Changes were recently made to the Resource Management Act.

The aim of those is to make sure your city functions well, provides for your social and economic wellbeing, as well as your health and safety.  The changes also aim to promote the protection and enhancement of the natural and built environment, while providing for housing. 

In response to those changes the Christchurch City Council have put together the “Housing and Business Choice Plan”. 

It’s a plan that will push intensification deeper into the suburbs and will have major consequences for you, your family, friends and colleagues - regardless of where in Christchurch you live. 

The Plan comes with environmental and economically damaging consequences.

• Thousands of trees will be stripped from Christchurch suburbs
• Traffic congestion will increase, making your daily commute to and from work, school, and appointments more expensive in terms of time and money
• Greater volumes of greenhouse emissions will be pumped into the atmosphere
• Parking spaces outside your home will no longer be available, and
• The central city will continue to stagnate

It will also very likely result in

• Your home being robbed of sunlight and privacy, and you being robbed of the right to object to that
• Green space in your neighbourhood quickly vanishing
• The character of the street you live on and your suburb being destroyed, and
• Christchurch being far more prone to flooding in winter, and much, much hotter in summer.

Nowhere has the government stated the aim of the reforms is to add to the destruction of the environment! 

The City Council should be adopting a plan that:

• Prompts thousands of residents to live, work and play within in the CBD, rather than commuting in from the suburbs every day
• Reduces harmful emissions and the number of vehicles clogging suburban roads 
• Provides the CBD with the much-needed kick-start to regenerate life and economic activity
• Protects thousands of neighbourhood trees from being cut down, and
• Meets the needs of the community, while also ensuring the city functions well

The Council could achieve all of that by introducing a staged plan

Stage 1:  Leave the suburbs as they are – stop suburban intensification and the destruction of the natural environment 

Stage 2: Push for well-designed, high density, multi-storey apartment blocks to be built in the central city (on the 50 hectares of bare land located between Gloucester Street and Moorhouse Avenue).  

Stage 3:  Once that 50 hectares of vacant land is filled, repurpose other disused central city light industrial land into to additional high-density apartment blocks.

Stage 4: Re-evaluate housing supply levels once stages 1, 2, and 3 have successfully been completed. 

We say the Council should abandon their proposed planning changes and go back to the Government with a better solution - a solution that...

  - increases housing supply in the very heart of the city

  - protects Christchurch tree canopy from being clear-felled in our communities

  - prevents free-for-all suburban intensification

  - requires Brownfields areas be repurposed into high density housing

  - guarantees Greenfields are protected and remain productive arable land