Public consultation has opened on proposed legislation to fast track the redevelopment and regeneration of urban areas to meet housing and commercial needs better.
“New Zealand needs Urban Development Authority (UDA) legislation to enable faster and better quality regeneration in our major cities,” says Building and construction minister Nick Smith.
“These new authorities need the power to assemble parcels of land, develop site-specific plans, reconfigure infrastructure and to construct a mix of public and private buildings to create vibrant hubs for modern urban living,” says Smith.
“These reforms are part of the solution to Auckland’s growth pressures over housing and infrastructure. UDAs would enable major redevelopment projects like those proposed or under way in areas such as Hobsonville, Tamaki, Three Kings and Northcote to occur three to five years faster,” he says.
“The international experience in cities like London, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and Singapore is that UDAs can create vibrant, new suburbs, with greater gains for housing, jobs and amenities than through usual incremental, piecemeal redevelopment,” says Smith.
“We are proposing a model of UDAs which requires the support of both central and local government, and one that maximises the role of the private sector in development,” he says.
“It is part of the Government’s wider range of reforms to grow housing supply and will complement the Housing Infrastructure Fund, reforms to the Resource Management Act, the National Policy Statement on Urban Development Capacity, the Crown Land Programme and the KiwiSaver HomeStart scheme,” says Smith.
The consultation closes on 19 May 2017.
The Government’s discussion document and more information is found here.
