Too much 'versatile land' lost to urban sprawl in New Zealand

Thursday, 18 April 2019

OPINION: The latest environmental snapshot from the Government paints a worrying picture of polluted rivers, threatened species and overfishing.

We've heard all of that before. But it also highlights a slow-moving environmental problem closer to home for the 86 per cent of Kiwis living in cities – the alarming loss of 'versatile land' to urban sprawl.

Versatile land is the productive land with rich, high-quality soils located close to our urban centres. It makes up the fertile floodplains near our coasts where we built our major cities.

A hundred years ago, this is where market gardens sprung up to grow our fruit and vegetables.

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Then came the inevitable population growth and increases in property value that saw this land gradually converted to housing and commercial development.

We put few limitations on how our most versatile land could be used and as a result, it has been paved over and landscaped.

The impact is most obvious in Auckland. Recently, after a long time away, I drove out to Whenuapai in West Auckland, where I grew up a stone's throw from the airforce base. The approach to Whenuapai is almost unrecognisable with its housing developments, motorways and just up the road, sprawling shopping centres.

As property developer Fletcher Living points out in its slick adverts: 'Whenuapai is the Māori name for 'good land' and our development definitely lives up to this description.'

Scientists are now very concerned about the loss of our remaining good land and biodiversity as housing developments push further out and plots ideal for productive uses are carved up into unproductive lifestyle blocks.

Between 1990 and 2008, 29 per cent of new urban areas were built on versatile land.

'Land with a favourable climate that has easy access to markets for perishable produce, is our most valuable versatile land,' notes the Ministry for the Environment's Environment Aotearoa report, released last week.

'This is the land that is being converted to urban use.'

Years of poor urban planning and our obsession with the quarter-acre dream has got us here.

We've big environmental issues to address in rural New Zealand, on our conservation estate and in our marine environment. But with the population set to hit 5 million within five years we've also got to stop the poor land use decisions that are happening on our expanding city fringes.