Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Socraates,
correct me if I’m wrong, but since the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan came out on the 30th Sep…you’ve been a bit quiet on it (and so to the MSM).
I remember reading a great piece from you when the Draft plan came out…but not recently.
Fair call. I enthusiastically retweeted Auckland Transport Blog :-)
Some would say the local body politicians have gone back to the safe option as opposed to enabling a real cultural shift.
We might as well say it out loud: they did.
I wonder about the the mood out there for intensification?
Who knows? It's a low-information environment.
The submissions on the plan will be very interesting!
I hope so.
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Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
In broader terms, though, I think the two big problems are,
1. As Mark Graham identified above, there is a fundamental market failure happening: what new housing is being built is not the housing that’s most needed; andAnd the NZ Initiative not only ignores that, but actively denies there is any market failure at all. It's just councils being councils apparently. Absurd.
2. There is a fundamental miss-match between New Zealander’s continuing aspiration to live in low-density housing but close to their places of work/school/play; and our national need to prevent urban sprawl/increase urban density. It’s a problem that can only be solved through culture change, and that takes time.
And there are, of course, certain local body reporters who indulge and encourage that disconnect, and never talk about what the implications of failing to intensify actually are. If they talked about Great Fucking Big New Roads through existing suburbs that will be necessary to enable the sprawl strategy instead of fanning panic about new regulations that aren't that different from the old regulations, things might be a bit different.
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Hard News: Bring on the Revival, in reply to Sacha,
I had forgotten Trocadero.
Totally missed it. But Cha Cha was actually very good -- under the editorship of future Oscar-winner Ngila Dickson.
I wrote for Cha Cha as Wayne Washington and Shake! as Steven Spencer. The only time in my life I've done anything significant under pseudonyms, and I really did enjoy it.
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Hard News: How a thing happens, in reply to giovanni tiso,
But I don’t think he was justifying the episode at all. More explaining the conditions that allowed it to happen.
And the more I think about it, the more relevant it seems to me. It’s astonishing that no one at any point gathered all the hosts together and talked about boundaries. But the simple fact is, there was no one there to do it. Even if it had been a matter of, as Bill Francis said on Mediawatch (and that Mediawatch show really annoyed me, tbh), just promptly making the gesture of taking the morons off air for a week, that would have helped.
Mediaworks does have pockets of editorial leadership – notably at 3 News and Campbell Live – but it seemed there was just nothing going on at Radio Live. And the entire company has suffered as a result.
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Hard News: Bring on the Revival, in reply to Stephen Adams,
you can get me on @_steveadams
Ian's not a tweeter, but he can get you on that email opposite your name.
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Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Schools are also built and funded via bonds and repaid via the same taxes on the homeowner.
Hmmmm ...
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Hard News: Bring on the Revival, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
What has happened to the Red Bulletin and your column?
They redesigned the back of the magazine and the column didn’t fit any more. No hard feelings – it was a great run.
But it doesn’t seem to go out with the Herald any more, so I guess that arrangement has ended too.
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Ben Ross, who's not an idiot, is not entirely dismissing MUDs.
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The model on Planet 5 is a young Teremoana Rapley, shot by Kerry Brown.
Planet 6 is also by Kerry Brown, and the model is Lynice Barrowman.
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Capture: From Deco to Eco, in reply to JacksonP,
Might have to make this a thing, but then I don’t have many friends with such magnificent houses for sale. :-)
The Herald's Saturday property supplement is my guilty pleasure over breakfast. Read some journalism, then just glaze over and look at pictures of other people's houses ...