And our central government has also declared an interest in its largest economic base and voting population functioning properly. If Council continues to dither, Govt's response may be interesting though probably not…

Councils are charged with reconciling the needs of future as well as current residents, but our system is badly designed in that only current ones get a vote.

Why should comfortable coastal nimbys get to override the interests…

I saw a great exhibition of Le Corbusier’s life work at the Pompidou Centre last year – but it seemed to me that his plans were about the buildings and not how to live in…

I don't think that's how democracy works, or should work. You seem to be talking about some of the more vigorous forms…

People can probably make their own estimates of how much population pressure has been the main causal factor in house price increases in this…

Sydney, and Australia, more generally is no poster child of effective PT though – yes there are systems in place, but…

Try living in Cronulla and working in Chatswood?

You have it backwards: trains are the enemy of sprawl.

Building train systems after the city is established is insanely expensive. Tunnels cost a lot of money ($100M/km is towards the…

This discussion and the situation more broadly strikes me a a repetitive loop:

– growing population needs somewhere to go
– increased density is suggested, to accommodate growth and support improved PT
– increased density is resisted in favour of sprawl so PT never really improves b/c taxes…

That's where trains come in handy as proven in many…

What happens when a couple both have jobs in Manukau and buy a house in the area, and then one…

true only for low-value jobs.

Telecommuting is good, but it's still slow to catch on in NZ, and it's generally not the employee's choice to do so. Once again, unless you're a company director who can…

Except that by most of the metrics of comparing houses affordability to local peoples ability to pay for them, Auckland works out to be about 1 and 1/2 times less affordable than London. Current London is kinda equivalent to Auckland…

We need the Manukau Harbour for the new port.

only if the value the work brings does not increase, and is not more fairly shared.

Working at what? This is the reason Labour have been talking about the future of work (Or as the Right would have it "how are we…

Missing second step: market to doltish easties as logical place to deposit their offspring.

In Sydney:
[[http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11613193|Australia's ghost suburbs a 'national…

In fact, Auckland has grown faster than the high population growth forecasts.

Which continues the long-term trend mentioned at that Akl Conversations session in 2012, hence Council benchmarking projections against the high-growth line.

Fools like Auckland2040 and a certain mayoral candidate continue to insist medium is enough. The same…

These show how strongly Auckland dominates New Zealand’s projected population growth over the next 30 years. Of the 1.2m growth projected for the whole country,…

It's a no-brainer. The big stumbling block is that Generation Rentier is…

Yet tens of thousands in the Auckland region accept that as a standard part of living here. Sad, really. We need to move jobs and homes closer together. Evidence shows that aint by laying more lanes of asphalt.

Thank you, Joshua. Understood.

Hey, do you have more recent population projections that those we've discussed above?

As long as it's not "Mount Taupo goes to London for OE" scale I'd be ok with that.

Moz:: just the other day we were talking about faking a Rangitoto eruption to do something about the housing bubble – building a large city…

You think that if used correctly fracking technology could encourage Rangitoto Island to fill in one of them, allowing it to be used for housing?

This is due to a the large number of jobs in the central area (around 100,000 or four…

Not so. The 2012 council-organised presentation I attended (and have mentioned previously) put natural increase at about 60% of the total. Our demographics are skewing younger than the rest of the country.

What do you mean, at a pinch? Canberra with wharves or something like that?

Oh, yes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCFDKUhtNxc

Sing it...yodelleee...those city slickers chill me to the bone...

C'mon...we were trying to take a leisurely stroll/wheel down the main drag in Kaitaia just the other afternoon and could barely move for folk just hangin'. And that…

?

A couple of quick thoughts …

All cities experience population growth (as in natural growth, not migrations) – on account of this alone Auckland needs more houses, and this trend will not go away. About 3% pa is normal.

On the migration side ‘economics’ or the ‘market’ should help…

I agree that intensification – in appropriate suburbs – is a good idea, and it is already in…

I’ve no doubt there is plenty of scope to increase density, and stats would reveal that density is much lower than many other cities … a key reason for increasing density as opposed to increasing sprawl goes to infrastructure. Specifically densification…

That's already starting to happen. Marton, in Rangitikei (25 minutes south of Whanganui, 35 minutes north of Palmie North) is starting to attract people moving south. Lovely houses, all the amenities you would want in a town, cheap…

Higher-value and therefore better-paid modern roles often benefit from aggregation effects that only larger cities offer. That's why we are unlikely to see a thriving design, software or niche engineering hub based in Twizel rather than Christchurch or Auckland or at a pinch, Wellington.

No! No!

In some places, where this is already happening, these ex-Aucklanders are trying to turn their new homes into mini-Aucklands.

Which might prompt comments that London is different to the U.S. cities, my point is so is New Zealand.

Home truths: 'Ditch the Sky and start saving'

Other things we could do include:

* Don't allow foreigners to buy land/housing here unless they are permanent residents, and then only buy land/housing if they…

Drove from Port Albert in the North down to Hamilton yesterday....gobsmacked at the amount of building activity north and south of Auckland just in the past six months.

The traffic...whew! For those of us who would never…