Institutions for the Pro-Housing Paradigm Shift

 I reckon two very average house-building jurisdictions have good models for institutions New Zealand should steal. And I reckon that these could be good tools to hurry-up the paradigm shift in planning - from the 'planning judgment' fetishists, to a younger set of pro-housing planners and urban economists.

In New Zealand, we are basking in the afterglow of outrage after Auckland Council appointed a panel of Hearing Commissioners to deny consent for a mid-rise mass timber office block on some gravel-covered site on Karangahape Road. For context, K Road is a major cultural street served by a million bus routes and near a colossally expensive, soon to open train station. One of them was in fact on the Independent Hearings Panel that the entire political spectrum battered relentlessly, like a donkey pinata at a Shrek birthday party. My most sage mutual on planning matters thought this decision was boringly wrong. But boringly wrong in line with the prejudices of a generally NIMBY planning establishment - part senior planners, part influential NIMBYs,

How do you displace such people? You make up new institutions. And we should get institutions that help with plan-making and consenting capacity. 

Ideas for professional and pro-housing institutions that we can steal

The Scottish Government (planning being devolved) has the Planning and Architecture Division, and the Directorate of Planning and Environment Appeals. This centralises the role of Planning (and, because its a hyper discretionary system, architecture) in the PAD. And it ensures that there's a level of appeals against local council decisions to the DPEA before courts. This keeps things administrative and ideally efficient. The national government (being a constituent nation of the United Kingdom) has its own independent officials making the big decisions.

The New South Wales Government (planning being a state issue) has the Housing Delivery Authority, a panel constituted under the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979. The panel is not operationally independent, having staff from the (department for planning?). But the panel members may make recommendations to the Minister on declaring residential developments and rezonings to be State Significant Developments, letting the statewide Independent Planning Commission determine them and side-stepping councils. The details are a tad wonky but the design is glorious. The state sifts through major residential applications, focuses explicitly on speeding up applications and prioritises desirable ones. This lets higher level guidance practically encourage sensible basically comply with the rules; not in dumb areas; big.

Scotland is not a great housing performer - the UK is generally pretty piss-poor. It does build slightly more homes than England per capita (which, in fairness, has similar institutions through the Planning Inspectorate). But it does have a certain logical approach to institutions that New Zealand doesn't really have. The Planning and Architecture Division can focus on planning policy and design guidance (so not every council goes around making its own mid-density guide), without being a random part of MfE (a policy shop) or maybe KO (an urban development agency that, admittedly, did 80% state housing). The DPEA means merits appeals on planning decisions don't go to the courts, and there's an institution with specialism and state capacity available nationwide.

New South Wales is a reasonably performer vs NZ historically, but less so recently. It is also builds less than Victoria, with Melbourne growing much faster than Sydney and having more reasonable housing costs. NSW currently builds something like 47,000 houses a year and needs to build 75,000 per year for the next few years to hit its 377,000 new build target under the National Housing Accord. The Minns Government set this up within the past 6 months, it started dropping announcements in January and declared dozens of applications to be State Significant Developments that could build 22,000 units. This shows how the higher state gov can practically incentivise big and sensible applications in a way simply changing substantive rules that councils apply would not. It retains state capacity at the center, in parallel with councils. This is an additional and excellent way to change developer behaviour.

What matters is having capable, independent national or state level bodies that can make decisions. No fast-track is needed. These are ongoing and professional institutions that can build up their capacity, not ad hoc panels addressing ad hoc applications. Ministers can set priorities things, and call-in or designate particular projects as deserving a higher-level institution to make the decision. This appears to be a superior institutional design to address nationally significant applications.

The key linking theme between these two approaches is that these institutions carry out, or assist, a Minister's role in planning. New Zealand mostly minimizes the role of politicians in individual decisions but has a greater judicial role. There may be reasons to think we could make a better trade-off.

Professional, devoted national/state institutions can do good things
There are also other ways that competent, professional institutiona can enhance planning capacity and outcomes. These are to do with

One of the easier ones is standardisation. New South Wales is developing pattern books with designs that will be available and easily consentable, for mid-rise apartments and townhouses. Victoria is following suit with something similar under the Future Homes initiative. Scotland's planning framework has some material on design guidance, but basically leaves these to Local Development Plans.

Scotland's planning framework on design covers street design as well as architecture. It seems to me street design is the more important of the two to micromanage, but I think street design has a much stronger case for regulation. Sausage flats down long driveways are worse for amenity and street vibes than long blocks of flats or terraces down a street that dare to have repetitive facades. And moreover, these engage with having parcels of land that can be efficiently used, and more regular parcels which may assist with standardisation.

Central institutions that provide nationwide guidance on valuable matters would be helpful. This would include building consenting capacity that side-steps over overrides councils when they're being difficult; prioritising how to standardise houses and designs, particular ones that comply with Building Code and future planning laws; and better design of public spaces. These institutions appear particularly effective for merging independent officials with the political direction of ministers, which is admittedly a high risk way of improving state capacity due to the risk of politicisation.

A briefer on paradigms
Thomas Kuhn had an account of the history of science based around the idea of "paradigm shifts", which would lead from one science to another. Paradigms are the sets of core premises, ways of doing things and fundamental knowledge that differentiate one science from another. There is occasionally a collapse in the social and epistemic authority of a paradigm - the whole science changes. People then grasp around in chaos for a replacement. I don't think the reproducibility crisis in social psychology quite got as far as causing a paradigm shift. Kuhn meant things like the difference between pre and post Newton or Einstein in physics. Paradigms are incommensurable - propositions don't really translate between them, and may be incomprehensible from outside the community of scientists.

Incidentally, Kuhn's account of paradigms is a bit undercooked. I have more sympathy for Imre Lakatos's model of science, where a research programme has  both a tight inner core which is protected against change, and outer bits which can be tinkered with in response to new findings. This draws in, for the outer layers of knowledge, Karl Popper's famous falsificationism. Popper views science basically as individual claims that can be disproven, but not really proven; Kuhn views science as a mix of epistemic (knowledge-y, as a gloss for people who did practical degrees) and social aspects that a community of scientists buy into. Lakatos views research programmes as progressive if they generate and confirm novel propositions. If they cease doing so and become regressive, the core of the research project may collapse under social and epistemic strain. This has nothing to do with housing or this thesis, I just think people should shout-out Lakatos's notions around science instead of only Kuhn's.

The very important point, with the ring of truth, is that planning ideas may be undergoing a paradigm shift. New schools of thoughts do generally involve upstarts fighting. And these people are usually from the outside of the institutions,  educated, with new ideas, and challenging. Most the greats of early modern philosopher were upstarts with dubious politics - David Hume was in his 20s when he wrote the Treatise on Human Understanding; John Locke was a propagandist for revolutionaries that once went into exile; Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan partly to justify returning to England after being on the losing side of a civil war. The philosophers in the universities were Aristotelians and clerics.

The Planning Paradigm Shift
To simplify - paradigm shifts are generally old insiders of institutions, panicking as they lose social and epistemic clout, being bulldozed by young outsider radicals, with new ideas. Their ideas shift, and the composition of institutions (certainly internal hierarchies) shift too.

The new-orthodoxy is you can just build things, let them happen, push down housing costs and get better urban outcomes than by micromanaging and procedural complexity and delay. This is a radical, novel notion. Its repeated empirical confirmation renders YIMBY urban economics, and planning, a progressive field. YIMBY policy, procedure and planning is, potentially, a new science drawing on bits of old planning, urban economics, urbanist nerd stuff and the abundance-pilled critique of New Left proceduralism.

This progressive research programme is a threat to the old, entrenched incumbents in the planning world. They probably know Kuhn better than me, but do they know what is coming?

Why would you want both 'hey these institutions seem cool' and stuff on paradigms on the same post? Well, I thought about both of them today and I quite like both ideas. And institutional change can be one way of speeding up the generational changeover. If we have some new agencies carrying out roles akin to these institutions, we can stack them with new-orthodox planners and urban economists. We can have a few new designers who care about street layouts but aren't prescriptive on how many materials houses should have.

We should think more about institutional design (and probably processes too), not just substantive rules. And we should definitely think about who makes the rules, at what level and in which branch of government. The paradigm shift of planning isn't just about what is in the plans.

A Labour Urbanist Agenda for 2026

An Urbanist Platform for Labour 2027

The big not-quite-partisan divide in New Zealand politics is urbanists vs. suburbanists. National seems to mostly suburbanists but has let an urbanist drive a lot of their housing and infrastructure (and, inshallah, transport soon) policy. But Labour has not been super vocal on urbanism this term. In this post, I’ll explain this divide and argue that Labour should adopt a set of concrete, sensible and politically advantageous urbanist policies for the 2026 election.


The Urbanist vs. Suburbanist Divide

The big partisan divide in NZ is increasingly between a highly-educated elite on the left, a wealthy but not educated elite on the right (Piketty calls this Brahmin-left and merchant-right). Broke students flatting in inner suburb villas vote Green; rich tradies in McMansions that they own in the outer suburbs of Tauranga vote for ACT; people in-between vote in-between.

As may be clear, where you live and in what type of house sorta but doesn't perfectly tie into this partisan divide. The broke student commuting in from Paekakariki probably still supports Greens; an Epsom tradie certainly voted for Seymour. Highly educated people generally like cities and towns and lowly educated but well-off people in NZ are often more rural and suburban. But there are still some educated professionals in National (generally associated with the 'liberal' wing but it might as well be called the urban professional wing), and still some social conservatives without postgrad degrees in Labour (most  people coming to mind are South Auckland Pacific Islander MPs). As a result, the urbanist vs suburbanist divide is as much within as between parties, even though it correlates. 

Urbanists generally want more intense housing in more urban areas with more apartments, public and active transport routes and public spaces. Suburbanists want the opposite and are generally grumpy about anything happening other than adding carparks and lanes. These also mostly but don't fully overlap with general support for new development. Right-wing YIMBYs generally want to build loads of new suburbs, while left-wing YIMBYs tend to be reasonably staunchly urbanist (or, in a few cases, anti-market pro-state housing zealots). Then there are the co-operative housing nerds, who are their own thing and properly niche. But for most purposes, NZ housing, transport and infrastructure policy comes down more to urbanists vs suburbanists than any other divide.


Policy Progress and Partisan Dynamics
Generally speaking, policy progress gets made on topics when it matters enough for stuff to get done and where parties agree. That is, a low partisan salience issue where major parties have compatible positions. While National appears to have mainly suburbanist MPs and voters, its urbanists appear to be pushing some good policy through on RMA reform and infrastructure funding and financing. Labour itself put through RMA replacement legislation and enacted both the National Policy Statement on Urban Develoment and Medium Density Residential Standards to try force councils to promptly permit more intensification, as well as getting KO to build a lot more directly. There is the potential for some degree of continuity and concurrence on housing liberalisation.

But housing policy has been unwound and stalled by suburbanites even as it is liberalised and reformed by urbanites. Because housing is high-salience and terrified by ACT outflanking National on suburbanism,  Luxon made his one and possibly only captain's call on policy as party leader to undermine the Medium Density Residential Standards. (An underrated part of the election was National's terror of ACT, competing with them more for right-marginal voters than Labour for center-marginal voters, and choosing to give a boost to NZF rather than finish them off) Behind the scenes, there are various drags from suburbanites (some even in very urban electorates) pertaining to 'character' areas, townhouses generally, recession lines and setbacks and so on.
 
Overseas politicians keep, hilariously, zoning for massive housing intensification in their opponents' safe seats. This is maybe the apex of partisan motivated upzoning, ratrher than NZ's attempts at bipartisan or at least quiet upzoning. In Australia, the Victoria Labor government's designation of Malvern as a spot for piles of high density residential towers has caused the Malvern opposition MP to furiously whinge online). In the UK, Michael Gove intensified the inner cities that are safe Labour seats; while Starmer has more ambitious housing targets overall but reduced inner city goals while raising targets in further out Tory voting suburbs.

 

Policy Priorities for a Refreshed Labour Urbanism

 I think this sets up a solid Labour-coded urbanist-pilled agenda for its glorious return to office:

1) Continuity with past successes by committing to and ruthlessly policing council compliance with the NPS-UD and the MDRS. Councils have been stalling, but Labour can use the threat of commissioners now that National has raised the specter for Wellington (which has an effective urbanist majority council). 

2) Focus on urban intensification upzone wealthy, low density National and ACT urban electorates to the moon! Make the most of existing infrastructure, transit and inner city land, and let's get the Epsom 101 and the Burj Ngaio built! Use updated infrastructure pricing rules they will inherit robustly, to avoid subsidizing new sprawl in conservative suburban areas.

3)  Revive KO as an urban regeneration developer focusing on regeneration, intensification and transit oriented development. Aim to generate revenue from developments to fund future projects and transit lines.

Combined, these show continuity with their recent stint in power; double-down on a popular policy but in way that puts National suburbanites in an uncomfortable, ugly NIMBY position; and distinguishes them from both their last stint (building state housing) and National now (gutting KO) in a state-led urban regeneration approach that fits Labour ideology. All need to be done with a sense of urgency, so Labour can be seen to deliver immediately. 

I put the cases for each of these below. These are a mix of shamelessly political reasons, as well as more earnest policy reasons. Given I am - and my audience probably is - urbanist and a nerd, these are at a pretty high levle.

Chris Hipkins and Partisan Upzoning

Chris Hipkins has never struck me as an urbanist, but he hasn't come out as publicly suburbanist either. He represents Upper Hutt, which is reasonably suburban but also a growing and even slightly intensifying city. It is the original type of Transit Oriented Development: a set of commuter suburbs along a trainline. 

His politics lean moderate and he also likes to get stuff done. He was quite willing to further haggle-down the MDRS just for National to permit broad upzoning and minimize the degree of partisan shit-fighting on the point, so builders could get on and spam townhouses with certainty. But he also is quite happy to get stuck into partisan brawling, which his critics miss. Their  basic critique seems to be that he doesn't interrupt Luxon when he's making a mistake. As the election draws near and the self inflicted wounds and battle lines become clear, Chippy will have a bit more to stay.

Chippy strikes me as someone who will be more than happy to upzone the shit out of right wing electorates. I think he should: if Epsom remains an electorate it should be zoned to the moon; 'character' areas with millionaire National and ACT voters are perfect places to one-up the Nats on Going for Growth. He should potentially also cut-off the lifeblood of conservative locales - why permit exurban sprawl, with its lavish subsidies and comical road costs? This can be done through adopting, wholeheartedly, current National ideas on infrastructure funding and financing.

This is good on the merits - these areas should definitely be upzoned - but it is also a sign of power for Labour. It turns over high-amenity suburbs to its urbanist, young professional supporters. A non-trivial part of politics is delivering concrete material and quality of life improvements for your base. And Hipkins should do this in a brutally partisan, urbanist way against suburbanist National voters in their million dollar villas.

 

Concrete Policies for an Urbanist Labour 

There are good reasons to think Chippy will embrace targeted upzoning of National enclaves, but what about the more broad urbanist platform?

I do think Labour will run on continuity with its successful housing policy. Twyford somehow snuck the NPS-UD past Cabinet colleagues without many of them grasping what it entailed. The MDRS was, briefly, a good sign that housing discussions could be bipartisan and move past zoning and onto other barriers to building. Labour MPs will want to campaign on some concrete and broadly popular achievement, and promise efficient changes building on these. This means promising to crack the whip on councils, up to and including appointing commissioners to power through housing plan changes. After all, National has been making a habit of targeting any councils that are politically expedient - even the Wellington City Council that has delivered ambitious housing plan changes. What National threatened to do for political theater, Labour can do in its first 100 days and present as a fait accompli.

A key priority of the Nats was to find everything that could be counted as an Ardern-era achievement, extirpate it then say there had never been anything. Choking KO is an obvious example. Revitalising KO, and calling back to sensible housing policies - which did not make the world end - are solid starting points for Labour urbanist policy. But Kainga Ora had some awkward issues that mean something smarter than just rebooting its large scale construction programme are needed.

Labour should run on reviving KO's role as a mass builder and urban redeveloper. State housing is hellishly unpopular, while upzoning along  existing transit lines, in existing centers, and building new trans systems is very popular. The popular things also tend to make more money than inherently high-cost, low-return good quality social housing. The role of being a mass builder and urban redeveloper is popular and counter-cylical, without having the political flaws of Ardern-era iteration of KO.

A transit-oriented urban redevelopment company can be lucrative, large scale and effective. It can deliver, be good and be popular. KO could compulsorily buy land on and around key stations, intensely develop it then making a bucket selling or renting the offices, retail units and apartments has a lot going for it. Things like the recently announced Downtown Towers in Auckland are great - and is there any reason why KO couldn't do similar things around other stations? This would deliver large amounts of well-placed residential and commercial units. And owning land is a straightforward form of value capture.

A tight focus on KO making money creates a virtuous cycle of urban redevelopment. Returns from successful developments on stations will, eventually, permit construction of new transit lines. KO could use the refreshed arsenal of infrastructure funding and financing tools. The purchases and developments are likely to rely on the Urban Development Act. This is a fun bit of leg Labour passed but didn't really get to flex in office. Private capital could also help - Labour is likely to favour investment from Kiwisaver over other sources. I don't love that as a risk-allocating measure, but the politics make sense.

Conclusion

By embracing a mildly urbanist platform, Labour can position itself as the party of growth, progress, and aspiration. This approach would allow Labour to appeal to its urban base, reach out to younger voters, and exploit the weaknesses of its conservative opponents. With the right messaging and policy execution, urbanism could be a winning issue for Labour in 2027.