Going for Housing Growth: Providing for urban development in the new resource management system

1. What does the new resource management system need to do to enable good housing and urban development outcomes?

Future development strategies and spatial planning

2. How should spatial planning requirements be designed to promote good housing and urban outcomes in the new resource management system?

Housing growth targets

3. Do you support the proposed high-level design of the housing growth targets? Why or why not?

Providing an agile land release mechanism

4. How can the new resource management system better enable a streamlined release of land previously identified as suitable for urban development or a greater intensity of development?

Determining housing growth targets

5. Do you agree with the proposed methodology for how housing growth targets are calculated and applied across councils? Are there other methods that might be more appropriate for determining Housing Growth Targets?

6. How should feasibility be defined in the new system? If based on profitability, should feasibility modelling be able to allow for changing costs and/or prices?

Calculating development capacity

7. How should feasibility be defined in the new system?

8. If the design of feasibility is based on profitability, should feasibility modelling be able to allow for changing costs or prices or both?

9. Do you agree with the proposal to replace the current ‘reasonably expected to be realised’ test with a higher-level requirement for capacity to be ‘realistic’?  

10. What aspects of capacity assessments would benefit from greater prescription and consistency?  

Infrastructure requirements  

11. Should councils be able to use the growth projection they consider to be most likely for assessing whether there is sufficient infrastructure-ready capacity?

12. How can we balance the need to set minimum levels of quality for demonstrating infrastructure capacity with the flexibility required to ensure they are implementable by all applicable councils?

13. What level of detail should be required when assessing whether capacity is infrastructure-ready? For instance, should this be limited to plant equipment (e.g. treatment plants, pumping stations) and trunk mains/key roads, or should it also include local pipes and roads?

Responding to price efficiency indicators

14. Do you agree with the proposed requirement for council planning decisions to be responsive to price efficiency indicators?

Business land requirements

15. Do you agree that councils should be required to provide enough development capacity for business land to meet 30 years of demand?

Responsive planning

16. Are mechanisms needed in the new resource management system to ensure councils are responsive to unanticipated or out-of-sequence developments? If so, how should these be designed?

17. How should any responsiveness requirements in the new system incorporate the direction for ‘growth to pay for growth’? 

Rural-urban boundaries

18. Do you agree with the proposal that the new resource management system is clear that councils are not able to include a policy, objective or rule that sets an urban limit or a rural-urban boundary line in their planning documents for the purposes of urban containment? If not, how should the system best give effect to Cabinet direction to not have rural-urban boundary lines in plans?

19. Do you agree that the future resource management system should prohibit any provisions in spatial or regulatory plans that would prevent leapfrogging? If not, why not?

20. What role could spatial planning play in better enabling urban expansion?

Intensification

Key public transport corridors

21. Do you agree with the proposed definitions for the two categories of ‘key public transport corridors’? If not, why not?

22. Do you agree with the intensification provisions applying to each category? If not, what should the requirements be?

23. Do you agree with councils being responsible for determining which corridors meet the definition of each of these categories?

Intensification catchments sizes

24. Do you support Option 1, Option 2 or something else? Why?

Minimum building heights to be enable

25. What are the key barriers to the delivery of four-to-six storey developments at present?

26. For areas where councils are currently required to enable at least six storeys, should this be increased to more than six storeys? If so, what should it be increased to? Would this have a material impact on what is built?

27. For areas where councils are currently required to enable at least six storeys, what would be the costs and risks (if any) of requiring councils to enable more than six storeys?

Offsetting the loss of development capacity

28. Is offsetting for the loss of capacity in directed intensification areas required in the new resource management system?

29. If offsetting is required, how should an equivalent area be determined?

Intensification in other areas

30. Is an equivalent to the NPS-UD’s policy 3(d) (as originally scoped) needed in the new resource management system? If so, are any changes needed to the policy to make it easier to implement?  

Enabling a mix of uses across urban environments

31. What controls need to be put in place to allow residential, commercial and community activities to take place in proximity to each other without significant negative externalities?

32. What areas should be required to use zones that enable a wide mix of uses?

Minimum floor area and balcony requirements

33. Which rules under the current system do you consider would either not meet the definition of an externality or have a disproportionate impact on development feasibility?

Targeting of proposals

34. Do you consider changes should be made to the current approach on how requirements are targeted? If so, what changes do you consider should be made?

Impacts of proposals on Māori

35. Do you have any feedback on how the Going for Housing Growth proposals could impact on Māori?

Other matters

36. Do you have any other feedback on Going for Housing Growth proposals and how they should be reflected in the new resource management system?

Transitioning to Phase Three

37. Should Tier 1 and 2 councils be required to prepare or review their HBA and FDS in accordance with current NPS-UD requirements ahead of 2027 long-term plans? Why or why not?