19 August 2013

Second CBD a better way to grow

At the launch of his fifth policy outline today, Auckland Mayoral candidate John Palino said, “It’s time Aucklanders were given an alternative to the sprawling intensification proposed by the Brown-led Auckland Council.

We don’t have to cram new residents into suburbs that were never designed for high intensification. We don’t have to destroy our communities and neighbourhoods. We don’t have to watch as the city we all know and love is torn apart to suit Council agenda.

There is an alternative to housing Auckland’s growing population and that is the creation of a second CBD.

If we concentrate new development within a specific area, maybe on redeveloped industrial land in Manukau, or on a Greenfield site serviced by rail or a busway, we can not only take the growth pressure out of Auckland’s suburbs, we can build a great new city where people want to live.

We can build up, reducing the need to build out. We can get the commercial sector involved to reduce the risk to ratepayers. We can design a smart city, a green city, a city that meets the needs of 21st century Auckland.

Just look at the passion of Cantabrians enthused about the rebuild of their city centre. They see the opportunity created by the rebuild, they see the jobs, they see the excitement and the amenity.

We can have that here. We’re going to need to build a whole new Christchurch in Auckland in just the next two decades. We should be as excited about this opportunity as the Cantabrians.

But the Council’s top-down, “my way or the highway” approach to growth has killed off the excitement we all should be feeling about Auckland’s future.

This is such a lost opportunity.

I want to bring back the lost promise of growth. I want to bring back Auckland’s mojo. I want to build a new city that provides new jobs and new prosperity for everyone, a city in which the world will recognize.

We don’t have to accept the destruction of our communities and neighbourhoods as an ever increasing number of residents are forced into streets that cannot meet their needs. There is another way.”

ENDS

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