Auckland’s Plan Change 78: In defence of the villa amid urban intensification push

Sue Cooper 22/04/2025 Sue Cooper 22/04/2025

Unless you are a planning nerd or need a cure for insomnia, the long-running saga of Auckland’s Plan Ch ange 78 will have escaped your notice.

Yet this arcane urban intensification instrument has far-reaching implications for our biggest city's future shape and liveability.

PC78 is Auckland Council’s (AC) response to central government demands that local authorities free up extra capacity for residential and commercial development in their areas.

However, since AC notified the plan change in 2022, seven worlds of natural disasters and political flip-flopping have collided to turn the pathway for its implementation into a bog, almost literally.

The devastation caused by the Anniversary Weekend floods and Cyclone Gabrielle in early 2023 resulted in Auckland begging Wellington for a time extension, as AC planners scrambled to reassess which areas of the city were still suitable for intensification.

Meanwhile, the AC had carved a gumboot-shaped swathe out of the central isthmus from Newton to the airport, where it refused to implement the mandatory upzoning.

This represented the corridor for the previous Government’s $15 billion light rail project.

In effect, AC sai d: “There’s no point in us doing this if you’re only going to turn around and declare your preferred light rail route and make us do it all over again.”

Upzoning whiplash

After three years, a general election, and the axing of light rail, AC again had to ask for more time.

As well as giving effect to the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD), PC78 was supposed to incorporate the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS), a directive allowing three dwellings of three storeys on most urban sites without a resource consent.

However, while the MDRS was passed in a bipartisan deal between the major parties in December 2021, the new National-led Government soon forgot that kumbaya moment and declared the MDRS would be optional.

Auckland’s unrivalled villas

Some people see a draughty old villa taking up valuable central city space, while others see precious historic character.

Joshua Howie, a postgraduate student in architecture and heritage conservation at Auckland University, did a study comparing the city’s villas with Brisbane’s “Queenslanders”, workers' cottages in Melbourne and Chicago, the “shotgun” houses of New Orleans, and the wooden cottages of Nantucket.

He found that Auckland’s Victorian and Edwardian residential architecture is characterised by a cohesive “vibe” and has no direct equivalent elsewhere in the world.

“Ponsonby is a perfect example of this; villas as far as the eye can see.

“Auckland is unrivalled in the scale and consistency of its areas of ornate timber colonial architecture.

“This architecture and its streetscapes are in and of themselves endemic to Auckland, and entirely unique globally, making Auckland’s special character areas a taonga,” he concluded.

Sites too small

Whether you agree with Howie or not, there is another important factor to consider in the heritage protection versus housing intensification debate.

Auckland’s character homes tend to sit on small and extremely valuable sites.

If a developer pays $3 million for an inner-city villa, they will not replace it with a clutch of $700,000 affordable homes. They will seek to maximise their outlay by building two or three luxury townhouses or apartments.

In Ponsonby, some sites are so bijoux that you’d be struggling to build townhouses, Chris Farhi, head of insights and data at real estate agency Bayleys, said.

He said that in other areas where the sections are larger, the economics are different, and there could be an argument for removing character protections.

Heritage is desirable, evidenced by the ongoing popularity of suburbs with a critical mass of turn-of-the-century houses and builders offering replica character homes. There is also demand for more quality homes, Farhi said.

“If you look at overall housing supply, we’re not necessarily needing to focus all the new developments at the affordable end of the spectrum.”

Leave Auckland alone

Cheung has told his constituents that the Government will not stop the AC from retaining special character provisions in its Unitary Plan.

It will demand that any loss of development capacity caused by the use of unlisted qualifying matters be offset by an increase in development capacity elsewhere.

“This change will allow councils to limit intensification in areas judged by local communities to be unsuited for further development, whilst preventing a net loss in housing,” he said.

The Character Coalition, an umbrella group representing 60 residents and heritage groups, is somewhat encouraged that it may not be necessary to sell the family silver after all.

It stated that Auckland is quite capable of balancing the unquestioned need for greater intensification, especially around train stations, once the new City Rail Link is up and running, with the retention of our remaining pockets of character housing.

Tamaki Makaurau should be left alone to determine where it is best to intensify, and where it is desirable to preserve its storied heritage and characterful cityscape.