Planning from a planner - Dave Armour talk - with notes

8 April 2013

We are very lucky to have a senior planner Dave Armour coming to talk to the class on Monday. Dave's CV is attached.

Its a brilliant opportunity to hear from someone who has been working from 1977 and has seen it all, the old system, the introduction of the RMA and its operation over its entire life.

Dave is going to take you through:

- Part 3 of the Act and the roles of regional and district and city councils
- the hierarchy of plans ie the top down approach
- plan objectives, policies and rules an their importance
- the different types of rules, permitted, discretionary, non-complying etc

His most recent job has been looking at Kapiti Coast's district plan and in particular the issues around retreat from the coast. He has a lifetime of great examples of how this system operates, so take advantage and ask questions.

Here are resources you can read in advance to get the most out of the class:

From the EDS - the hierarchy of plans. Read these pages as a basic introduction to planning.

Here is the planning consent report on a replacement coastal dwelling that Dave talked about in class.

Here are the notes for Dave's talk.


Auckland plan
Right now we are in the middle of developing the biggest plan in the country, the Auckland unitary plan

See the draft, starting here. Watch the introductory video. See how many private cars you can count in the part where the video talks about the future. I wonder if Steven Joyce has seen it. We will discuss at our next lecture why the government doesnt want the Auckland Unitary to become immediately operative (and what that even means).

This page here is a really useful one for looking through the plan. Click on the left hand side to open up different sections and see how they work.

Also useful is this brand new experimental planning tool. Use it to find out if you need resource consent to demolish the building at 25 Queen Street and build new residential units.


For next week:

- how plans get made - the submissions and cross submissions process, how plans overlap (and why this has become critically important in Auckland)
- existing uses & certificate of compliance - why you dont have to get a fresh resource consent for your house every time the plan changes
- notification and non-notification
- how decisions are made on consents
- Boon case
- Shirley case