Develop a quality compact urban form to accommodate Auckland’s growth and support a low carbon future

Auckland’s population is projected to increase significantly over the next three decades. To accommodate this growth and reach our climate goal of net zero emissions by 2050, Auckland will follow a quality compact urban form approach to growth.

Our Development Strategy sets out what this means.

A quality compact urban form approach to growth brings a number of environmental, social and economic benefits and opportunities.

These include:

• enabling more housing to be built in places with good access to jobs, services and amenities, reducing the distance that people need to travel. This creates more time for things that people enjoy and reduces carbon emissions
• improving the cost-effectiveness of delivering infrastructure – such as transport and wastewater – and other services. This also results in the best asset management and infrastructure provision
• reducing car dependency and distance travelled by car and enabling Aucklanders to make sustainable travel choices such as walking, cycling and using public transport
• lower travel costs for people and businesses and increased economic agglomeration benefits
• reducing building emissions due to the different types of buildings that make up more dense cities (e.g. low-rise residential housing such as townhouses consume less operational and embodied emissions than standalone buildings (depending on design and material use)
• helps to protect our natural environment and maintain Auckland’s rural productivity by limiting urban sprawl.

A quality compact approach to future development will be achieved by:

• enabling sufficient capacity for growth across Auckland
• embedding good design in all developments and new housing
• sequencing and prioritising what gets delivered
• leveraging existing infrastructure investments
• aligning the timing of infrastructure provision with development.