Going for Housing Growth: Providing for urban development in the new resource management system

While city centres, metropolitan centres and areas close to public transport are some of the best areas for intensification due to their accessibility, there can be other areas where demand for housing is high where we consider intensification should also be enabled. In line with this, prior to the introduction of the MDRS, policy 3(d) of the NPS-UD required Tier 1 councils to enable heights and densities commensurate with the greater of:

1. the level of accessibility by existing or planned active or public transport to a range of commercial activities and community services
2. relative demand for housing and business use in that location.

Policy 3(d) was narrowed when the MDRS were introduced to only apply to areas within and adjacent to neighbourhood, local and town centre zones. This was because the MDRS arguably made the policy redundant outside of these centre zones.

We’re considering whether an equivalent to Policy 3(d) (as per its original scope) is needed in the new resource management system. A requirement for councils to ensure that heights and densities are enabled in line with demand, accessibility or both could help to ensure that councils are applying the right standardised zones in the right places. However, there may be less need for such a policy if standardised zones are in themselves sufficiently enabling.