Council takes hard line on apartment design
The Auckland City Council is taking a hard line on cheap and ugly apartments.
Wednesday, June 1st 2005, 11:59AM
A mayoral task force has recommended that from July 1 a scoring system be set up to vet building designs and plans that do not meet guidelines be rejected.
Auckland mayor Dick Hubbard says if developers appeal the decision in court they will face “the full might of the council”.
“Today we put a stake in the ground and say ‘enough is enough’ of the appalling developments we have seen go up in the city,” Hubbard said at the release of the mayoral task force on urban design report.
Changes will have to be made to the council’s three district plans so that urban design criteria are part of the resource consent process. The task force has also recommended that the government is lobbied to change the Building Act and codes on issues such as size of apartments.
Although it would take up to two years to see the result of the task force’s recommendations a number of measures would be started immediately. These would include procedures to score all new buildings on their design merits, with a three-tier system to reject mediocre proposals, process acceptable ones in the usual manner and fast-track high-quality ones.
Lobby group Urban Design has welcomed the council’s move although it has some reservations about who will define what is “ugly” architecture or “bad urban design”.
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