Urban planning and development

We suggest you read our downloadable article on planning and development, "KiwiGrow - a new approach to sustainable development".

It is in planning the future of our cities that the problems of sustainable development are often most keenly appreciated.  Cities compete with one another for industry, for the best and the brightest, and for material resources.  Many have seen huge increases in population as a result of migration, as well as natural population growth.  Old patterns and styles of development have increasingly little relevance in a world that is more and more concerned with efficient use of resources, social responsibility, and getting the climate back under control.   So the need is for change.  But in this change, a whole range of issues clamour for prioritisation.  We can list a few: renewing old areas and making them safer, rediscovering connections with the natural environment, re-establishing a sense of identity which may have been lost amid recent rapid development, reclaiming waterfronts for public amenity, living with cultural diversity, finding ways to continue servicing sprawling cities, infrastructure renewal, rethinking water and wastewater infrastructure,  energy consumption and the distance of the cities from energy sources, rethinking management of solid waste, rediscovering walking and healthy urban lifestyles,  providing choice in transport, rethinking the relationship between cities and their rural environs, sustainability of peripheral food-growing areas under threat from urbanisation, assuring ecological health of harbours and estuaries, and rethinking the city as a place to access and generate knowledge in the  internet age. 

The list is endless, but often comes down to three key factors.  Many cities are still relatively young, and still coming to terms with their place in the environment and the natural landscape.  People often have no idea what a sustainable city might look like, or how it might function.   Then there is the problem of governance:  problems of government by traditional elites, or factionalised politics, and an inability to extract consensus.  And finally there is the problem of finance.  Until recently, cities have often relied on external financial investment to fund development (often property development), and with the realisation that this has been unsustainable, the source of the new funds for development is in question.   

Planning comes down to visions, goals, measures, methods, and prioritisation - all in the context of continual change:  changing priorities, changing external conditions, the changing faces of the actors, and ongoing technological change.  Extracting strategic direction from all of this requires clarity on fundamental values and drivers.  And, inevitably, it requires leadership - leadership that can be trusted, and a form of democracy that is appropriate for meeting these challenges.

Rural planning and development

While urban issues are dominated by the needs of a concentrated population, rural issues relate more directly to natural resource and environmental management, the servicing and sustainability of small communities, and debates around hot issues such as rapidly expanding industry sectors (such as irrigation-based dairying in New Zealand), erosion and flood-plain management, sustainable tourism, recovering or salvaging indigenous biodiversity in a landscape impoverished by destruction of natural ecosystems, and the needs of remaining indigenous communities - many of whom will retain a long view of landscape ecological development and how it is intertwined with their heritage and culture.  Often less visible, but no less important, are the social issues related to education, skill-bases, well-being, underemployment, isolation, and community stability in the face of changing land uses.

Battles between competing needs of urban and rural communities are often fought in the context of development of rural or small communities, whether related to dams for water supply or hydro-electricity,   wind power electricity schemes, supply lines for electricity, routes for new motorways, development of tourist resort areas, or corporatised farming.  The needs and wants of the multicultural population of a modern city are, at one level, vastly different from those of a less varied and more traditional (but still changing) small rural community.  Urban dwellers have become increasingly remote from the countryside, with less and less in common with their rural counterparts.  They are also often better represented among the ranks of the planners, politicians, and other holders of instruments of power.  As for urban issues, progress on rural issues requires clarity on, and respect for, fundamental common values.

A fundamental difference between urban and rural planning and development is in the levels of awareness of the importance of natural systems and processes.  Urban dwellers are more likely to feel nature is under control, while rural dwellers are more likely to respect or be wary of nature.   Both, however, live with risk and uncertainty.   Finding ways of fostering shared modes of thinking between these two camps, especially about risk,  is crucial for ensuring that rural development is sustainable.

Balancing urban and rural development

In today's globalising world, with its major shift in population from rural to urban areas, in search of education and opportunity, we have to ask the question, where should governments and business invest their resources.  Should it be in the often poverty-stricken, depopulating rural areas, or in the burgeoning urban areas where development of infrastructure services struggle or fail to keep up with the needs of the incoming population. The answer is that it is how you invest that matters.   

In either case, we are seeking to establish sustainable development, and in the first instance we should invest in those communities where the leadership commits to sustainable development models like NZ2100.  Avoidance or failure to acknowledge these principles provides a recipe for failure.  If we assume that, as far as an underdeveloped third world community is concerned, the resources of the western world are limitless, the issue becomes more one of working out how to maximise the opportunities that these investment opportunities represent.  Rural areas should not be developed to the exclusion of struggling urban areas, and vice versa.  Each community has its own needs, and adaptive capacities, whether social, economic, environmental, or cultural.  And each has a contribution to make to the well-being of the region and the nation.

And it is not just the people that we are concerned about. Sustainable development in rural areas demands sustainable patterns of land use, sustainable use of water resources, management of soils and soil erosion, and so on.  The health of the land and the people must be considered as a part of the same question.  Similarly, urban development has to consider pressures on local ecosystems, and the potential for ecological rehabilitation in areas that have become degraded through poor or inadequate infrastructure.  

All of this calls for western donor or lending institutions to engage with local communities, and their stakeholders, to understand them, to build understanding of sustainable development and the NZ2100 model, and to establish realistic development trajectories, and their associated investment needs.  Rural areas, perceiving they are now part of a global sustainability project, may become more stable, feeling that there is a chance after all, that their needs will be met without the dislocation of migration and joining what are often dangerous urban communities.  Development of urban communities may be slowed, and there may be greater opportunity for planned solutions that make a real difference.  And in both areas, new leaders may emerge, skilled in the methods of sustainable development and  NZ2100, and capable of extracting maximum benefit for their communities of the opportunities for investment and development that there are available.