortgage expenses, and those paying more than 50% are “extremely stressed” (Mitchel, 2019). The growing intermediate housing market and number of stressed renters and owners, is therefore putting pressure on the social and community housing stock, and contributing greatly to the risk of gentrification in regeneration areas. Gentrification is a consequence of existing residents having to move out of an area, for reasons of affordability. 

As an example, Porirua’s housing market demonstrates all the signs of a market under affordability pressure, as a result of housing costs (rent and house prices) increasing faster than household incomes (Mitchell, 2016). Rising rents are affecting the ability of households to access affordable and appropriate housing.  In Eastern Porirua, 78% of renters have insufficient income to affordably pay the median market rent and the house price they could affordably buy at is 57% of the median market price.The market is providing little (3%) new stock below the market median or at affordable prices (Ibid.).

Retained affordable housing means that it remains affordable for the duration of the house and is not lost to the open market once affordability restrictions are removed after a set period. It refers also to the continuous recycling of investment into affordable housing from the sale of shared equity products, for example. 

Affordable and assisted housing models often rely on trade-offs with land value or similar indirect subsidy or payments. For the government to have an active role in delivering affordable housing, there has to be a demonstrable ‘public benefit’ from their investment, when considering a total value assessment. If a long term view is taken, the benefits and value created by investing in a range of affordable housing products far outweighs the investment into social housing only. The benefits from shared equity ownership, cooperative housing, cohousing and community land trust are plentiful, and well documented. 

Perhaps what is understood less, is how initiatives like community-led homes revolving funds and low interest loans enable the recycling of investment, and ensure that affordability is retained over time. More thinking needed here. 

It is about the use of fresh thinking, improved systems and more collaborative processes to transform places to improve the wellbeing of people.

Urban strategists are skilled in being able to see the ‘big picture’, synthesise large amounts of information, broker between project partners in complex environments, and provide clarity & direction to identify creative pathways towards implementation.

Urban Strategists are at the table, helping to bring clarity to urban challenges and identify new and workable solutions.

This growing sector is part of the way we need to be delivering a more diverse offering of housing options in New Zealand and we’re pleased to have been researching and working in this space for a number of years now. Here is a summary of some of our key thoughts about CFH and growing the sector in New Zealand.

What is Community-focused housing?

Community-focused housing (also referred to as community-led housing) is its own sector within the housing ecosystem – it differs from the approach taken by Community Housing Providers, although both sectors are committed to a ‘not-for-profit’ or ‘limited profit’ model and treat housing as a human right, not a commodity. Government support for both sectors is needed.

Community-focused housing is where people and communities play a leading role in addressing their own housing needs. There is no profit being made by the ‘traditional developer’ in this process. There are a range of models that have varying degrees of resident and community involvement, that have been used internationally to address issues of housing affordability, social disconnectedness and sustainability. They are models, not ‘housing products’, as defined by the set of legal, financial, governance, management, and design parameters that shape them, and include:

• Community Land Trusts (CLT)
• Cooperative housing, and
• Cohousing

Currently in New Zealand there is a handful of cohousing projects including High Street in Dunedin, Habitat Collective in Wellington, and Cohaus in Auckland. However, there are also several projects, including CLOser Developments in Bay of Plenty, Corletts Corner and Madras Square, both in Christchurch, and Hamilton City Council, that are pushing the boundaries of both tenure (ownership) and typology (design) and exploring the viability of the cooperative and communityland trust models. For more information on these, see www.theurbanadvisory.com or www.cohousing.org.nz

Who does it serve?

Internationally, national and local governments view CFH models as a primary means to fill inthe ‘intermediate’ housing market, offering options for people whose income levels disqualify them for subsidised, affordable housing, but also does not enable them to purchase housing at market prices. The intermediate housing market is defined as private sector renter households, having at least one member in paid employment, which are unable to affordably (using no more than 30% of their gross household income to service mortgage expenses) purchase a dwelling at the lower quartile housing market sale price). Currently, there are limited options for this segment of the market, despite the large quantum of people falling into this category. Community-focused housing encompasses new builds as well as existing buildings. Community-focused housing has proven to be an effective regeneration and anti-gentrification and displacement tool and assists in stabilising the housing market in economic downturns. Importantly, many governments have learned the added value of community-led models as they have proven to achieve much higher levels of social and ecological sustainability and design excellence targets over more traditional, developer-led approaches.

What are the benefits from Community Focused Housing?

Community-focused housing lowers the cost of the initial purchase price, and produces perpetual affordability by:

• Providing stewardship over land by retaining ownership, therefore reducing the cost,
• Facilitating access to finance at low interest rates, in recognition of CFH’s not-for-profitstatus,
• Pooling members’ resources to leverage their buying power, and sharing the costs associated with home ownership among a greater number of people,
• Delivering a high level of environmental sustainability and energy efficiency, and making cost efficient, future-focused decisions informed by the whole-of-life costs.
• Controlling resale conditions to ensure that subsidised homes remain in circulation andavailable to subsequent buyers.

Community-focused housing builds stronger communities by improving personal health (physical, emotional, and mental), and household wellbeing (reduced healthcare needs andcosts). CFH also offers a greater degree of flexibility and diversity, by providing fit-for-purpose intergenerational housing options that meet demand, and that are culturally appropriate, by:

• Providing support networks and opportunities to reduce isolation and loneliness,
• Creating diverse mixed-income neighbourhoods that reduce anti-social behaviour,
• Allowing residents to reclaim space within, and control of, their neighbourhood,
• Adopting a participatory design and development process, delivering design typologies witha broader range of functionalities that respond to people’s needs,
• Supporting housing mobility within the same dwelling, as life phases change, and
• Integrating non-housing elements, such as shared laundries, playrooms, guest houses, gardens and cooperative enterprises.

Community-focused housing builds skills and capability by allowing people to participate in the ownership and management of their homes through democratic governance (control) by:

• Enabling residents to develop a range of social, financial, operational, administrative, leadership and job-seeking capabilities that allow them to access further education, qualifications, and employment opportunities, and
• Building democratic capability, thus encouraging participation in civic activities.

Why is it different from other forms of housing development?

The approach taken to design, fund and develop the building(s) is unique to each model, and depends on things like the nature of the issues in the community, the housing demand and most importantly the type of partnerships that can be developed across sectors and their available resources (land, finance and capability).

These models do in some instances adopt the principles of the more commonly understood ‘shared equity’ model. Shared equity is a tenure (ownership) structure that serves as a tool to preserve housing affordability, which can be part of the solution to closing the wealth gap. This style of homeownership mitigates the risks of traditional homeownership, strengthens residential stability, and promotes equitable wealth-building. The equity can come in the form of land or cash. Shared equity homeownership programs make homes affordable to lower income families by investing public resources to reduce the initial prices, and then they keep the prices affordable to all future home buyers through resale restrictions. The organisation supports the residents to attain and sustain homeownership. In return, the homeowners agree to sell their homes at a resale-restricted and affordable price to other lower-income home buyers in the future. Consequently, the homeowner can successfully own a home and build wealth, while the organisation is able to preserve the public’s investment in the affordable home permanently to help family after family.

Community-focused housing development offers a range of tenures (including shared equity) thereby promoting mixed income housing communities. However, the primary difference between community-led or community-focused housing and other mixed income developments, delivered by developers, housing providers and/ or the government, is the process by which itis developed. As the name suggests, CFH involves the residents and a co-design process, so the development generally looks different and people’s roles within the community are also different. Community focused housing promotes the use of a range of different common areas (centralised large areas and smaller pods on levels), including:

• Allotments / community gardens
• Community workshops (tools, arts, music)
• Shared library
• Wellness centre (fitness, sauna, multi-purpose)
• Common house
• Common goods (e.g. household equipment, games)
• Community kitchen and large hireable or shareable dining
• Meeting spaces / community centre
• Play areas/rooms
• Guest rooms
• Solar energy and community heating
• Shared utilities (internet/phone)
• Parking at edge/shared vehicles

In addition to the programme looking some what different from a traditional speculative development, the way that developments are managed and operated is different, with a level of democratic participation and control afforded to those who live there. Fundamentally, CFH developments operate as a community, while also providing for privacy and individual living.

How can we grow the sector in New Zealand?

Growing CFH in New Zealand requires a commitment by both central and local government, and organisations across sectors, to use their resources, and capability, to work together towards a mutually agreed set of outcomes that are underpinned by public or ‘common good’ objectives (be they affordability, social, broader economic or environmental). This represents a shift from ‘highest and best use’ to highest and best ‘public’ use on public land.

A partnership approach makes these models work, and that requires a process that is collaborative, open and transparent; therefore, a commitment is needed to shift from the procurement approaches traditionally taken by the public sector, to a genuine partnership-based approach. Many governments around the world have learned that their role can be partner and enabler of community-led models by adopting a different risk-sharing profile; one where the public sector takes on some of the earlier risk, to unlock the benefits offered by CFH, namely through providing access to land and less expensive development finance.

Transactionally, there is not much difference between a local council engaging with a traditional developer versus a community-focused development group. Contracts and legal instruments would not be dissimilar to manage risk and liabilities between each party. From a procurement perspective, there is a difference. Local governments across the United Kingdom, mainland Europe and North America have evolved their governance and management of land and housing to recognise community-led housing as its own distinct sector within the housing continuum. Numerous local governments have amended their housing, land governance and procurement strategies to specifically support the growth of CFH within their municipalities. For instance, Vienna and Berlin passed laws prohibiting sale of public land, with only CFH or state-sponsored social housing being able to be developed on government land through 60- or 99-year groundleases (Vienna goes a step further to proactively acquire land and reserve it for cooperativehousing development only).

Should developers wish to partner with social housing organisation or community-led housing groups, they must adhere to strict criteria weighted as follows:

• 90% criteria weighting on urban/architectural design excellence, sustainability, social value creation
• 10% criteria weighting on tender price

In addition to supporting community-focused housing groups to find and access land for development, local governments also provide critical seed funding to support capacity building, training and resources to help scale the community-led housing sector. For example, in 2019 London Mayor Sadiq Khan approved a £38million ($NZ80million) fund to finance the growth ofthis sector in London, known in the UK as the community-led housing sector.

To overcome financial barriers to underwriting community-led housing models internationally, numerous local and national governments have also provided support through:

• The creation of Revolving Loan Funds to provide critical gap financing solutions to support projects,
• Loan guarantees and cross-collateralisation of public assets to reduce underwriting risks from senior lender,
• Allowing ground rental payments to be subordinate to senior debt payments,
• Direct grants to support group formation and design development phase, and
• Ground rent concessions to reduce rent levels to meet local income affordability levels (i.e.income derived rents < or = 30%).

As the government looks to ‘infrastructure’ to form the basis of the post Covid-19 rebuildingof the NZ economy, there is an opportunity to take a new approach to addressing issues of housing affordability, social disconnectedness and environmental sustainability through supporting the growth of the community-focused housing sector. An introduction to what CFH is, and why it would be beneficial to New Zealand, as well as some of the things that the government organisations could do to unlock the newer models, including cooperative housing and community land trusts, has been provided in this brief article.

Written by Greer O’Donnell with contributions from Jason Twill.

We work with a diverse range of urban actors, across a range of scales, to coordinate policy and development efforts toward more integrated neighbourhoods that are better for people and place. In simple terms, this is what urban strategists do.

In the process of delivering neighbourhoods, we have developed seven strategic principles that we follow when identifying new ways of prioritising people- and place-based outcomes

The COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020 marked the beginning of what could be described as a new era for New Zealand. Our shared experience and strong collective response to the virus has changed how we see ourselves as New Zealanders: we are now the ‘team of 5 million’. And by staying at home, New Zealanders saved many lives. But the lockdown situation also highlighted the critical ways that our homes and neighbourhoods impact our wellbeing. It brought renewed focus to our systemic housing issues: from crowding and affordability stresses, to the lack of healthy, secure and fit-for-purpose housing. With a new policy agenda and fiscal means for urban development, New Zealand has a timely opportunity to address these challenges, and to solidify the legacy of the ‘team of 5 million’ and the wellbeing of current and future generations. This essay argues that to build back better, the urban development sector must value housing as infrastructure. With this stance, we can deliver transformative, integrated infrastructure programmes and quality, secure, affordable homes for all New Zealanders.

Housing is essential infrastructure.

Infrastructure is defined as ‘the system of public works of a country, state, or region (1)’ or ‘the basic systems and services... that a country or organization uses in order to work effectively (2)’. Traditionally, this understanding includes network systems such as telecommunications, roading and rail, energy, education and healthcare facilities, but excludes housing. Secure, quality, affordable and fit-for-purpose housing is arguably fundamental to people’s health and wellbeing, and the effective social and economic functioning of a country, region or city. Great housing also delivers benefits beyond their own walls, from improved educational achievement and public health to strengthened employment and social outcomes. But, at present, the New Zealand housing system is not supporting these wellbeing outcomes for many households, especially low to middle income households, key essential workers, people with disabilities, Māori, Pasifika and other minority cultural groups (3). Also, many renters in New Zealand (4) live in poor quality homes that are cold, damp, mouldy or crowded with serious impacts on their health and wellbeing, regardless of pandemic restrictions (5). On this basis, with a similarly serious housing crisis, research (6) from Australia, has built up interest in ‘reconceptualising social housing as a form of essential infrastructure ... to attract additional investment, especially from private sector sources (7)’ . In this post-COVID-19 era, New Zealand would benefit from a similar reconceptualisation of housing as essential social and physical infrastructure, and infrastructure that can be built back better.

Public works programmes that value housing as critical national infrastructure have not been seen in New Zealand since the decades following the Great Depression and World War II. This era turned an economic crisis into an opportunity to develop New Zealand. The welfare state was developed, including a significant government housing programme which gave many New Zealand families the opportunity to affordably build (or buy) their own homes, or rent secure state housing. The scale of public works programmes across infrastructure sectors in this period have had an enduring impact on our homes and communities, from the physical form of neighbourhoods, cities and regions, to our lifestyles, ideals, identity and overall wellbeing as New Zealanders. For example, housing and family ideals from this era have persisted in our housing system (8).

Despite this strong legacy, New Zealand society has changed and become significantly more diverse, such that past housing ideals are no longer serving all New Zealanders well (9). In 2020, we are a multicultural nation with a growing population demanding a range of housing options to meet diverse needs across different life stages, lifestyles and income levels. Housing situations directly impact our health and wellbeing, but these situations are firmly influenced by the available housing choices. Intensified lived experiences of housing during the COVID-19 lockdowns highlighted how, for many, our housing choices don’t necessarily reflect our ideal housing option or meet our housing needs. Housing choices are ultimately constrained by what is provided by the market. Poorer wellbeing outcomes from unsuitable or lacking housing choices are a symptom of our shamefully insecure, inequitable and unaffordable housing system (10). This system values housing primarily as a commodity, rather than a public good. For example, despite a post-pandemic recession, property market prices continue to grow, outpacing income growth, increasing housing costs and widening inequality between homeowners and renters. In this current market-based system, our housing infrastructure is not being valued adequately as essential social and physical infrastructure, most evident because it is failing to support the basic needs and wellbeing of all New Zealanders. So, how do we build back better? We need to value housing as critical infrastructure and act on this by delivering a national public housing programme akin to the post-war housing build - in scale, quality and social and economic impact. We could even bring back the Ministry of Public Works (11) to oversee the delivery of all public infrastructure, to create thousands of jobs for New Zealanders, to boost our economy, and to build better homes for current and future generations.

The infrastructure system must include housing.

The infrastructure sector in New Zealand is currently focused on physical infrastructure like transport, energy, water, telecommunications and social infrastructure (12). But to truly deliver for wellbeing in urban development, we must consider infrastructure as a system that is connected to and inclusive of housing. This is challenging at present, with the disconnect between how urban development programmes (e.g. urban regeneration by Kāinga Ora), and major public infrastructure is nationally funded and delivered, whereas local civil infrastructure is funded and delivered by local government. The delivery of integrated and transformative infrastructure investment in this post-COVID era, would benefit from a change to the infrastructure funding and delivery systems in New Zealand. We need to align local and central government infrastructure funding mechanisms or create a system where the ‘risky’ precedent of central government funding local infrastructure for housing, for example, isn’t a risk but instead an efficient public service mechanism. A 21st century Ministry of Public Works could help to resolve these tensions.

Furthemore, our communities will benefit from an infrastructure investment agenda and urban development legislation, which collectively value the critical role of housing in well-functioning urban environments. Recent reconfigurations and reforms to the government’s housing and urban development agenda, structures and legislation will improve infrastructure and urban development outcomes for wellbeing. These include a new Housing and Urban Development Ministry (HUD) which was established in 2018 to “help the Government build New Zealand out of the national housing crisis and restore the basic right to healthy, affordable housing for all New Zealanders (13)” . In 2019, the urban development authority Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities was formed with the objective “to contribute to sustainable, inclusive, and thriving communities”, including providing New Zealanders with “quality affordable housing choices that meet diverse needs (14)” . Combined with the wellbeing mandate from the Treasury, the new National Policy Statement on Urban Development (15) and growing political support for reform of the Resource Management Act, the coming decades will see significant change and improvement in how urban development and infrastructure investment will support the wellbeing of New Zealanders.

While these changes to the urban development agenda and governing legislation are not insignificant, they are not adequate to fundamentally address our housing crisis or to make the most of the post-COVID opportunity to build back better. The current fiscal plan to support households, communities and businesses through the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Rebuilding Together Budget, is significant and unprecedented (16). But as a once-in-a-generation investment in the wellbeing of New Zealanders, bolder measures are required. As already proposed, New Zealand needs to re-establish the Ministry of Public Works to administer an integrated public infrastructure programme. This should include a major public housing programme administered by the state to deliver housing independent of the market, to meet our diverse housing needs. Recent recommendations from the Welfare Advisory Group support this suggestion for a housing programme not too dissimilar from post-war recovery programmes in New Zealand, highlighting the importance of spending on social infrastructure (17).

The WAG found that major housing developments can provide a similar scale of employment and support to the economy as more conventional large economic infrastructure developments and thus are appropriate economic stimulus in this situation (18). Indeed, our nation reaped the benefits of large-scale public housing development post-war, but we’ve fallen behind. New Zealand desperately needs a shift-change in the infrastructure and urban development sectors to address the pre-existing housing crisis and to meet the economic challenges (and opportunities) of the post-COVID era. This strategy to deliver housing as essential infrastructure will offer wide ranging wellbeing outcomes for decades to come.

In conclusion, the post-COVID era presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build back better and to invest in the wellbeing of New Zealanders, current and future. A case for valuing housing as essential infrastructure, and as part of an integrated system of infrastructure has been presented. The renewed housing and urban development policy agenda is considered an improved position, but New Zealand requires a bolder agenda, and new mechanisms and means to make the best of this significant post-COVID opportunity. On this basis, New Zealand should deliver a major public housing programme, using an instrument like the past Ministry of Public Works to deliver integrated public infrastructure, to create jobs, better homes and a better country for our people. Wellbeing, health, productivity and resilience all start from home, but we are already behind amidst a severe housing crisis. Thus, at this time, major investment in housing as infrastructure is crucial, strategic and wise. Generations of New Zealanders will benefit from a post-COVID response that uses this crisis to solve another crisis. Let’s make the most of the major Rebuilding Together investment and build better homes for New Zealand in the process.

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References

(1) Merriam-Webster Dictionary

(2) Cambridge Dictionary

(3) Johnson, A., Howden-Chapman, P., & Eaqub, S. (2018). A stocktake of New Zealand's housing. Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment; Allen, N., Dale, M., and O’Donnell, G. (2019) Diversifying the Housing Ecosystem: A Case for Change. Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities [unpublished]; Kake, J. (2020) Māori Housing Issues in Election 2020. The Dig. Retrieved from: https://thedig.nz/transitional-livelihoods/maori-housing-issues-in-election-2020/

(4) Renter households, and those on lower to middle incomes disproportionately experience housing affordability stress (Mitchell, 2019) and poor housing quality (White et al., 2015). Māori and Pacific households are over-represented in housing deprivation statistics such as declining home ownership, increasing renting, increasing homelessness and public housing tenure (Tanielu, 2019; Amore, 2016; Johnson, Howden-Chapman & Equab, 2018). Disabled people are also particularly disadvantaged in securing affordable, fit-for-purpose housing.

(5) Early evidence suggests that lockdown and inadequate housing situations intensified some housing-related health issues. Comprehensive data on health impacts is not yet available, however this article from NZ Doctor highlights a significant increase in Rheumatic fever, a disease caused by household overcrowding. Refer also: https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/undoctored/spike-rheumatic-fever-coincides-launch-unprecedented-research-funding

(6) Flanagan, K., Martin, C., Jacobs, K. and Lawson, J. (2019) A conceptual analysis of social housing as infrastructure, AHURI Final Report No. 309, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Limited, Melbourne, http://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/309, doi: 10.18408/ahuri-4114101.

(7) Ibid. p. 1

(8) Also, the western nuclear family-unit household who owns their own home is no longer an accurate or appropriate assumption for the ideal housing situation.

(9) Home ownership rates have fallen to their lowest levels since the 1960s: now, just over half of New Zealand adults own their own home (Johnson, Howden-Chapman and Eaqub, 2018). Equally, the long-held kiwi dream of a standalone home on a quarter acre section is often inappropriate, unattainable and unaffordable for many households.

(10) Johnson, Howden-Chapman & Eaqub (2018); Allen, Dale & O’Donnell (2019)

(11) The New Zealand Ministry of Works (various names across history) was disestablished in 1988 after more than 100 years serving New Zealanders.

(12) Refer https://infrastructure.org.nz/

(13) https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new-ministry-brings-leadership-and-focus-housing-and-urban-development

(14) Kāinga Ora - Homes and Communities Act 2019, s12(1) http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2019/0050/latest/LMS191164.html

(15) Intensification is especially enabled in locations close to rapid transport services and from the removal of parking minimums.

(16) The $60b+ ‘Rebuilding Together’ 2020 Budget, seeks to “grow jobs and support New Zealanders and the economy through the effects of COVID-19 and the global recession”. This budget includes $3 billion worth of ‘shovel ready’ infrastructure projects that would provide or retain 20,000 jobs, $464m for housing and urban development including a target to deliver 8,000 additional public and transitional houses, and provision for the horizontal and vertical infrastructure required for housing.

(17) https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/121423308/coronavirus-welfare-advisory-group-calls-for-postwar-style-house-building-programme

(18) Ibid.