Urban Growth Agenda

This work aims to remove barriers to the supply of land and infrastructure and make room for cities to grow up and out.  The UGA Ministers group that governs the programme includes the Ministers of Housing, Infrastructure, Transport, Local Government, and the Ministers for Building and Construction and the Environment.

Objectives of the UGA

Affordable housing

Giving people more and better options for housing locations and types, to improve housing affordability in urban areas. 

Emissions reductions

Encouraging, enabling, and incentivising lower emission urban form and construction. 

Liveable and resilient cities

Making urban areas more accessible and inclusive, and increasing resilience to natural hazards and climate change impacts. 

Focus areas

The UGA is built on five pillars: 

• Infrastructure Funding, Financing, and Delivery — to enable a more responsive supply of infrastructure and appropriate cost allocation, while supporting stable and certain funding systems. 
• Urban Planning — to allow for cities to make room for growth, support quality-built environments and enable strategic integrated planning. 
• Urban Growth Partnership — to build a stronger partnership with iwi and Māori, and between local and central government as a means of developing integrated spatial planning.  
• Levering and Integrating Transport — to ensure low-carbon, well-connected public and active transport through transport investment and land use across the pillars. 
• System Coherence — to ensure that regulatory, institutional and funding settings are integrated and mutually reinforcing, and that and urban development perspective is included across government reforms.