Credibility on the line: time to get real about Auckland transport and land use options

Councillors are getting nervous about the planned central rail link (CRL).  So they should be.  And while planning is well down the track, it’s not too late to apply the brakes.

This post strings together some of the arguments I have raised against the CRL over the past several years[1], and adds another one –the likelihood that technology gains will further undermine it.

But first some basics. 

Moving more and moving further

Transport is a derived demand: you only get it in response to the demand to move people or goods.  And as information flows more and more freely around the world, so growing demand for travel and trade -- locally, nationally, and internationally -- drives investment in transport. 

As nations, towns, and cities prosper, we travel more and further.  We exercise greater choice in where and how we live.  We consume a greater variety of products and services at lower prices.  And the transport sector responds with ever increasing products, services, and capacity.

Of course, it’s not just a one-way street. Transport innovations facilitate new trading relationships and expand travel demands.  Innovation-driven gains in mobility have enabled the masses and not simply the rich to enjoy the benefits of access to more space, more places, and more lifestyle opportunities. 

For example, the arrival of the wide-bodied jet in the 1960s and the more recent emergence of the single aisle, light weight, twin engine long-distance jet have increased the affordability of long distance travel and supported the emergence of many more international travel destinations for many more travellers. 

Similarly, the globalisation of production has been facilitated by transformation of the freight industry into an integrated transport, storage, and fulfilment logistics sector operating seamlessly to deliver lower priced goods from producer to consumer regardless of the distance and borders between them.

Urban transport – a history of increasing personal mobility

This is not the place to detail the history of urban transport, but it’s worth noting a legacy of occasional step changes resulting from disruptive new technologies interspersed with long periods of refining existing technologies.  These two have offered people the opportunity to enjoy more space, better health, and better lifestyles through progressively improved access to housing, services, work, and recreation. 

 

Hence the displacement of horse and carriage with steam-driven and tracked vehicles in the second half of the 19^th century, the replacement of steam engines with internal combustion engines late in the 19^th century; the introduction of the omnibus at the beginning of the 20^th; the development of mass-production techniques for automobiles in the 1930s; and their proliferation in the 1950s and beyond.

Innovations in engines, propulsion, and materials have led to continuous automobile performance improvements. Even so, concerns about congestion, threats to oil supplies, pollution, and the costs of providing more road capacity raise questions over just how much more car use we can sustain. 

Despite its own gains in distribution, comfort, and speed, mass transit remains an alternative limited by fixed routes especially in today's complex and often fragmented cities.  The problem is less acute for buses than trains, although the economics of providing routes and schedules to suit diverse needs in large cities are entrenched in both modes.

So, where does the next step change lie in urban mobility?

Driving innovation

Perhaps the rate of advance to existing technologies has reached the point that disruptive technologies are less likely.  Ongoing innovation in car operations (built most recently on revolutions in information technology) and advances in engines are likely to deliver major capacity gains from infrastructure and lower the cost and impacts of private motoring[2], lifting personal mobility and reducing the likelihood of step change.  At the same time the propensity to use cars is stabilising, if not diminishing. [3] The threat is that the fixed route options for public transport will become even less attractive.

Of course demand will be  continue to be driven up by population growth, even if individuals drive less.  Herein lies the challenge: we are not talking about the mobility of current Aucklanders, but that of perhaps a million more seeking their share of transport infrastructure. 

How do we cater for this: promote a return to the old technology of fixed route rail capacity?  More roads? Or by managing transport demand through effective land use planning?  I prefer a combination of all three, but it’s a preference based on (1) understanding the particular limits to and costs of continued obsession with rail and particularly (in Auckland) the CRL, and (2) returning to an emphasis on sensible land use as the engine of this particular train, not transport.

The limits to rail

At the risk of being repetitive [4] here are some of the reasons to reject major expenditure on the CRL (or a rail-based airport link or harbour crossing for that matter):

(1)  Demand will be limited.  A doubling or tripling of rail patronage will not go far in terms of total commuter demand given the very small base it operates off; 9,000 Aucklanders commuted by train according to the 2013 Census.  That's 2% of commuters.  Currently 10% of Aucklanders commute by public transport, 80% of those bus.
 

Boosting public transport demand though park and ride facilities or integrated ticketing is limited by the relatively small number of destinations served.  Public transport travel time costs are already high and multi-mode travel inevitably lifts them no matter high efficient. 

Boosting public transport demand by providing inner city dwelling capacity is largely irrelevant as inner city commuters already have a high propensity to walk, cycle or take public transport to work (only 55% use a private vehicle).  That market is tiny anyway, and likely to remain so.[5]  

Promoting high density dwelling around stations at key suburban centres to boost train patronage will meet market resistance.  And, if successful, it will lead to conflicts between local activity and park and ride facilities, adding to local congestion. 

Focusing employment on the CBD to boost the use of public transport ignores the needs of the majority of businesses (only 12% of Auckland employment is currently in the CBD).  It also ignores questions over the resilience of the CBD. its ageing, often capacity-constrained infrastructure. and the vulnerability to extreme climatic events of low lying and reclaimed land on which much of it is built[6].

Promoting higher employment densities around stations to lift the viability of rail will generate additional road congestion as much of the interaction around businesses still requires point-to-point vehicle access, the majority of commuters are likely to remain car-bound, and the more people that live in and around the CBD the more of them will need to commute outwards to employment as well as for recreational reasons -- by car.

And there is a real question mark over what those many more white collar workers in the new towers might be doing,[7] especially as high tech employment increasingly favours low rise, green working environments.

(2)  The impact on congestion will be minimal. Creating additional road capacity by diverting some commuter trips to public transport reduces the costs of private transport, encouraging greater car use until such time as unacceptable levels of delay once more set in.  Such evidence as there is for developed cities in North America, Australasia and Europe does not support the proposition that public transport reduces congestion.[8]

(3)  The Capital costs will be high – almost inevitably higher by hundreds of millions of dollars than current estimates;[9].  Even without the usual "large project blowout" the marginal costs will be very high: if the impact was to triple daily commuting patronage to, say, 30,000 people a day a capital cost of $2.4bn (both optimistic assumptions) represents $120,000 for each additional commuter.
 

(4)  Overheads will be high – fixed costs are a large component of rail overheads.  These include operating costs, maintenance, and renewals (for rolling stock in particular), interest on capital, and depreciation.  Any demands on ratepayers or road users to subsidise this are still costs, costs that are likely to reduce the attractiveness of Auckland as a place to live or invest. 

In addition, pricing public transport to recover even a constant share of higher costs from users is likely to lower demand. This, in turn, is likely to reduce income more than costs, potentially leading to a subsidy (public cost) blow out.

(5)  The business case relies on heroic assumptions about the future of work and housing.  Building a case on assumptions about a shift to high density housing on suburban stations and new towers of white collar employees around inner city stations is highly risky, with no evidence that the risks have been factored into decision making. [10]  And there seems to be little consideration given to the risks to rail resulting from technical advances taking place in the automobile industry that should increase the efficiency of roads, lower the costs and boost further the convenience of cars, and improve the performance of buses  [2],

(6)  The economics do not stack up and consequently fiscal risk is high.[11][12]  The legacy of the CRL is likely to be enduring debt and costs that potentially reduce the appeal of Auckland as a place to live without reducing the problem of congestion. And they will be so much higher if the optimistic projections on which the business case is based fail to materialise.  When costs substantially exceed benefits productivity suffer and the Auckland economy is the loser. 

There’s got to be a Better Way

The aim of this post was to contribute to the current debate over the future of the CRL.  Whether or not it goes ahead it is not going to solve Auckland’s transport problems.  Nor will an integrated transport system based on common ticketing and interchange stations with their substantial land demands and impact on local and arterial road congestion help much.

The long-term solution may best be based on a return to basics: identifying the land use pattern that is in accord with both the city’s geography and the ambitions of the council to house another million residents (an ambition that seems to have gone un-debated in the lead up to current plans).  The transport system needs to be organised to serve that. 

Planning land use to serve an outmoded transit model based on an increasingly dated transport mode justified by the view that Auckland can continue to grow as mono-centric city is a recipe for disappointment  - and not just in transport.

---

[1] Starting on this blog with Buses or Bust? April 2011 and Rethink the Link: Does Auckland Really Need to Pour Money into a Hole in the Ground, December 2011  To get an alternative point of view, visit transportblog.co.nz/

[2] Cars, Engines, Travel – Fewer, Smaller, Less February 2013,  Driving Blind – Driverless Cars Ramp up the Risk for Rail October 2014

[3] Cities, Cars, People – is Changing Car Use of Function of New Urbanism? March 2012

[4] Here’s an earlier list At least Five More Reasons not to Build the Central City Rail Link December 2012

[5] Living in the CBD or Just Passing Through, October 2014

[6] See Planning for Disaster and The Auckland Plan – A High Risk Recipe, November 2012

[7] See, for example, Whither White Collar Services? December 2011

[8] Do Density and Public Transport Relieve Congestion? December 2013

[9] Tunnel Vision: Thin Edge of the Rail Wedge July 2012

[10] For example Out Might Just be Better than up – the great Housing Debate is not Over April 2013 and on employment More Land, More Jobs, More Income, Addressing the Other Side of the Affordability Question April 2013

[11] This is the sort of contingency that a Business case should address as a matter of course.

[12] A Flawed Case,  Auckland’s City Rail Link and Derailing Auckland – Unravelling the assumptions December 2012

Another Middle Class City Vision

Roads or cafes? That is not the question.

Dr Joel Cayford says that we are throwing away money when we invest in roads but creating value when we invest in downtown infrastructure (New Zealand Herald, 17 September 2012).  It’s a mistake to think state highways are not a critical part of our urban infrastructure, a mistake too many central road planners make – failing to appreciate that the highway's main role in and around Auckland is in the provision of urban arterials, the roads that keep the city itself connected and working.

And while I share Dr Cayford’s concern over the shaky rationale behind some current over-the-top  inter-city road projects, I cannot accept the idea that throwing a lot public money into the CBD is a rational alternative.  Nor do I accept that we should persist in a cargo cult mentality, demonstrated in his suggestion that the taxpayer should deliver more central city goodies to Aucklanders.

Creating a central city sink

Dr Cayford’s vision is one of even more public spending in an area already at risk from over-investment in public amenities.  This simply means that the city’s ratepayers will have to cough up even more because of over-optimistic – or plain misleading - extrapolations of demand and dollars and a contrived vision of what a central city might be.  Except that he would also have the taxpayers help pay for the party.  

At least he is in good company: Auckland’s spatial plan promotes the CBD as a sink for the city’s rates.

Even the occupants of the latest flagship quarter, the Wynyard Wharf, are said to require further rental subsidies from the city.   And while it was great to have Wynyard set up  for the Rugby World Cup – and we were lucky enough to have fair weather most of the time – it is more often echoing and empty than thriving and buzzing. 

The CBD is doing fine

Dr Cayford suggests that the problem is that the city centre is not a great place to visit.  I disagree, and I doubt that never-ending spending on me-too inner city infrastructure will drag more tourists down to New Zealand as he suggests. Incomes and exchange rates drive tourist numbers, as years of analysis for the tourism sector have demonstrated, topped up a little by awareness campaigns and airfare promotions. Having a city that bears a vague resemblance to the Mediterranean won't make any difference.

(He is right to diss a new convention centre, though: there is good reason not to gamble too many public dollars on a sunset industry).

Anyway, things  already look pretty good.  To quote Dr Cayford, :

Go down and sit at a table outside the old netshed on North Wharf about 5pm on a balmy, sunny afternoon, Saturday, Sunday, Friday - whenever - and watch the promenading that's happening here in Auckland. You could be on the Mediterranean. Kiwis have style and they like to show it, given an opportunity.

One problem is that the promenaders that Joel likes to watch are spread ever more thinly spread through fashionable quarters, and therein lies the risk. 

There has been a string of such initiatives, local nodes promoted by public investment in the built environment.  And they are all great places to be on their day, but they are also struggling to retain tenants and stay that way.   Princess Wharf, Queens Wharf, High Street and Vulcan Lane, the Chancery Quarter, Britomart, the Vector Centre, the University precinct, the Viaduct Basin: they are all worthy destinations, great spots to kick back in on a sunny day.

They are  nodes that, as long as they  retain some vibrancy, create the frame of a great CBD. Individually and collectively they contribute to a city centre that’s well worth a visit.  But we need to be thinking strategically now about how much more we can sustain, and how we are going to keep what we already have buoyant.

Time for fine-tuning and coming out

For a start, when it’s wet and blustery, winter or spring, the Mediterranean idyll goes out the window. 

There are things we can do to reduce dependence on our uncooperative  elements, and they needn’t cost a lot.  Wellington has created sheltered pedestrian ways in a climate  less comfortable (if somewhat drier) than Auckland’s.  We certainly do not need new tracts of paving, new collections of cafes, and over-capitalising infrastructure to get our CBD working better.  The new rail loop that Joel cites, for example, might make it easier for a few more residents from outer suburbs to visit the CBD, but it won’t do anything for the ambience and quality of places within it.  

Much current thinking seems simply to pander to the café set and an image of our climate that is only true some of the time.  Queen Street appears to have bucked the trendy trend, though.  It caters increasingly to the take-away crowd and night owls.  While this perhaps reflect some of our much-touted diversity it seems to be a source of middle class angst.

Democratise the CBD

We need to consolidate what we have and to do so within a budget that reflects our means.  We should ideally aim to make the CBD relevant to citizens other than just the coffee set.

Maybe we could pursue initiatives that will democratise it: improve pedestrian links among existing nodes; open up  hidden spaces (St Patricks Square, Myers Park come to mind); create more places for kids to play; promote more informal gardens and greening; provide capacity for people to perform and not simply promenade in public places; provide for street art, street theatre, and street life; and  promote places where our local cultures can inject new life, all the time recognising the need for sheltered places and paths. 

These are the sorts of things that might put a little flesh on the CBD bones without relying on the begging bowl or  pandering to middle class conceits.  And they just might turn it into an asset for more Aucklanders.

No more LBF

If we need to do more, let’s do it within our means and in a way that is relevant to our citizens. Focus on what we’ve got and who we are.  And get off the me-too middle class spending bandwagon that seems to be driving Auckland’s civic leaders and planners, and amounts to little more than rates (and taxes?) being treated as some sort of central city Landlords’ Benevolent Fund. 

What’s happening to central city services?

Questioning the future of the CBD
In an earlier posting I speculated about the future of white collar employment. This raised the question of what confidence we might have in service sector growth underpinning the future of the CBD, and incidentally how risky is investment – public and private – based on assuming that it will. 

This was construed in the comments as “giving up on the CBD” and a criticism of the proposed $2bn plus central rail link (CRL).   Well, I haven’t given up on the CBD, but I do differ in my analysis and prognosis from people who believe that a combination of coercive plans and think big projects will do the trick (see, for example, Hey, City Planners,  Remaking the CBD and Central City Dreaming). 

But the questions raised certainly go to the heart of the “business” case for the CRL.  In this blog I dig a little deeper into changes in the white collar sectors in the CBD to see if we can cast more light on the subject.

Projecting even more of more of the same
I have looked at service employment in the CBD and the rest of Auckland from February 2000 to February 2011 using Statistics New Zealand Business Statistics job count data (which does not distinguish between full- and part-time jobs).

The City Council’s economic update on the CRL projected central city employment to jump by two thirds, or 60,000 jobs, over 30 years, or 20,000 jobs a decade.  Now that’s real optimism in light of growth of under 12,000  from 2000 to 2011, and I don't see any underlying analysis supporting it.

The risk of depending on white collar growth
But this is only one of my concerns.  Changes in white collar employment raise other, more fundamental issues around the future of the urban area and especially the CBD.

White collar services (omitting hospitality and retailing for this analysis) accounted for virtually all the CBD job growth and rose from 71% in 2000 to 75% of employment there in 2011.  Commercial services accounted for two thirds of this.  So what happens in the service sector seems petty critical to the future shape of our CBD especially is we hope to counter a long-term tendency for work to decentralise (i.e., to grow faster outside the CBD than inside).

Decentralisation - international examples
A quick review of international examples suggests that greater contracting of public service delivery favours deconcentration (e.g. Washington DC); that dispersal to suburban and town-based offices contributes to decentralisation (e.g., Dublin), but that there may be a simultaneous decentralisation of some services and concentration of others (e.g., Paris).  

This is quite apart from the increasing international mobility of white collar jobs, and potential changes in functional interdependence and the need for clusters of centralised specialist services as a result of the deskilling traditional specialist occupations.

So what’s been happening in Auckland?
The 11,800 new white collar jobs in the CBD in 2011 represented 19% of Auckland’s total growth in those sectors.   Because they collectively grew faster elsewhere in Auckland (42%), though , the CBD’s share was down from 22% at the beginning of the decade.  

This tendency to decentralise varied by sector.  In Chart 1 the bars denote absolute gains (or losses) of jobs (left axis) and the points show the rates of change (right axis).  The CBD gained employment share in the sectors on the left hand side of the chart (centralising) and lost share in those on the right (decentralising). 

Chart 1: Changing Shares in White Collar Employment, the CBD and rest of Auckland, 2000-2011

                                              
Some sectors centralising
Centralisation increased in the specialised but small information and media and arts and recreation sectors.  The bigger finance and insurance sector also continued to focus on the CBD where 51% of the city’s employment in this sector is now located .  There was a slight increase in the CBD share of Auckland’s total education employment, although 87% is still located elsewhere.

While the others decentralise
But what about the fast growing – and highly significant – professional, scientific, and technical service sector?  Over a third of employees were in the CBD in 2000, but this was down to 27% in 2011.  A gain of 3,550 CBD jobs was dwarfed by 20,800 new jobs elsewhere.

And health care, medical and social services were clearly driven by suburban investment and demand.

In fact, 50% of white collar employment in the CBD in 2011 was in sectors which had grown faster outside it than in; not an especially strong foundation for projections that require annual employment gains in the area to almost double over the next three decades.

Recession can change these spatial patterns, of course, if lower order services and services directed towards individuals and households bear the brunt of a slowdown.  So we could see some re-concentration of services in the CBD in the next year or two, but it’s unlikely to be driven by high growth rates.

The CBD – a centre of specialisation?
Digging a bit deeper confirms the more specialised nature of CBD services. In the education sector  45% of tertiary jobs are located there.  This share didn’t change over the period, but the number of CBD jobs was still up by a solid 4,200 (47%).  Community and adult education jobs were up by 1,600. 

Chart 2: The Changing Share of Scientific, Professional and Technical Services in the CBD, Auckland 2000 and 2011

Scientific and market research services increased their CBD presence, but these are minnows in the wider picture (Chart 3). 

So it’s today's bigger employment sectors that show signs of decamping – especially management consulting and legal and accounting services.  In fact, 75% of employees in perhaps the most "knowledge-based" sector,  professional, scientific and technical services, were in sub-sectors that have been decentralising.


Chart 3: The Composition of Auckland''s Scientific, Professional, and Technical Service Sector 2011

So what can we take from the past?
There are two broad reasons for questioning reliance on white collar jobs to continue to underpin CBD growth.  The first is structural – a changing mix of jobs (and we haven’t seen the impact of global financial restructuring in New Zealand ... yet), including the international realignment of services suggested by my earlier posting on the white collar sector. 

The second is location preferences – with the analysis here suggesting that the CBD may not be the focus of future white collar growth that city and transport planners hope for. 

The international experience cited above suggests some reasons for this.  There may be others.

For example, people may be more concerned today with the quality of the work environment.   For many, elevator-dependent, air-conditioned, fluorescently-lit, high rise (and high cost) offices may no longer cut the mustard.  The convenience and amenities of working in the heart of the city can increasingly be replicated in suburban centres, without the congestion.

And perhaps issues of resilience, reliable infrastructure, flexibility, and proximity to the work force are important suburban attractions to the investors who employ them. 

Time to ask the hard questions
I don’t have the answers.  But I suspect that the people planning to spend billions on offering better transport to, from, and around the CBD should at least ask the hard questions, and particularly explain the grounds for expecting such a boost in job growth in the CBD and the consequences for their plans (and the city) if it does not happen.

If we cannot rely on the growth drivers of the past – and the evidence suggests that we cannot, not with any confidence at least – then we have to continue to question the very foundations of our plans. 

Living in the city – the path to CBD redemption?

A tale of two city centres

Auckland and Christchurch councils see housing playing a much greater role in the central city.  They have released plans for transformation (or bits of a plan in Auckland’s case), both with visions of more active, exciting, and greener central cities.  Auckland is already on its way, with the recent extension of public waterfront amenities into the Wynyard Quarter.

For Christchurch, the path is more difficult but the council’s vision for the CBD following the devastation of repeated earthquakes over the past year is a bold one: increasing green spaces in a low-medium rise centre, an ambitious combination of restoration and remembrance, public spaces, public transport, and a revival of inner city retailing and housing.  It is an ambitious blueprint for creating certainty from chaos.

Common hopes

Both cities share a hope that the redemption of downtown will be sustained by an influx of city dwellers, people trading off the space of the suburbs for the buzz of the centre. 

Will it work?  I am not sure.  The quest to revive the CBD by relying on expanding residential precincts within what are already quite confined spaces raises conflicts between accommodating residents' needs and catering 24/7 for many more visitors and a wider variety of educational, entertainment, recreational, professional, and employment activities. 

In any case, the plans appear founded on a vision of place more than people: views of structures, precincts, and building controls define them, rather than consideration of dwelling needs and lifestyle preferences.  Where are the people (other than as stylised figures in rose-tinted renderings)? 

Even though the rhetoric is strong on getting people there (although preferably not by car) little attention seems to have been paid to who will live in expanded central dwelling precincts, how they might live, and what their housing and neighbourhood needs might be.

False expectations

Recent experience suggests that land purchase and aggregation, remediation, and redevelopment, and building costs mean affordability will only be achieved by sacrificing amenity and quality.  This in turn implies that inner city residential development will continue to displace the less well-off, with gentrification leaving no room for the sort of social housing envisaged in the Christchurch mix. 

At least Christchurch central does not lend itself to the shoebox blocks that have become part of inner Auckland’s apartment scene over the past decade.  On the other had, more of the same may be the only real hope of squeezing in the inner city resident numbers Auckland Council hopes for. Either way, it is questionable just how many more young, unattached professionals and students there will be to occupy large numbers of additional medium-density dwellings in either city.

This is one of the questions considered in a report by CityScope Consultants just published on the website of the now discontinued Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand.   It examines the international evidence, looks at the numbers, and reports primary research (interviews with buyers and residents) to identify what might make medium density housing more attractive. (By medium density we mean anything from single storey units, through low rise apartments of 2-3 storeys, to medium-high rise apartment blocks – all of which involve a significant shift from New Zealand’s suburban tradition).

Here are some of the relevant findings:

Extracts from Key Points

It is important to understand the nature of ... demand ... as adoption of medium density housing has not matched expectations.  This may reflect:

• The limited market for centralised, multi-medium density housing;
• A mismatch between where plans are directing housing and where the market lies;
• Supply difficulties with recent development that feed negative market perceptions.

...  New Zealanders’ long-standing cultural preference for detached housing on individual sections has been reinforced by the leaky homes episode and failures in the developer driven, retail investor apartment market.  People see medium density housing as inferior: characterless, drab, monotonous, cramped, leaky, subject to the complications of bodies corporate, lacking privacy, noisy, insecure, lacking an outlook, lacking hobby and storage space, having parking problems, not allowing pets, and with poor prospects for capital gains. 

...

Changing tastes and experience could lift long-term acceptability of residential intensification ... The influences on choice can be organised across three levels spatial resolution:

• accessibility to activities at the city or sector-wide level, including how easy it is to get to jobs, higher order services and retailing, formal recreation and cultural activities, and the like.  In some respects this can be treated as a necessary condition, although the level of accessibility required will vary according to household characteristics;
• domain, which encompasses the area over which day-to-day social relations are formed and regular or lower order transactions take place. This corresponds broadly with suburb or neighbourhood, and may include elements of the medium density complex itself; and
• sanctuary, which refers to the dwelling, and may be influenced by the relationship of the dwelling to the complex and the immediate neighbourhood.

The must-have parameters people look for in their sanctuary are much the same in medium density as in conventional housing: a safe and secure environment, privacy; space, light, and warmth; and flexibility in how it may be used;

...

Domain preferences are influenced by lifestage:

• Younger people (usually in non-family households) at the beginning of their working careers, housing ladder, and relationships tend to favour central city locations;
• Young families tend to favour familiar neighbourhoods;
• Family households tend to favour suburbs and town centres ...;
• Older families and post-family households tend to remain in their established neighbourhoods ...

The resolution of preferences around sanctuary and domain will influence where and what style of housing is generally favoured according to lifestage segment, with the actual choice conditioned by limits of affordability and usually confined to geographic submarkets.  ..

...  future demand for new housing will be driven increasingly by the preferences of empty nester and retirement households, many of whom own their dwellings.  This gives them the capacity to purchase well-appointed medium density housing that satisfies their expectations for domain and sanctuary.  They are less likely to favour small, centralised apartments than younger households and are more likely to have a commitment to particular residential submarkets, built on a stronger sense of domain.

Consequently, residential intensification is more likely to be achieved with plans allowing for diversity of locality and form.  This, in turn, means meeting supply challenges in suburban environments ...

Source: CityScope Consultants (2011) Improving the Design, Quality and Affordability of Residential Intensification in New Zealand, Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand, Wellington

Putting future housing in its place
Meeting residential needs, achieving higher residential densities, and restoring the CBD are not objectives that necessarily converge.  A liveable city calls for an emphasis on where most people will be living – the suburbs.  Meeting housing needs and demand will not be achieved by building undifferentiated, small footprint apartments in the centre for what is essentially a minority, transitional and diminishing market segment. 

Equally, reviving the central city will not happen as a result of creating more swathes of medium density housing, and nor should it depend on such a strategy.

It is likely that residential densities will increase in mature cities over the next thirty years naturally: just don’t expect this to favour the CBD.  Certainly the central city has an exciting future as a place to visit.  Let’s not rely too much, though, on getting a lot more people to live there, especially not in medium rise apartments.