Sprawl not an issue for NZ: Report
Michael Bassett and Luke Malpass, of the New Zealand Initiative said in the report, issued today, that the shortfall of houses was due to anti-development attitudes, tight building regulations and artificial controls on land supply.
They said that less than 1% of New Zealand had been built upon, including landfill and roads. “Fears of ‘using up all our farmland’ are grossly exaggerated…. this fear of ‘urban sprawl’ has resulted in urban limits and restrictive and prescriptive zoning, which have conferred a virtual monopoly market power on landowners near the city fringes.”
The authors said that, regardless of how many thousands of sections were available within urban limits, they were only worth the developer opening them up at a certain price.
“The experience of Auckland’s Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL) is similar to that of Portland, Oregon, with land outside the city limits costing nine times less than within city limits.”
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