URBAN magazine

ISSUE 1 | VOLUME 5 | MARCH 2011

A nation’s memories deserve a significant urban space

Graduate perspectives urban design from a new angle

Cycling by design: urban form arrives on two wheels

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ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS

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CHRISTCHURCH’S FUTURE

GIVING LIFE TO MEMORY

GRADUATE PERSPECTIVES

LOOKING AT SMALL TOWNS

After the big quakes, our second-biggest city’s future is under review

Stephen Olsen reports on a project at Auckland’s War Memorial Museum

Three students of urban design present their master planning exercises on ‘live’ sites in Auckland

David Pronger writes of cream buns, entrepreneurs and modest urbanity

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WHAT TO DO ABOUT CITIES?

SMALL TOWNS, TAKE HEART

THE SOCIAL DIMENSION

CONSTRUCTION CONTRACTS

Our North American correspondent, Keith Hall, looks at Columbia, past and present

Small-town New Zealand is reasserting itself, stepping out of the cities’ shadows

How to get social wellbeing into planning and decision-making

Our legal expert monitors progress by DBH on the CC Act

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Designers, planners look to shape Christchurch’s future National architectural practice Warren and Mahoney has set up a group of leading New Zealand urban planning, design and property services experts.

The plan is to look for the best way forward in the rebuilding of Christchurch, following the devastating earthquake of February 22.

Warren and Mahoney director Peter Marshall, from the firm’s Christchurch office, says while the plan is at a preliminary stage, the aim has been formed out of a sense of responsibility to the city.

“We were founded in Christchurch in 1955 by Sir Miles Warren and in many ways Christchurch’s post-war building story is also our story. Its modern heritage is also our heritage.

“From this shared history we feel a profound sense of commitment to the city. Clearly though, a careful and collective response is required, and that’s why we have partnered with other experts who also care deeply about rebuilding our city,” Mr Marshall says.

Initial members of the group are: Warren and Mahoney – architecture and interior design Boffa Miskell – environmental planning and urban design Holmes Consulting Group – structural and civil engineering Colliers International – commercial leasing and sales services Wareham Cameron + Co. – tenant advisory services RCP – project management.

Don Miskell, managing director of Boffa Miskell, says the formation of the group was a logical response from the local planning and design community.

“Civic leaders and government officials are

rightly focused on the immediate rescue and recovery mission.

“Forming the group and turning our minds to seeking integrated solutions by combining visionary thinking with a depth and breadth of development experience is one way that the interdisciplinary members thought we could contribute to the rebuilding of Christchurch,” he says.

As an initial outcome, the group will develop a set of key design principles and long term development scenarios for discussion with Christchurch stakeholders.

Mr Marshall says the group will seek to work closely with Christchurch City Council – as well as central government – to ensure a co-ordinated approach is taken, and the group will recruit other members as its role evolves.

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Cities: can we solve their problems?

In the early 1990s, Colombia’s capital city was known for the uncontrolled growth, crime and pollution that stifled its economy.

By KEITH C. HALL, former CEO of NZPI A 1993 New York Times article ranked Bogota fourth in Latin America and among the world’s worst twenty cities for air pollution. The Vice President of Planning of the Bogota Chamber of Commerce said the city was becoming as ‘unmanageable’ as its larger peers, México City and Saõ Paulo.1 Instead of continuing along its seemingly predetermined path, the city’s politicians and planners charted a new course from the early 1990s. They began tackling the city’s problems from the high crime rates and the deteriorating environment – with an overarching goal of creating a liveable city where the needs of its citizens were prioritised first.

The city invested in projects and programmes to benefit its citizens in direct ways: parks and bikeways to provide recreation and encourage healthy activity, a better public transit system to link people to jobs quickly and efficiently, and land use plans and development strategies designed to create a more attractive, liveable and humane city. In the process, the city may have undertaken strategies that ‘accidentally’ supported a more robust economy in the city.

Less than two decades later, Bogota is a much safer and, by some measures, a less polluted city. Bogota is more than safe; the city cut its homicide rate by nearly a third – to a level less than that of Washington, DC. Although the city still struggles with air

pollution, Bogota’s planning and environmental strategies have produced positive results.2 Nonetheless, a more prosperous Bogota has seen the number of cars in the city triple from the early 90s, while population grew by 62 per cent in just two decades.3 In spite of its growth and prosperity, only one private car is registered for every seven residents, a low rate of car ownership in comparison to other large cities in Latin America.4 Nonetheless, the city’s autopistas (motorways) are perpetually clogged with traffic, and the situation promises only to get worse.

Among the most innovative of its transportation and air quality solutions has been TransMilenio, the city’s bus rapid transit (BRT) system. Bogota’s BRT began as an idea to consolidate the tens of thousands of buses operated by nearly as many private companies into a coherent rapid transit system that would be less costly to build than an under-ground metro.

The first trunk line on Caracas Avenue, Bogota’s ‘main street’, included branches on either end to link the city’s far-flung impoverished neighbourhoods with the wealthy ones in the north. Bus lanes – two in each direction – were carved out of Caracas Avenue, along with wider footpaths, street trees and enough space for enclosed stations that function more like those on a train line than those of a typical bus stop. Nearly 1.4

million passengers enter the TransMilenio system each day; the buses are fast and efficient, but they are typically jam-packed at all times of day and in every direction.

Construction of TransMilenio is ongoing, and Phase II has recently been completed.

The system now includes two central trunk lines and seven distinct branches totalling 84km, over which more than a thousand 160-passenger (articulated) buses operate.

More than 70 feeder routes and nearly 1500 bicycle parking spaces connect passengers to the main BRT system5, not including those who transfer from the city’s 20,000 privatised urban buses. Construction recently began on the third phase of the system (seven phases have been planned), and funding for the construction of an underground metro was recently announced by Bogota’s mayor.

In 1990, the view of Bogota’s future was bleak. Nonetheless, the city changed course and became a model for coping effectively with growth, transportation and pollution. In short, Bogota proves that difficult urban challenges have solutions and that, with political will and public support, large cities can be transformed into livable places.

Next stop… BRT in America.

FOOTNOTES 1 Growth, Pollution and Crime Stifling Bogota, New York Times, Sept. 9, 1993.

2 Secretaria Distrital de Ambiente, Sistema de Informacion Ambiental (SIA), Base de Datos 19912010.

3 Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica (DANE), 1985-2005.

4 Portal de la Ciudad de Bogota.

5 TransMilenio System, a presentation to the C40 Cities conference, Angelica Castro Rodriguez, 2007.

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The act of giving life to memory in our public spaces We New Zealanders live in a country where the contained memory of memorials – particularly those commemorating a nation’s war dead – is plainly visible in significant public and urban spaces.

by Stephen Olsen, URBAN correspondent To see a new memorial of the kind now in situ at the Auckland War Memorial Museum (see photos), is a special opportunity then to reflect on the place that memorials occupy in those spaces and the associations we make with them.

This new memorial is now ready in its final form, to see the light of its first ANZAC Day in April. Judging from observable visitor interaction, it is evoking a positive and poignant experience.

The elliptically engaging centrepiece of the memorial is a raised feature of cascading water, the full story of which only unfolds (along with its iconic silver fern and koru crest) when looking back towards the Museum building from below.

Seen from the Museum steps above, this appears as no more than an anonymous black rectangle, while from the facing side it reveals

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an embossed combination of symbols and words, English and Maori together, gently concealed on a 45-degree angle beneath a continuous 5 millimetre flow of rippling water.

This concept was developed and refined by design engineer and landscape architect Ian Vincent, with assistance on graphic design from Jeremy Snowsill of Long White Cloud.

The design process referenced points of inspiration such as Quebec sculptor Pierre Granche’s Canada Memorial in Green Park, London (unveiled in 1994) and more recently the New Zealand Memorial in London’s Hyde Park Corner as designed by architect John Hardwick-Smith and sculptor Paul Dibble and dedicated on November 11,2006.

Originally from London himself, Vincent valued the opportunity to work on a once-in-alifetime project that mediates a blending of

English and Maori story telling – from the integration of Laurence Binyan’s famous lines beginning “They shall grow not old” coupled with a Maori translation, which is then further coupled with a 239 word essay-length exposition that ends with the words: “Celebrate our Fallen, our Tupuna. Honour them with Peace”.

Vincent: “To take all this in, you have get up close, to be on the spot, in person, casting your own impression. This isn’t some ready-made postcard. The effect I was hoping for is a sense of floating, like a sense of spirit.

“Along with intentional details such as replicating the same font as you see on the cenotaph and museum and other technical aspects, the art of building this was the art.

“As well as being a mark of respect, the other strong driver for me was that everyone who visits this place should leave with a clearer understanding that, as the words say, we all are one – we are fronds on the same fern.”

Vincent chooses to put the water feature on a par with the symmetrical resolution achieved within the overall site: the containment of lines with the existing cenotaph’s consecrated boundary, the alignment of sculptured bespoke plinth-like seating and large granite paving with the Museum’s neoclassical columns, the understated new pathways and

CONTAINED MEMORY

contoured gradients, a shared space roadway and the use of “tactile” stone ridging.

From this attention to detail one of the end results has been improved accessibility for those who might be sight-impaired or in a wheelchair, or simply someone pushing a child’s stroller. Making the memorial accessible to everyday users was an important aspect of the project says Alan Gray, a former member of Auckland City Council’s urban design team who had project oversight and is now working at Waterfront Auckland.

For Gray, who had worked on a memorial project in his native Georgia, USA, the response to the new Auckland memorial space is best described as reverent. “People get it… it resonates with people. Different groups bring a different lens to its uncluttered

nature. It has been considerate of the heritage value, of the need for open space, of the vistas.”

He credits the success of the project (which had a few starts and stops since the 2007 master plan by Salmond Reed Architects) to everyone involved in the stewardship of the site walking in step – the museum people, the operations people, Urban Solutions as project manager, John Filmore Contracting, Design Source, Hatch New Zealand, 360 Urban and Vincent’s Urbanlogic.

Gray also notes that this memorial “canvas”, at one of New Zealand’s most sacred spaces and the beneficiary of its relatively isolated location, is not such a completely finished piece that it can’t evolve in the future as its role of giving life to memory continues.

This topic of memorials was given full play last December at Te Papa, where Massey University joined with New York’s Syracuse University in holding a conference of the world’s top scholars in the study of a growing area of both academic and public interest: public memory.

A theme of the event was the idea that remembering together is a powerful activity. Across the programme, which also featured artists and poets, were presentations on almost every conceivable aspect of memorial landscapes, also referred to as memoryscapes – across borders, cultures, time and space. For more information on this event, versions of which are now being repeated annually, see www.containedmemory.org.nz

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MARCH 2011 URBAN

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Lest we forget our darkest hours A recent gathering in Auckland saw the launch of a project dedicated to seeing a memorial landmark with a difference established in the northern French township of Le Quesnoy, in permanent memory of the New Zealanders who fought and died in Europe in the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.

by Stephen Olsen, URBAN correspondent

The launch – which took place in the same week as the tragic devastation and loss of life wrought in Christchurch – was attended by the Mayors of both Le Quesnoy, Paul Raoult, and its smaller neighbour Beaudignies, Mrs Raymonde Dramez. Olympic cycling champion Sarah Ulmer was a guest speaker and spoke of her first-hand experience of the special bond between New Zealand and this

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part of the world – backed by the sister city relationship enjoyed between her hometown of Cambridge and Le Quesnoy, and also Waipa District.

Both Beaudignies and Le Quesnoy were liberated by New Zealand infantry in the last months of 1918, with 122 New Zealanders subsequently dying in the battle to take the town of Le Quesnoy from its German

occupiers on November 4 1918 – just seven days before the Armistice.

Le Quesnoy has famously never forgotten the fact that their 5000 residents were not subjected to bombing on that fateful day, and that the assault on the ancient fortress township was instead conducted by use of smokescreens and by ladder.

Military historian Herb Farrant, a regular visitor to Le Quesnoy since 1995, is heading a project team that has commenced fundraising for the $NZ500,000 needed to gain final planning and consent approvals for a Memorial Museum and New Zealand-themed hotel to proceed on prime land being effectively gifted for the project by Le Quesnoy citizens.

The project team includes Auckland architect Malcolm Brown, of Brown Day Group, who has taken on the design of the 40-bedroom hotel to be known as ‘The Riflemen’ in honour of the New Zealand infantry brigade that stormed Le Quesnoy.

The planning to date integrates the hotel within the urban fabric of a walled settlement

dating back several centuries – a unique challenge – with proposed interior design contributed by Unitec students.

As many will know, Le Quesnoy is one of the battle sites engraved on the exterior walls of the Auckland Memorial War Museum, the frontispiece of which has the memorable lines about men being “commemorated not only by columns and inscriptions in their own country/ but in foreign lands also by memorials graven not on stone/ but on the hearts of men”.

As described by Herb Farrant there is a certain pathos that the people of Le Quesnoy live with the “evidence, legacy and aftermath of the Great War every day” while this remains a too-distant place for New Zealanders despite the fact more than 16,000 of our forebears lost their lives in that war alone – a lost generation that touched virtually every family in our young nation.

Having a New Zealand presence and a memorial museum amidst the network of

museums and memorials in the region between northern France and Flanders is expected to right the balance that has put this place at too far a remove.

It will also provide a hub or base for what, in the translated words of Paul Raoult, could be regarded as a central point for a “tourism of memory” – a way of respecting the past and making the kinds of connections that help make sense of what might otherwise be a wasteland of loss.

MARCH 2011 URBAN

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Citygate to boost Hamilton’s CBD A planned building described by Hamilton Mayor Julie Hardaker as having a “stunning”design will help to further develop the city’s central business district.

McConnell Property, an Auckland-based property developer owned by the McConnell Group employed Jasmax Architects to lead the design work for the building, to be called Citygate, and construction is planned to begin late this year.

The development will go ahead on the vacant “sand-pit” site next to Wintec’s Atrium building on the corner of Ward and Anglesea Streets.

The five-level building has a distinctive triangular glass and pre-cast concrete facade and behind the exterior will be mostly offices, with retail, cafes, and licensed premises at street level.

The Mayor says Citygate will be a significant addition to the Wintec tertiary precinct and CBD generally and she is pleased to see business opportunities opening up in the city centre.

Aidan Donnelly, development manager for the McConnell Group, says the building will take full advantage of the corner site and will include the creation of a public open-space area, which is to be landscaped to a high quality for use by staff and the public.

Citygate has been designed to reflect sustainability principles and will feature natural day-lighting, indoor environmental quality, energy efficiency and water management.

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He says the building plan was helped by McConnell Property’s close relationship with both Hamilton City Council and Wintec. While the three organisations are not partners in any financial or legal sense, Mr Donnelly believes working closely together was an integral part of successfully delivering the Citygate project.

“Citygate will complement the fantastic work recently undertaken by Wintec in refurbishing Block F and that area of the

campus. The building footprint is triangular to protect the views to Block F and into the campus, and to enable better pedestrian connections between the campus, Citygate and the City. ”The project is a boost for the CBD and a fantastic addition. We see this as a sign of better things to come in terms of the CBD office market. Our discussions with Hamilton businesses indicate that they are eagerly anticipating the delivery of the Citygate building. We have had a very good level of interest to date and will be formally launching Citygate in the coming weeks.”

Around 300 people will be employed within the building.

Hawkins Construction is part of the McConnell Group and will be responsible for constructing Citygate.

Cities in search of resilience Resilience: the ability to recover quickly from setbacks (Encarta)

By PHIL McDERMOTT Without debating whether an increase in the frequency of extreme events reflects climate warming, such events can be catastrophic when they impact on densely populated areas.

Natural disturbances, whether geophysical (tsunami, earthquakes, mudslides) or climatic (flooding, hurricane strength winds, tidal surges), become disasters if they strike heavily populated centres.

So do human acts of aggression. The tactic of terrorising civilian populations taken to new heights in the bombing raids of the Second World War and adopted by today’s extremists is most effective – and destructive - when directed at the heart of major cities.

So how do we respond, especially given the expectation that we face an increase in such events?

We can prepare ourselves individually by sensible precautions. House design, construction, maintenance can help in high-risk areas. Having household plans and resources for escape, survival, and recovery is becoming more common. As communities we can build our collective emergency response and recovery capacity. We can also look to our hinterlands to ensure that land use practices – clearances, monocultures, river straightening, irrigation, and dams – do not precipitate major events such as dust storms or floods that impact on cities downwind and downstream.

The Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 increased the New Zealand government’s focus on risk reduction, hazard avoidance, and community readiness. In particular, Part 1 (3) (d) requires: local authorities to co-ordinate, through regional groups, planning, programmes, and activities related to civil defence emergency management across the areas of reduction, readiness, response, and recovery, and encourage co-operation and joint action within those regional groups.

The effects of climate change, presumably including the potential for violent storms and inundation, are matters to which people exercising powers under the Resource Management Act should have particular regard (Part 2 7 (i)).

There is an imperative in legislation in New Zealand, then, for local and regional councils to consider hazard mitigation and risk avoidance in our urban planning and design.

This is so internationally.

It is not coincidence that many – if not most

– major cities in the world are built on rivers or at the coast, given their origins as nodal points; or on fertile flood plains in the lee of mountains, between mountains and sea, even on fault lines. They are consequently built across unstable and vulnerable sites in many instances. This should be a fundamental consideration in our urban design, architecture, and engineering.

So here are some reasons why we might seriously question the compact city paradigm which so influences planning and urban design today: 1. It relies on sophisticated, centralised interdependent systems of services. This creates greater capacity for disruption when any one part fails. Economies of scale in utilities may come with increased risk of failure under duress. This applies to sewage treatment infrastructure, communications, water, energy distribution, and power supplies. It also applies to public transport systems.

2. Poorly designed intensification reduces permeable surfaces, intensifying flood impacts.

3. Converting brown-field and even green-field sites (such as undeveloped urban space) to housing or mixed use reduces the safety valve of open space and increases vulnerability associated with the concentration of buildings and populations.

4. Crowding more people into smaller spaces around constrained road capacity reduces prospects for rapid evacuation from the city or into safe structures and areas.

5. Lifting the density of buildings increases the consequential impacts of severe events by such things as the collapse of structures, the spread of fire, and the transmission of disease.

6. Mixing uses increases the risk of injury and destruction when people live close to premises where hazardous and flammable goods may be stored. Gas, chemical cleaners, and fuel are obvious examples.

7. Reducing the space available reduces the capacity of people – households and communities – to fend for themselves, particularly if the consequences of a disruptive event are prolonged.

Looking over these issues, it is unsurprising that our past history of increasing prosperity was a history of reducing urban densities, even as rural-urban migration pushed up city populations. What is surprising is that we seem to have given up the quest to make this same movement – essentially a de facto public health programme – work in a resource-constrained environment.

One of the drivers of early town and country planning was the desire to protect public

health, with zones separating industry from where people lived. A healthy workforce was a productive workforce, so it made sense to reduce the exposure of people to industrial pollution. There were also public health benefits from getting families out of high density slums into something approximating a rural lifestyle with access to space, gardens, and parks. The resulting residential areas – the suburbs – came to be highly valued in the 20th century. Many people still value them, even in a post-industrial age.

But in today’s quest to preserve city edges, to support public transit, and curtail car use, planners have moved to reinstate higher urban densities around existing city centres, denigrating suburban life as ‘sprawl’ and down-playing the new risks that revisiting the old ways raise.

We may have to rethink these revisionary ideals in the face of reality. A better understanding of resource constraints and the need for diversity may mean that we shouldn’t look at expanding our cities in the uncritical way we did in the past, providing large plots for small households. But for many people, and perhaps for nature, high density, mixed use is not necessarily the best alternative.

I’m not sure what form a move to resilience in urban design might favour. Most probably it will – and should – vary from place to place.

Decentralisation will have a role to play.

Certainly smaller centres, within, on, or beyond the edges of large cities, with a full range of services and amenities and a high level of self sufficiency are likely to offer more resilience to communities than centralised, hierarchical and interdependent services stretched over the entire city. In some places, well-constructed and spacious high-rise apartments set in extensive green spaces might work. In others, terraced housing, each dwelling with a small garden, interconnected by pathways and roads to nearby community and commercial centres will be appropriate. Traditional suburbs, perhaps scaled down, will have their place, providing private and public spaces to nurture families and nature. High-density suburbs with extensive parks, green belts, and generous transport corridors are another option.

Whatever the form, the risk of disasters in our cities being compounded by crowding and mean design, calls for putting resilience into the urban design equation. The possibility of marginal long-term savings in fuel consumption and vehicle emissions used to justify constricting our urban places (and lives) may otherwise come at too high a cost.

Phil McDermott is a consultant in urban, economic and community development who has worked throughout New Zealand and in Australia, Asia, and the Pacific. http://cities-matter.blogspot.com

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New Zealand’s small towns – take heart Small town New Zealand is reasserting itself after languishing in the wake of the big cities for too long.

This is not the superficial makeover stuff of new street furniture but a more fundamental and wide-reaching approach that seeks to put the heart of a community back into a town, as exemplified in Picton and Foxton.

By SHONA McCAHON for Boffa Miskell

Historically, many small towns were bustling hubs of enterprise that sprang up to service rural hinterlands and to process primary products. Foxton, for instance, was the centre of a thriving flax industry based on the vast flax swamps that still covered much of the Manawatu plains during the nineteenth century. Picton, at the head of the Queen Charlotte Sound in the Marlborough Sounds, became a busy port linking the North and South Islands and handling large volumes of primary produce. In their heyday, such towns were the focus of community life, servicing

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the social as well as economic needs of the town dwellers and those who would ‘come to town’ from surrounding areas.

Times change, however, and during the twentieth century many of New Zealand’s small towns experienced decline. Local primary-processing industries closed down or relocated to cities. Transport routes, intent on linking the main cities, bypassed or cut right through small town centres. People became more mobile, too, and increasingly went to larger centres for their employment and shopping. Small towns seemed to be languishing

by the wayside. Their role as the gathering place for local communities was much diminished; their townscapes were haunted by areas of disuse and often shaped by roading infrastructure with its inevitable parking lots and highway-oriented services.

The 21st century is heralding a renaissance, however. Small town communities like Picton and Foxton are looking for opportunities to reinvent themselves, while also wishing to revive their sense of community and redevelop their towns to reflect that.

Planning Marc Baily, urban planner with Boffa Miskell, who has been assisting a number of small town communities translate their redevelopment dreams into reality, says if proposals are to succeed they have to be well-considered and practical while also being inspirational and visionary.

“It takes time – typically four to five years – to work through the strategic and urban planning stage and reach the point when things start to happen on the ground,” he says. “As a consultant, you can’t expect to really understand the place and how it works without spending considerable time observing the current environment and finding out from locals about the cultural and social context, as well as their issues and aspirations.

Spending time at this stage pays off hugely when it comes to the inevitable debates about the physical changes that might be proposed in the town.”

Such timeframes can, of course, be frustrating for a

community that is pressing for change, yet necessary to ensure that the different views within that community are properly canvassed. While there may be a general desire for change, there will be a range of views about what that might mean in practical terms, and there will be some who are simply suspicious of change.

“One of the outcomes of a town redevelopment project should be a strengthened sense of community and that won’t, of course, be achieved purely by reconfiguring the built form,” Marc says. “If the process is well managed and seen to be democratic, the visioning and debate during the planning phase can assist people within the town to get to know each other in new ways, to perhaps better

understand their own history and to think about what kind of community they want to be part of.”

Public space When community revival is an objective, the future of public space in the town is a major focus because of its role in potentially bringing people together and enabling interaction, according to Boffa Miskell landscape architect Michael Hawes.

“The design of the public realm in cities has attracted a lot of attention but the principles apply just as much in small towns,” Michael says. “Ideally, public space should accommodate a lot of different types of interaction if it is to be truly public – that is, accessible

and welcoming to all. These are the places where people can meet up with those they know but also encounter people from outside their own social group who are, nevertheless, part of the community. In a small town, that enables people to (at the very least) recognise who else lives in the community and perhaps get to know a little more about them.

That in turn builds the sense of belonging, shared ownership and security.”

Enabling out-of-town visitors to also use the public space and intermingle comfortably with locals is another important consideration in many small towns, where attracting visitors is crucial to economic revival and survival. Community spaces need to be designed in such a way that seasonal or weekend influxes of

visitors can be accommodated while also providing for more low-key local use in between times.

“There’s more to it than simply providing a public square or a promenade,” Michael says. “The public space needs to be part of the fabric of the town and that means integrating it with the way the town works both socially and economically. If we create places where people want to spend time, it will support local businesses through increased foot traffic and activity. Conversely, having businesses and services adjacent to and integrated with the public space can improve the success of the space by bringing people through it and improving passive surveillance. These factors are far more critical than fancy signage or town branding ”

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Picton’s London Quay The integration of business and community activities has been a key component of Picton’s new London Quay town square and waterfront redevelopment, completed in October 2010. The redevelopment followed a four-year strategic planning, community consultation and master planning exercise led by Boffa Miskell on behalf of the Marlborough District Council.

London Quay had traditionally been Picton’s gathering place when it was the town’s main point of departure and arrival, but this changed. The main port was developed further away and the site became a ‘back door’ to the town centre, dominated by car parking and service functions.

The redevelopment incorporates tourist operations, fishing boat and boat servicing uses to ensure that both locals and tourists are drawn to the area. Moreover, new buildings designed by Warren and Mahoney to help define the new square, have been designed with ground floor public uses that will

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encourage cross-over of inside and outside activities.

Marc Baily says practical considerations and benefits have flowed through from involving the local businesses in planning the overall concept and developing specific facilities.

“Not only does their presence attract public use and contribute to the site’s waterfront character and vitality – the businesses have also contributed financially and enabled a level of funding for the project,” Marc says.

The redevelopment has created a series of interrelated spaces that provide flexibility for both peak season and off season activity. On New Year’s Eve, it accommodated a crowd of more than 9000.

During weekends fish is sold directly off the fishing boats, bringing a flow of locals to the space and during quiet times lunch time workers and off-season travellers are able to find smaller-scale sheltered spaces that feel safe when there are fewer people around. The evenings see overnight visitors promenading between the marina and foreshore

“The design has reinstated the historic role of the London Quay site as a meeting place, but in a contemporary context,” Michael says. “Meeting places are focal points for communities and we’ve built upon that by drawing together the functional requirements with the aspirations of the local people, the commercial interests and the marine-related operators located on the waterfront – not to mention the needs of visitors.

The aim has been to better integrate the wide range of commercial and public waterfront activities and link them strongly to the town centre.“

Foxton Plans for revitalising the Foxton community came out of an urban planning project in which Boffa Miskell assisted the Horowhenua District Council to look at opportunities and best locations for growth and development over the whole of the Horowhenua district. Foxton was identified as having development potential, which happily aligned with various initiatives the council had already earmarked in consultation with the Foxton community.

Located on State Highway 1, Foxton is one of those small towns where the main road has been diverted away from the commercial area and main shopping street. Through-traffic problems in the town centre have been avoided but highway travellers have been diverted with a consequent loss of potential business.

Marc says the focus during the consultative strategic planning phase was very much upon understanding the town’s history – how it came about and how it works now. Out of that came an understanding of the issues and, importantly, the opportunities for the future.

Boffa Miskell led the formulation of the Foxton Town Plan, which was recently signed off by the community board. It provides the over-arching framework for enhancements, aimed at attracting people into the town; consolidating activities to better emphasise the sense of a town centre; and celebrating Foxton’s heritage. Two other overlapping plans bring together proposals for specific focus areas.

Under the Te Awahou Development Plan a regional multi-purpose culture and heritage centre will be developed in Foxton’s town centre. It will incorporate the site of the now long-gone Foxton port, which operated on a former bend in the Manawatu River before the river was straightened, and will tell the historic stories of the Horowhenua. The centre will be a focus for the local community and out-of-town visitors. It will incorporate a new library and council service centre, a Dutch museum, a Maori arts and craft gallery, tourism information and meeting spaces.

“The objective is not only to preserve the cultural, social and economic heritage of the district but to enable that heritage to be celebrated and extended in the contemporary activities of the local community,” Michael says.”

In doing so, the public space created will build upon the Town Plan’s key concepts of consolidation and reconnecting Main Street with Foxton’s historically important riverfront.”.

Meanwhile the River Loop Plan is underway, aimed at restoring the physical and historic connections with the Manawatu River via the remnant ‘ox – bow’ that was once part of the river. It will involve restoring the degraded ox-bow environment and developing recreational opportunities for locals and visitors.

“Communities often push to get things done quickly, but our advice is to not be too ambitious,” Marc says. “Small things can turn big wheels and affect the wider picture in surprisingly effective ways.

“It’s also important to realise that urban places change over time and you can’t always plan for completion. Small towns are better to think of these plans as works in progress than to try to implement a single master plan all in one go. As the parts are progressively implemented, the community will notice changes and perhaps adapt and evolve their plan as they go along.”

(Marc Baily is a director and Michael Hawes a principal of Boffa Miskell Limited, a town planning and design consultancy.

Shona McCahon is a freelance writer and oral historian.)

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Graduate perspectives Last year I returned to university to study towards a Master of Urban Design at the University of Auckland. The decision to go back was due to a desire to gain more technical skills in urban design, to add to the urban policy and project work I had done previously. In brief, it was one of the most stimulating, yet intense years of my life.

PHOTO CREDITS || 01: Grant Neill

Compiled by ANNA WOOD, Urbanismplus

Design studios provided the focus of the programme and this is where techniques were taught and mastered.

‘Live’ sites from the Auckland region were used for master planning exercises. For our class this included Swanson, Avondale, Henderson and Wynyard Quarter – enabling a focus on transport orientated development (TOD) and sustainable intensification.

Three of my classmates from the 2010 MUrbDes programme are profiled here, presenting their studio submissions.

Hayley Fisher and Grant Neill both showcase Wynyard Quarter – developing master plans and designs for the brown-field site on Auckland CBD’s harbour edge.

Students tackled residential intensification, establishing central city communities and supporting the marine industry that exists on the site.

Jere Wilks shares his work for Henderson – presenting a design response to enable a sustainable future for the mixed industrial/ suburban area. Work here explored opportunities for intensification at growth nodes along the western rail corridor.

The course, and in particular the studios, encouraged us to research, test and apply design principles and techniques. A focus on building typologies was something I found particularly interesting and was a useful addition to my planning background. A

research project enabled me to focus specifically on the perimeter block typology and its application to the New Zealand context.

At the conclusion of a busy yet invigorating year, we left the programme with the knowledge and techniques to work on urban design projects at a range of scales. The course enhanced our passion for the design and function of the urban environment and left me with no regrets for temporarily reverting back to student life.

Anna Wood MUrbDes (Hons), MPlan (Hons), BPlan (Hons) Urban Planner/Designer, Urbanismplus

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WYNYARD QUARTER – HAYLEY FISHER Our challenge at Wynyard Quarter on Auckland’s waterfront, was to develop a master plan illustrating how the site would function in the future, successfully responding to its currently industrial and under-developed nature.

Wynyard Quarter is a much-debated corner of Auckland and presented an opportunity to challenge ourselves as budding urban designers within a realistic context.

My project investigated the concept of ‘local culture’ by creating spaces that responded to our values in a contemporary society. The Auckland waterfront is steeped in a rich history both colonial and Maori. Consideration of this historical context was also infused into the scheme to create identity and a sense of place.

One example was the inter-relationship between the natural landscape and built form, which is privileged within the master plan.

Although the site was designed to be densely urban, the implementation of a swale to collect water from buildings presents an opportunity to reduce ecologically damaging stormwater runoff, as well as create an attractive setting for new local communities. It also allows an incorporation of native coastal planting which imparts a sense of identity and grounds the space to its context.

The role of open space within the Wynyard Quarter was to facilitate a range of different

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spatial experiences both intimate and formal.

It was also designed to allow the functioning of everyday life and cultural exchange as Auckland society moves from a bi-cultural context to a more diverse multi-cultural network. A civic space is incorporated into the master plan, achieved through a pavilion and a formal plaza. The constriction of the eastern edge of the plaza physically concentrates the experience of entry to the large open space.

This area can accommodate large outdoor performances as well as create a powerful presence when occupied by only a few.

Columns flank the pavilion, softening the boundaries of interior and exterior. The columns’ form references the Kuta reed that once grew in the streams around the area.

The position of the pavilion is also important as it is situated at the hub of the Quarter and responds to the wider context orientated to Rangitoto cone with the main entry facing the rising sun. [02] This civic space was designed as a pause along a greater journey of experiences around the Wynyard Quarter master plan. A series of spaces with differing characteristics and purposes, nomadic, conversational, powerful and insignificant, all contributed to creating a ‘place’ adding to Auckland’s waterfront experience.

Hayley Fisher B.Arch (Hons), M.Urb Des (Hons) H.Fisher Architecture Ltd.

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WYNYARD QUARTER – GRANT NEILL Life Wynyard Quarter is a CBD “bookend” positioned on an edge to the sea [01]. It celebrates multiple urban roles while offering the opportunity for life at its edges to be permeated by the life of the harbour.

It anticipates public use, high-density residential living, and commercial activity: the life of the CBD is extended to the Wynyard Quarter and the harbour edge.

The peninsula offers unique opportunities for public life on a regional scale, by ensuring the majority remains publicly owned and used. An urban regional park is accessed past a sculptured lake that signifies arrival, beyond an intensely activated “blue square”. [03]

Space and connections Common social and activity precincts are created by contextually consolidating compatible activities; public use on the harbour edge, residential in the enclave of the basin area, and commercial buffer strips to Fanshawe Street and the marine industrial area. A marina, maritime tourism base and a beach face the recreational area of Westhaven.

Wynyard Quarter connects directly with the

PHOTO CREDITS || 02: Hayley Fisher; 03 & 04: Grant Neill; 05:Jere Wilks

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CBD and the region, Quay Street extends and terminates with a large public space. A transverse connection runs to the end of the peninsula from Fanshawe Street serving the public, park and residential areas. Another serves the existing marine industrial areas, separating potential conflicts.

Public transport systems are integral. Within the residential and commercial precincts a pedestrian scale “T.O.D.” environment is created by breaking down the existing large grid with lanes and paths; transport interchanges are at the centre. Public transport loops through the regional park.

Public space in the residential precinct is purposeful and hierarchical; a central square is a space of gathering and meeting, an outdoor living room for the residents; a water courtyard public space is an intimately scaled bay with vistas out of the precinct. A connecting street continues by pedestrian bridge to the existing viaduct precinct, with spaces for pedestrian engagement, movement and encounter. Perimeter block courtyards are opened up into publicly accessible shared spaces – apartments orientate toward the shared spaces for ‘ownership’ and security [04].

Buildings An urban contextual scale is achieved by the existing city street grid continuing over the site.

Facades facing each other in the street

house common activities and form legible streetscapes with purpose, by activities changing mid-block, instead of whole blocks of activity changing at streets.

Perimeter blocks change to singular buildings toward the openness of the peninsula, as the direct connections force block sizes to reduce; giving potential for dramatic public architecture of a scale commensurate with the harbour it sits in.

Grant Neill Registered Architect, BArch, MUrbDes (Hons) Grant Neill Architects Ltd

HENDERSON – JERE WILKS Following a site visit to the Henderson valley, it was considered that an opportunity for redevelopment existed within the large industrial area slightly south of the town centre. This brown-field land displays several ‘deficiencies’ antithetical to a TOD proposal, including single use zoning; relatively poor connectivity through the road network; inefficient use of land displaying outdated industrial buildings and the adjoining residential areas being poorly connected to nearby rail stations.

In seeking to address these issues, the

design project sought to create a mid-valley TOD predicated on altering the current built form parameters. These amendments included changing the current zoning to allow for mixed use capabilities while still recognising the economic opportunities created by the industrial zone. Architecturally, a distinct built form differentiation was proposed to encourage a sense of place particular to the neighbourhood. The adaptability of building design for future uses, specific materiality and small building design was also considered, aimed at both economic affordability and aesthetic variance within the urban fabric.

The economic mechanism for delivering this design proposal was via the identification of an industry that could reward the region in growth opportunities and by tailoring the TOD around that industry’s requirements and support services. The three film studios within the immediate vicinity of the proposed TOD were highlighted as just such an industry.

Their requirements would include costeffective and adaptable large buildings with ease of access to transport systems.

Supporting businesses would be required in transport, accommodation and communication to name a few. Therefore the inclusion of small business neighbourhoods displaying adaptable spaces for a variety of use were proposed, specifically aimed at creating cost effective premises for the creation of new business opportunities.

Improving the connectivity across the valley was also explored. The primary design concept to deliver this was the inclusion of two new axial roads running approximately east-west. While obviously facilitating vehicular access their principal aim was to link the current disparate cycle and pedestrian systems at each side of the valley. This proposal then created ease of access to the new rail station via multiple forms of transportation. [05] The uniting theme for consideration in the design was ecological, being underpinned by much of the now amalgamated Waitakere City Council’s environmental aims. The built environment aspect proposed issues of water sustainability, collection and re-use along with alternative power generation as an integrated form of the architecture. Public open space was increased where possible, with multiple sites for community garden inclusion and planting strategies to reconcile the built environment as an ‘island of heat’ while creating identity through street tree hierarchies.

Jere Wilks MUrbDes, BLA (Hons) Landscape Architect

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Strengthening social dimensions in urban design Despite the best efforts of urban designers, planners and community specialists, elements of social well-being, often less easily defined or quantified, are still inconsistently embedded into plans and decision-making processes.

By NICOLA ALBISTON, Urbanismplus Ltd

Scratching the surface of urban design-led projects reveals continuing difficulties in the way ‘social’ considerations are captured, integrated, and reconciled across projects.

Seldom are case-sensitive, often qualitative issues such as community equity, accessibility and identity brought to the table as equal partners to transport data, land-use projections, and environmental models.

Should this be a reasonable outcome, or should urban design, as a holistic, integrated approach, be expected to do better?

Urban designers are comfortable representing issues spatially and those in the social sciences more often communicate verbally, with words and policies. A number of tools to bring these together have been developed: producing a CPTED plan; designing a public space for the mobility, comfort and the amenity of its users; determining where and why social infrastructure should be provided in an urban environment to support densities, ethnicities, and other socio-economic indicators. Yet intangible dimensions are less well-evaluated and remain harder to represent compared to other components of the urban system.

This article explores the value of spatial analysis techniques and tailored project methodologies to tackle the difficult contours of things ‘social’. It discusses a series of steps that practitioners can draw on to achieve this objective. It argues that despite being sometimes problematic, persevering with the issues can demonstrably lead to more robust outcomes. These not only provide a more rounded and integrated outcome, but one which better reinforces the arguments supporting other ‘non-social’ components.

Step one: Get the right people around the table Target those involved in the day-to-day planning, provision and delivery of services such as central Government agencies, Local government officers, private sector providers of community infrastructure, and

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non-governmental (third sector) providers and groups. This is critical in order to input local knowledge about specific characteristics and constraints, ensure continuity and understanding through implementation, and to gain cross-agency support. These participants must be able to be part of the answer rather than confined solely to reporting a role or position.

Step two: Analyse the existing social context of the study area Explore: knowledge and policy gaps; demographic trends; the provision and performance of services and facilities; social service disposition; factors that contribute to community cohesion; and community-led initiatives.

This has been effectively achieved elsewhere through the following techniques: represent community infrastructure: Plot the distribution and provision of social service providers, educational, health, recreation, leisure, and cultural facilities (both public and private). Understand where the high order sub-regional, district or city-wide institutions are located universities, hospitals, courts, emergency services, and sports centres. Understand where the lower-order local and neighbourhood facilities are located – community centres, churches, primary and secondary schools, childcare, marae, and RSAs for instance. represent known social issues: Understand the social challenges facing the area. Mark up areas with high social-deprivation; areas with severance and poor accessibility to services and amenities; pockets of geographical isolation; places with a prevalence of crime and anti-social behaviour; areas of vandalism and degradation where community ownership

may be lower; and locations of tension between different demographic groups.

Other socio-economic variables such as ethnicity or education are often also relevant. support the mapped analysis with a literature review of significant projects, strategies and policies that contribute to social capital building in the study area.

Case studies of previous initiatives, including what worked and why are extremely valuable.

Step 3: Collate and compare social infrastructure and issues Evaluate social and community well-being in the study area and the wider context. identify socially distinct communities of interest peripheral to the project area.

These may overlap and fluctuate between issues as people are now often members of more than one community. These community catchments may be defined by topographic, demographic, ethnic or socio-economic change; land use type and housing mix; ward or suburb boundaries. graphically represent the social networks within the study area and the surrounding community catchments. This should include a relative assessment of: 1. the existing provision of ‘hard’ physical infrastructure; 2. how well intangible, qualitative aspects of community well-being are being met; 3. the scale (or quality) of provision from neighbourhood to regional levels; and 4. the potential or desire to grow (or improve) services, accessibility and sense of community.

Step 4: Determine community network opportunities in the study area.

Look at the comprehensive picture. Evaluate all data and maps and identify possible actions. Amongst others, opportunities may exist to: consolidate or co-ordinate multiple

agencies and organisations e.g. sharing or pooling of information, resources and venues; build local self-sufficiency, leadership and capacity through utilising what was already at work in the community; leverage additional or improved community facilities through expected population growth; and grow cultural and creative recognition and expression in the community.

Horses and courses There are many ‘typical’ tools that will be relevant in almost all instances. However as demonstrated in two urban design-led projects from New Zealand and Australia, the use of custom methodologies to truly unlock rather than just map the issues, has benefits.

Case study 1: Social understanding can influence decision-making priorities As evidenced in Casey-Cardinia, one of five urban growth areas in the Melbourne 2030 Growth Strategy, the articulation of community infrastructure issues had a direct influence on resultant transport funding priorities. Use of a ‘social pin-wheel’ tool to evaluate the provision of physical infrastructure across suburbs, revealed it was not possible to provide all services in each location. Each instead had to essentially specialise, with people moving between suburbs to access the full range of amenities. Specific transport investments were then prioritised to make accessibility easier.

Case study 2: A community network proposition needs an equally enabling process and meaningful engagement Nowhere was this more evident than in the Tamaki Transformation Programme, an urban and community renewal project on a scale not attempted before in New Zealand. The workshop-based approach, led by Urbanismplus, sought to develop a clear and prioritised action plan (distinct from a spatial master plan). It addressed three important objectives: 1. build integrated partnerships between community champions and the local residents and communities they represent, multi-sector agencies, and other stakeholders; 2. explore both non-spatial and physical (built) initiatives around all social issues; and 3. be firmly grounded in delivering real, tangible action.

The workshop, building on significant previous work by many of the stakeholders, explored each aspect of the community through a process of dialogue and co-design. The

resulting Development Plan builds on a unifying vision for the area, finding opportunities for the people of Tamaki to more easily provide for their own well-being. A suite of integrated community and social initiatives are co-ordinated and organised under five ‘change strategies’: Tatou tatou (all together): Engage with people in their communities though centralised multi-agency / community service hubs and grassroots care networks within local neighbourhoods.

Tangata whenua (people of the place): Celebrate the environment, heritage and cultures through story-telling in public spaces, event programmes, trails, community gardens, and medicinal/edible landscapes.

Haora (well-being): Create healthy, creative, learning environments through cultural enterprise, trade-based and health sector training schemes for residents, a technology-based learning network for children, more high quality early childhood centres, and expanded marae-based service delivery.

Whai rawa (abundant resource): Connect people with their full economic potential through building on amenities offered in town centres and along Tamaki River, affordable business incubation, and a community transport scheme.

Kainga (home): Deliver quality, integrated living environments through state housing renewal demonstration projects in community and town centre nodes, non-shelter outcomes, a redeveloped people’s park and sense of pride and ownership initiatives.

The Plan places initiatives into a 20-year strategic sequence for comprehensive renewal with responsibilities for different agencies and stakeholders identified. It builds on foundation projects for 2009-2011 with full or seed funding and is backed by clearly defined targets. Economic analysis estimates the Plan will grow New Zealand’s GDP by around $2 billion (1 per cent), directly support 20,700 jobs over 30 years and decrease crime and avoidable hospitalisation rates to the Auckland average¹.

Conclusion While spatial mapping techniques follow a relatively straight-forward formula, giving social dimensions a voice within a broader programme of engagement and implementation remains the continuing challenge. Analytical tools must be tailored and new methods developed if urban design is to truly commit to social sustainability imperatives.

¹ Tamaki Development Plan: Economic Value Proposition, October 2010, SGS Economics and Planning Pty. Ltd, SGS

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Cream buns, entrepreneurs and modest urbanity

Re-imagining the small town In downtown Cambridge there just isn’t an empty shop to be found. Presided over by a hundred-year-old town hall and flanked by the verdant Victoria Square and busily cultivating boutique shopping credentials, Cambridge town centre is clearly a part of ‘old Cambridge’. [01]

By DAVID PRONGER, Antanas Procuta Architects Ltd

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Across river is Cambridge’s ‘southbank’, Leamington, with its own distinct character.

Originally a separate borough, Leamington has its shopping precinct currently in growth mode. Nine retail shop units, a café, a supermarket, and a new, more intimate two-bar tavern replacing the old medallioncarpeted, 70s vintage one, is the latest development for Leamington’s heart.

“If you want to succeed, if you want to get ahead of the competition, then you need to stop tolerating mediocrity and start focusing on the behaviours and attitudes that get results,” advises LesleyAnn Thomas, the new president of the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce.1

LesleyAnn, a freelance human resources consultant and business owner, directs her counsel at small enterprise, but equally it could apply to the management of small towns. LesleyAnn Thomas is the third woman in a row to hold the presidency of this 230-strong membership business organisation.

Cambridge has that timeless quality, built on a simple street grid of vista-harvesting tree-lined avenues, culminating in a town centre of admirable architecture.

Its congenial relationship with both the equine and dairy industries, its proximity to Hamilton and its attractive arboreal environment are commonly presented as the principal contributors to its consistent progress. But the continuing dedication over time of an active and committed Cambridge entrepreneurial core – as in many other successful towns – is an enviable asset not to be dismissed too lightly.

Baker’s man Across the Tasman in rural northeast Victoria, Tom O’Toole is busy containing his ebullient bakery team. Tom O’Toole is no ordinary baker. He owns the very felicitous Beechworth bakery. If you have read Bryce Courtney’s novel ‘Four Fires’, you’ll have some familiarity with Beechworth. About 280 kilometres from Melbourne, Beechworth is a well-preserved historical town, establishing itself during the gold rush days of mid 1850s. Its present population is just 3200, about the size of Putaruru in south Waikato.

On one recent Easter Saturday, the cash registers of the Beechworth Bakery rang up some 3500 transactions, altogether taking $31,000 in one day’s trading. They had 30 staff in the shop working that day. 2 Tom O’Toole reminisces: ‘I remember when I first came back to Beechworth 26 years ago to set up the bakery, my accountant and the bank manager said I was mad taking a risk investing in a dying country town, but luckily I didn’t listen to them.’

The exuberant Tom O’Toole is proud of his employees and encourages initiative and participation. “I sell lamingtons and pies, and my business is far from perfect. Its 5 per cent technology and 95 per cent psychology – it’s all about people. You need to have vision, persistence and discipline, but most of all you need to believe in yourself, your business and your community.’

Today the Beechworth Bakery boasts six bakeries across Victoria and southern New South Wales. Tom O’Toole is an entrepreneur and a great ambassador for his hometown.

Give the town the business In New Zealand, the late 1980s was a difficult time for many small towns. Locally owned businesses and manufacturers were struggling to compete against pressure from international corporations and countries with

low wages and often poor environmental protection. The economic reforms of the mid-80s had removed import tariffs and privatised government departments. This hit hard with business closures, unemployment and general economic decline in many communities throughout the country. Kaitaia, a small town in far north New Zealand, nearly 400 kilometres from the Auckland CBD, was not immune.

But with DIY resilience, Kaitaia (population around only 5000) responded positively, seeing the opportunity for establishing an enterprise that would put community benefit before return on profit. In 1989, Kaitaia’s ‘Community Business and Environment Centre’ (CBEC) was born.3 CBEC’s raison d’etre was to create a community owned organisation that could generate new businesses and jobs. The organisation was seen as being able to bid for contracts that would otherwise be won by companies from outside the district. Profits could be ploughed back into the community to create more employment and other community benefit.

The founding managers and board members were determined to establish sustainable businesses and practices that, at the same time, would provide training and employment for local people.

CBEC is a community enterprise that now operates a range of businesses and environmental programmes as part of an overall effort to build a sustainable local economy. A shareholder-elected board of directors controls CBEC. Anyone within the far north community can become a shareholder.

Today CBEC employs more than 70 full-time staff in a number of enterprises and joint ventures, including waste management, recycling, labour hire, transport, home insulation, nursery and environmental education.

Cultivating entrepreneurship “‘The green shoots of entrepreneurship give an economy its vitality,” maintain William Bygrave and Andrew Zacharakis of the Babson College, Massachusetts in their textbook on the subject, ‘Entrepreneurship’.

Entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs come in many shapes and sizes. Some create businesses, some contribute to civic organisations and still others endeavour to enhance the provision of public goods and services. What they all have in common is what Bygrave characterises as ‘the presence of imagination, flexibility, creativity, a willingness to think conceptually and the capacity to see change as an opportunity.’

Entrepreneurship, however defined, is commonly recognised as a key ingredient of a robust community and a sustainable economy.

Over the Moon in Putaruru Operated by longtime Waikato resident Sue Arthur and situated in a small factory in Putaruru, Over the Moon is a boutique cheese-making company producing around 9000 kilograms of cheese a year.4 [02] Sue Arthur is clearly an entrepreneur in its widest sense.

Since 1985 she has served in various elected and executive positions on the local South Waikato District Council, helping to drive many high-profile local tourist attractions such as Tokoroa’s ‘Talking Poles’, Tirau’s ‘Big Dog’ tourist information centre and upgrades of three of the region’s central business districts.

The perfect dairying environment that begirded Sue Arthur over many years had inspired a passion for dairy products that eventually sent her globetrotting – experiencing, making and sampling cheese.

Sue eventually brought her inspiration back to the South Waikato and set up Over the Moon and its affiliate the New Zealand Cheese School in late 2007. By early 2008, Over the Moon had made its first cheeses and won a gold and two silver medals at the Cuisine New Zealand Champion of Cheese Awards. In 2010 Over the Moon was recognised by the international cheese community as the world’s best producer of semi-soft mixed milk and flavoured sheep cheese.

Located on State Highway 1200 kilometres south of Auckland, Putaruru is a rural town with a population of around 3800. Putaruru’s ‘Blue Spring’ on the local Te Waihou River provides 60 per cent of New Zealand’s bottled water (distributed nationwide and internationally) and also supplies the town’s water supply.

Across Tirau Street from Over the Moon is Putaruru’s former post office. Constructed in 1968 and designed on a circular plan with a crown-shaped roof of thin parabolic pre-cast concrete shells, the former post office and its 900 square-metre footprint is architecturally undoubtedly provincial New Zealand’s most outstanding example. [03] No longer used by NZ Post, the building is now in private hands and destined to gain a new zest for life as a food court.

Shepherding Putaruru’s development potential is Pride in Putaruru, a close descendant of the Chamber of Commerce, but which now embraces not only the business interests of the town but the social and community interests as well. Capably orchestrated by the dynamic Annie Waterworth, Pride in Putaruru is currently actioning a plan Vibrant Putaruru commissioned by it to coordinate future social and economic development.5

Social entrepreneurship Just as there are entrepreneurs who change the face of business, there are also social entrepreneurs who act as the change agents

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supporting local responses and then weaving them together into a coordinated action plan for change.

By building local resilience, we are able, collectively, to respond to whatever the future may bring in a positive and creative way. By remembering how to live within our means, we can rediscover the spirit of community and a feeling of empowerment that flows from belonging and sharing in a world that is vibrant, just and truly sustainable.

for society, seizing opportunities others miss and improving systems, inventing new approaches and creating solutions to change society for the better. While a business entrepreneur might create entirely new industries, a social entrepreneur comes up with new solutions to social problems and then implements them on a large scale.

“Our job is not to give people fish, it’s not to teach them how to fish, it’s to build new and better fishing industries,” explains Bill Drayton, the ‘godfather of social entrepreneurship’ and founder of Ashoka, a global non-profit organisation with headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, dedicated to finding and fostering social entrepreneurs worldwide.6 The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s split society into two unequal segments, maintains Ashoka’s Bill Drayton. Commerce became entrepreneurial and competitive, its compounding productivity gains sparking rapid income growth. But somehow enlightenment bypassed society’s other half, that part concerned with education, public welfare and the environment, Drayton laments. As the consumer sector grew more productive, the social sector supported by taxes and protected from competition, fell even further behind.

While it is basic for human beings to trade and exchange, it is just as fundamental to cooperate. We are social beings who are at our best as active participants of thriving groups and networks.

‘Community is not something we have, it is something we never stop doing.’7 Set around 1950, Nevil Shute’s novel, A Town Like Alice, is firstly a love story – about a Jean Paget and a Joe Harman, two people thrown together by war finding each other again after six years. But also it is a story about love of place and what one person with the motivation to contribute and build for the benefit of community can achieve.

A Town Like Alice captures the vision of a young Englishwoman: how to build attractiveness into a place such that its young people want to remain and where others want to come to live. In her travels Jean had been enchanted with the quality of life in the remote Alice Springs (population then about 1200) in central Australia. Armed with this experience, she devises a plan for her adopted home, an outback town in western Queensland starting

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with the building of a workshop to employ a small number of ladies making fashion goods from locally produced leather – and progressively superintends the plan’s implementation.

“Community is about place, spirit, belonging and connection. It is about joy, fear, love and hope. Community is also about friendship, caring and being cared for. These are the things that motivate us every day,” announces the Tamarack Institute website.

Tamarack is the real-time Jean Paget. It is a Canadian organisation dedicated to supporting “collaborative strategies that engage citizens and institutions to solve major community challenges”.8 Brit Nevil Shute was himself an entrepreneur, starting up an aeronautical engineering business prior to taking up writing full time. All his books, one way or another, are about this – except ‘On the Beach’, and that is a warning of what will happen to mankind if it ceases to be on the side of creation and improvement.

Small towns, big opportunities It takes less than four minutes to drive through the built-up area of Putaruru and at just five houses to the hectare, it is neither a big nor a particularly compact place. This is not necessarily a bad thing. With their walkable characteristics, spare infrastructure, space for local food production and home occupations, small towns like Putaruru are in fact well-placed to confront issues of climate change and diminishing resources.

Retirees are already discovering the affordable housing such places offer.

Businesses that are able to service their clients remotely via telephone and the Internet are discovering the benefits with cheaper overheads.

The important challenges facing us today – the need for frugality, living more sustainably and fostering civic engagement – are all made easier in small towns.

Small town initiatives are part of an emerging movement that is bringing people together to explore how we – as communities – can respond to the environmental, economic and social exigencies of today. Our communities have within themselves the innovation and ingenuity to create positive rejoinders to these challenges of our time.

What is required is firstly igniting and

Conclusion: stewardship and imagination “If Henry Ford had gone out and surveyed his community, they probably would have told him they needed a faster horse.” It’s trite but pedagogical. We all need a vision.

Communities need vision. But equally important, communities need people to help articulate, nurture and drive their vision.

In the future, leaders will not be remembered for their professional, technical or cost-cutting skills but for their wisdom, empathy, presence, intuition and artistry, predicts leadership educator and pianist/ composer, Michael Jones.9 “It will be a way of leading that is more relational focused and based upon creating an empathic resonance with others as a networker, connector and convener of webs and communities,” suggests Jones.

As designers we practise those particular disciplines that awaken the power of the imagination. These help transform our mechanistic or industrial view of our world to one that is more subtle – and sustainable – a transcendent vision that is more creative, organic and whole. This is how an artistic viewpoint can be especially helpful to community leaders.

“Make and mend is a fundamental principle in the history of cities as of civilisation,” observed Professor Arthur Smailes in his slim but pithy volume on the history and morphology of town building, ‘The Geography of Towns.’

The scale of required interventions to make better, more-liveable places does not have to be big. Small projects can add massive value to rural towns and these small urban programmes can be the catalyst for positive change. Likewise, solutions do not need to be spectacular or eye-catching. The important thing is they need to be pragmatic, sensible and place-based. If they are, they can work.

REFERENCES Bygrave, W.D and Andrew Zacharakis.

Entrepreneurship (Second edition), John Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2010.

Courtney, B. Four Fires, Penguin, 2003 Shute, Nevil A Town Like Alice, Heinemann, 1950 Smailes, A.E. The Geography of Towns Hutchinson, London, 1967.

DBH puts CC Act under scrutiny

BY PAULA NICOLAOU, senior associate DLA Phillips Fox The Construction Contracts Act 2003 (Act) came into force on 1 April 2003 with its purpose being to regulate payments under construction contracts and provide an alternative avenue for dispute resolution between parties to those contracts.

The Act currently covers commercial construction contracts between principals and contractors and contractors and subcontractors and extends, in part, to residential construction contracts.

Eight years on, the Act is now undergoing its first review. In November 2010, the Department of Building and Housing issued a discussion document containing reference to five specific issues under review.

The date for submissions closed on 16 December 2010 and the Department is looking to issue a paper outlining responses to the proposed changes early this year.

Focus of the review The matters under review and the Department’s proposals are as follows:

1. Whether the Act should apply in its entirety to residential construction contracts.

As it currently stands, the Act regulates commercial construction contracts and residential construction contracts differently.

The main differences being residential construction contracts do not get the benefit of: the implied default provisions relating to progress payments; the wider options for enforcement of adjudication orders, for example, where an adjudication order is issued in favour of a consumer and the other party does not comply with the order, the only option for the consumer is to re-litigate it either through the courts or pursuant to the dispute resolution clauses of the contract; if the order concerns a dispute about rights and obligations then it is not enforceable at all; the provisions allowing the issuing of charging orders in respect of construction sites and suspension of work.

The Act also requires payment claims under residential construction contracts, where the client is a ‘residential occupier’ to be made in the form prescribed under the Act. This form contains additional requirements to that required under a residential construction contract where the client is not a ‘residential occupier’. The reference to a ‘residential occupier’ has raised issues for contractors and caused confusion as to which type of payment claim is required.

The Department’s proposal It intends to remove the limitation in how the Act applies to residential construction contracts, as well as requiring a generic notice to accompany all payment claims, whether under a commercial or a residential construction contract, detailing how to respond to a claim and the consequences of not paying a claim either in full or in part.

2. Enforcement of adjudication orders The Act currently distinguishes between how adjudication orders can be enforced depending on the type of contract they fall under and the matter being determined. For example, commercial construction contracts receive the full benefit of the Act which extends to (for orders for payment of money only) the right to suspend work, register a charging order or register the order as a judgement in the courts.

Orders under residential construction contracts or orders in respect of rights and obligations under either a commercial or residential construction contract are more difficult to enforce, with the latter having to be re-heard in a court if the parties want a decision at that level.

In looking at this issue the Department gave comparisons between the ability to enforce an adjudication order under the Act and other Acts that have similar regimes. For example, an adjudication order under the Arbitration Act 1996 and adjudication orders under the Tenancy Tribunal, the Weathertight Homes Tribunal and the Disputes Tribunal are all enforceable as if they were an order of the District Court.

The Department’s proposal It intends to amend the Act so that all adjudication orders under the Act can be enforced as if they were orders of the District or High Court, whether they relate to payment disputes or parties’ rights and/or obligations under the construction contract. The Department has also proposed that the Act allow adjudication orders in respect of residential construction contracts to be enforced in the same way as commercial construction contracts (i.e. enabling suspension of works and the issuing of charging orders).

3. Appeal rights The ability to challenge an adjudication order under the Act is limited. Appeal rights are generally limited to judicial review of the adjudicator’s decision (i.e. an appeal that the adjudicator has not followed the required process) which must be heard in the High Court. Judicial review of an adjudication order does not address whether the decision was right or wrong. The Act contains some appeal rights in favour of specific parties, such as where the owner of the building site is not the

party to the construction contract but either has had an adjudication order against the owner making the owner jointly and severally liable, or allowing the registration of a charging order on the site.

Currently, the Act does not allow for parties to appeal decisions where the adjudicator has ‘got it wrong’ i.e. a right of appeal on the facts of the case, points of law or unfairness. Most other tribunals and courts allow for an appeal on that basis.

The Department’s proposal It proposes amendments to the Act to enable appeals of adjudication orders where a party feels the adjudicator has got it wrong. Appeals will be limited to the facts of the case, points of law and unfairness. The Department also proposes that appeals be heard in the District Court in the first instance.

4. Confidentiality of orders Currently, adjudication orders under the Act are confidential. The reason for this was to protect private and commercially sensitive information.

The Department made reference to other dispute tribunal forums where the decisions are not confidential, but noted that decisions are not public under The Arbitration Act 1996.

The Department’s proposal It intends to remove the confidentiality requirements applicable to adjudication orders.

5. Related goods and services While the Act covers a wide range of ‘construction work’ relating to a number of different structures, it does not extend to goods and services related to construction work such as design, engineering work, supply of materials and equipment.

The Department’s comments focused on the role these parties play in the construction industry and whether it was appropriate to suggest they come under the full ambit of the Act. The Department focused on the payment provisions of the Act stating that the purpose of those provisions was to remove any blockage of payment from the top down and they noted that often supplies and consultants sat outside of that arrangement.

The Department’s proposal It proposed that while the implied payment provisions of the Act should not apply to supplies and consultants, the adjudication provisions should, thereby giving those parties an alternative dispute resolution process in addition to their rights under their contracts and through the courts.

We will confirm the outcome of the review and proposed amendments to the Act once that information is available from the Department.

(Further information: paula.nicolaou@ dlaphillipsfox.com; tel 04 474 3274).

MARCH 2011 URBAN

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International news

01

Greedy metropolis eats its way across Victoria Melbourne [01] has sprawled 50 per cent further than its official urban growth boundary and is eating up small country towns.

The Age newspaper reports developers are building large suburban-style estates as close as three kilometres to the boundary, marketing to metropolitan commuters while avoiding the infrastructure levy.

Meanwhile, thousands of housing blocks in regional towns are being sold as an alternative to the city’s high land prices, from Drouin in Gippsland to Wallan on the Northern Highway and Bacchus Marsh in the west. It is a span of more than 150 kilometres from east to west, a distance further than that from the CBD to Bendigo.

One new development is the 500-lot Jackson’s View estate in Drouin that is 40 kilometres outside the boundary and is being marketed as “a hassle-free commute to Melbourne”.

In Wallan, which is now just three kilometres outside the boundary that was extended in July, there are four new housing estates with plans for more than 5000 new homes in total.

The developments are set to more than double the population of the town.

The developers of the 900-lot Spring Ridge and up to 3000-lot Wallara Waters are being marketed on the developers’ claims of “just a 45-minute train trip from the Melbourne CBD”.

Macedon Ranges Residents Association secretary Christine Pruneau told The Age that such estates represented an uncontrolled expansion of Melbourne that made a mockery of the boundary.

“These are little towns getting development that looks like it belongs in Essendon and it’s changing the character of the places into suburbs of Melbourne.”

A spokeswoman for Planning Minister Justin

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02

Madden said the government’s $631 million regional blueprint ‘Ready for Tomorrow’ included $37 million to help regional councils plan for population and jobs growth.

RMIT associate professor of planning Michael Buxton said the state government’s stated aim of decentralising population growth into the regions was a good idea. But it should be concentrated away from the boundary in bigger regional centres such as Wangaratta and Ballarat, where there were jobs and infrastructure to accommodate more people.

“Huge numbers of people travelling even bigger distances to the city to work isn’t going to solve anything,” he said.

Professor Buxton said housing was a threat to some of Victoria’s most productive agricultural land around Warragul and Drouin.

However, Baw Baw Shire mayor Adam Tyson said a house-and-land package in the shire was $30,000 cheaper than in Pakenham, a nearby suburb that is inside the boundary.

First home owners who build in a regional area receive $26,500 in government grants compared with $20,000 for a new home inside the boundary.

Source: The Age

Bikes play shapely role in creating urban form Design Within Reach founder Rob Forbes, who now runs Studio Forbes, based in San Francisco, has a new passion: Public.

It’s a design-based business, reports MediaBistro.com, with a mission “to help reduce our dependency on cars and think more intelligently and artfully about the way we get around and connect with our cities and communities”.

It designs and makes bikes, basically, and a particular focus are the practical, traditional designs inspired from Europe of the 1950s and 1960s. (http://publicbikes.com).

Forbes told MediaBistro: “I’ve been watching the growth of city bikes in Europe for almost ten years and seeing the changes here, such as the Bloomberg initiatives in New York. I’m passionate about urban design and mobility, and want to help us get over our car addiction.” that are guaranteed for life and “ride like butter.”

Source: www.mediabistro.com and www. publicbikes.com

Denver airport’s great – pity about the buses And while we are talking of Rob Forbes, a recent blog from Public which centred on Denver International Airport [03] offered up an interesting parallel with Auckland. ”A quick trip to Colorado last month put us in the Denver International Airport on our way to Boulder, Colorado. We don’t know of two greater contrasts in transportation designs in one region. The experience was a study in the extremes we see in our modern world.

“The Denver International Airport has been on the design radar since its inception in 1994. It rises out of nowhere in the high plains, like modernist Bedouin tents. Inside it feels like a study in efficient mobility with everyone everywhere in motion. The architecture firm Fentress Architects designed the airport and it lives up to their slogan “Inspired Design for People”. A speedy tram zips you to terminals. There are elevators, horizontal conveyor walkways, and escalators in every space. They whisk you around like magic inside the space. But once you get your bags and look for public transportation, it smacks you. You are stuck.

You are 15 miles from anywhere.

“Denver is one of the few major airports in the entire world that is not connected to its city by some form of rail. Taxis and rental cars are your only way out. OK, there are

03

buses (sort of) but who wants to pack into a bus, especially after a plane flight? It is as if the car rental agencies and taxis conspired to form a monopoly. Maybe they did. How uncivilised.”

Here in Auckland, should we look forward to similar comments from…oh….85 thousand overseas visitors to the Rugby World Cup? Source: Public.com

PHOTO CREDITS || 03:FLICKR/BACHIR; 04: DAIVID BERKOWITZ

Urban designers getting younger by the day ‘Kids can be planners too’ is the philosophy of a group of Los Angeles teachers who just started their own pilot school organised around the unlikely theme of urban planning.

The East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy of Urban Planning and Design held its first classes in September on the crisp new campus of Esteban Torres High School, in the heavily Latino East L.A. MetropolisMag.com reports it’s a neighborhood where, the teachers think,students can particularly benefit from the skills and values of the planning profession.

But the school is not only about zoning and parking minimums. Teachers say they’re easing into the broad and complex world of urban planning from a more abstract starting point.

“For our students, at this stage, ‘urban planning’ is not even a term that they use.

We’re mainly talking about community,” says Martin Buchman, an English teacher who has promoted the new school.

Buchman and his colleagues felt that urban planners’ emphasis on community development and public participation was especially relevant to local students and their families. None of the teachers, however, have any formal training in urban planning. To help with the more specific aspects of the

04

discipline, they have James Rojas, a 20-year veteran of L.A. planning who has been advising them on the curriculum and lecturing. He’s also looking to host workshops where students build and discuss models of cities and urban environments.

Source: MetropolisMag.com

Australians told: look to Rio for ‘inspiration’ An urban planning expert says town planners can learn a lot from the slums of Rio de Janeiro [04] when it comes to building our future cities.

John Norquist, the president of the United States Congress for New Urbanism, is in Brisbane for the City of the Future Conference.

The former mayor of Milwaukee says population growth means high-density living will be the way of the future in Australian cities like Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

Mr Norquist points to Rio’s favalas as examples of functional communities and says the informal arrangements made in slums are a good model for how councils can improve zoning laws.

“To give you an example of where you have a very strict plan like the capital of Brazil, Brasilia, where most of the streets are grade separated and everything is use separated and it’s planned on the utopian model that was predominant in the 1950s,” he said.

“The capital of Brazil is one of the most lifeless places on earth. The restaurants and the nightclubs and so forth that you find in Rio you don’t find that in Brasilia – you find it in the slums around Brasilia.

“So planners need to learn from the way human beings arrange their lives informally when there’s not a plan.”

Mr Norquist says planning cities with transportation and sustainability in mind is the

“convenient remedy, the inconvenient truth”.

He says Australian cities had it right before World War II, but since then, planning has led to urban sprawl, which means people are forced to rely on cars more.

“The pre-World War II development was built compactly and around transit,” he said.

“In the post-war period there was a time in Australia – not quite as long and as devastating as what happened in the US – where you experienced a lot of sprawl.”

Mr Norquist says urbanism does not mean the end of owning a car and having a backyard barbeque.

“There is an understanding in the real estate market in the US more and more that urbanism has a value, that urbanism creates a lot of variety of choices,” he said.

“Even in our most suburban areas on the edge of metropolitan areas there’s talk about building village centres that are walkable, where people can enjoy life, where they can meet their friends and have a social function and also market function, retail.

“The idea of just having a community built around cars with the main feature being giant roads and parking lots, that’s not enough to people anymore. They want more than that.”

In the United States there are between 35 and 40 million new homes expected to be built in the next 30 years and Australia is set to follow a similar path.

Mr Norquist says Vancouver in Canada – a city of boulevards and good transit – is a perfect model for Australia’s major cities.

“It has no expressways at all and it’s quite successful.

“It’s been the most successful city in Canada in terms of property value growth, it’s gained in population but the population seems very satisfied with the growing density of the city.

“It’s a great tourist city, it’s a great economic city, it has manufacturing, it has all kinds of things that makes for a great city.”

Source: The Age

MARCH 2011 URBAN

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ISSUE 1 | VOLUME 5 | MARCH 2011

A nation’s memories deserve a significant urban space

Welcome to the first issue of URBAN for 2011. We all know it’s been a tough time recently for New Zealand’s second-biggest city, but we have articles in this issue which look to the future for towns and cities all over the country, including Christchurch.

The urban design and development community mourns with Canterbury, but which other sector of New Zealand’s economy will play such an important role in the city’s rebirth?

Warren & Mahoney have already begun the process by gathering a group of leading New Zealand urban planning, design and property services experts together to look for the best way forward in the rebuilding process.

We look forward to reporting on their work through our website and in future issues of our magazine.

Also in this issue URBAN, we look at the work of young designers; David Pronger looks at ‘the small town’ and Stephen Olsen writes of giving life to memory in some of our public spaces.

The Construction Contracts Act is under scrutiny by the Department of Building and Housing, and a legal expert gives us the latest on that process.

And as usual, we look at trends and developments ‘internationally” in urban design, planning, architecture and city development.

Graduate perspectives urban design from a new angle

Cycling by design:

URBAN has redesigned its website @: www.UrbanNZ. co.nz and we are still building content into the new shape and ‘look’.

Because our magazine is published only quarterly, we intend making the website a useful, up-to-date and stimulating source of news, features and information. We look forward to have you visit, and please add comments to articles that interest or inspire you. Let’s start some dialogue.

Best wishes for 2011.

urban form arrives on two wheels

urban form arrives on two wheels

Cycling by design: urban design from a new angle

Graduate perspectives

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What’s on MARCH 28-29 YP Congress 11, Shed 22 Taranaki/Cable Streets, Wellington.

Young planners have a voice on national planning issues.

www.teamarchitects.co.nz

29 MARCH - 1 APRIL NZ Planning Institute annual conference: Winds of change.

APRIL 20 New Zealand Architecture Awards winners announced

MAY 20 New Zealand Architecture Awards Dinner

JUNE 20 Entries open online for the 2011/12 Architecture Awards

JULY 28-29 4th Making Cities Liveable Conference, Noosa Queensland. The 4th Making Cities Liveable Conference will be a platform for government and industry sector professionals to discuss causes, effects and solutions that relate to population health, sustainability, natural resource management, transport, climate change and urban design.

AUGUST 4 Entries close online for the 2011/12 Architecture Awards

AUGUST 11-13 Transform – Australian Institute of Landscape Architects national conference. Climate change challenges, opportunities and urban design solutions. Brisbane Convention Centre.

SEPTEMBER 22-23 4th International Urban Design Conference, Gold Coast, Queensland. To ensure Australian cities are globally competitive, productive, sustainable, liveable and socially inclusive and are well placed to meet future challenges and growth.”

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