Going for Housing Growth: Providing for urban development in the new resource management system
Rural-urban boundaries
Current status and case for change
Generally, at the edge of a city or town there will be a point at which land that is zoned for urban use is adjacent to rural use. In the absence of other policies, rural land can be rezoned to urban uses through either council-led or privately initiated plan change processes.
In some cases councils have imposed more formal urban limits and ‘hard boundaries’ through the policies and objectives in plans or regional policy statements or have other ‘soft boundaries’ via provisions designed to limit urban expansion.
Such policies and objectives restrict the competitive operation of land markets. Regional policy statements (RPS) cannot be altered through private plan changes. Even where boundaries or limits can be altered through private plan changes, they still present a possible legal hurdle for private plan changes and can be given weight in decision making, even if the weight is low.
The guidance on the responsiveness policy makes it clear that when a council identifies areas for growth, they are still expected to give effect to the responsive planning policies in the NPS-UD and ensure any boundaries in plans need are responsive and flexible. This would exclude a ‘hard’ boundary, but not necessarily a ‘soft’ boundary, and there is a lack of clarity because this is not explicitly stated in the policy.
Summary of proposal
Cabinet has agreed to remove councils’ ability to impose rural-urban boundary lines in their planning documents. We’re proposing that the new resource management system is clear that councils are not able to include a policy, objective or rule that sets an urban limit or a rural-urban boundary line in their planning documents for the purposes of urban containment.
We’ve also identified some existing RPS with provisions that new urban development should be adjacent to existing urban development. This prevents ‘leapfrogging’ (when development occurs on land that is not directly adjacent to an urban area) and can act as a barrier to greenfield development, in a similar way to rural urban boundaries. There may be other policies in RPS or plans that are set for the purposes of urban containment and in doing so, limit urban growth. While RPS won’t exist in the future system, we’re seeking feedback as to whether the future resource management system should exclude any rules that can be used in regulatory plans relating to leapfrogging or any other provisions designed to achieve urban containment.
There is also a risk that spatial plans are used to restrict leapfrogging in the new system. We’re seeking feedback on how the new system can be set up to prevent this from occurring while allowing for spatial planning to better enable urban expansion.