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Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme


	Contributing to the Auckland region’s sustainable development through action on: Transport, Child and youth development, Migrant and refugee settlement, Urban design, Urban Centres and Economic Performance.

Genesis

Reorienting human lifestyles towards sustainable development is a global challenge.
In New Zealand, efforts to encourage sustainable development have been growing since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

The NZ Sustainable Development Programme of Action (NZSDPOA) was launched by the Government in January 2003 following the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg in 2002.

Within the NZSDPOA there were four key initiatives, of which “Sustainable Cities” was one. This initiative aimed to improve sustainability in cities. Its overarching goal is that “our cities are healthy, safe and attractive places where business, social and cultural life can flourish”.

Desired outcomes for Sustainable Cities are:
• Cities as centres of innovation and economic growth.
• Liveable cities that support social wellbeing, quality of life and cultural identities.

The government chose to run a pilot under this initiative with the Auckland region’s councils, and the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme was born.

Local government has a renewed interest in facilitating sustainable development since the Local Government Act of 2002. Councils are now required to consider social, environmental, economic and cultural wellbeings and future generations in everything they do as part of “taking a sustainable development approach”.

Establishing the programme

The Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme was a three-year partnership from 2003-06 involving the region’s seven local councils, the regional council and a number of government agencies.
Communities also participated in many parts of the programme. From mid 2003 to mid 2004, the partners set the programme’s parameters, working definitions of sustainability and identified the projects they would jointly undertake and resource. Local government partners also agreed to build a vision and a long term plan for a sustainable Auckland region.

The programme partners focused on critical issues facing the region, and based the work on the definition of sustainable development in the Local Government Act 2002:
• The social, economic and cultural well-being of people and communities
• The need to maintain and enhance the quality of the environment, and
• The reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations.

To this, the partners added the need to encourage participation and partnerships.

A learning approach

An important feature of the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme was that all agencies committed to actively learn better ways of working together and to taking a holistic approach. The programme has been evaluated and its effectiveness documented, for others to learn and to gain benefit from the programme.

Workstrands and projects

The partner organisations selected six areas of work, called workstrands, for inclusion in the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme. Some workstrands involve several projects. These were either new or existing projects, where collaboration could result in better outcomes.

It is important to note that the programme was a three-year pilot programme for sustainable development. It did not set out to tackle every issue, nor all of the critical issues to create sustainable development. Most projects ran until mid 2006 and a few until mid 2007.

The workstrands, and projects within them, were:

Transport

Aim: Build and foster Auckland urban communities where sustainable transport choices are the norm.
• Accelerate school travel plans – develop plans with 103 schools over 2 years
• Air quality – reduce bus fleet emissions
• Passenger transport procurement – assess the need for legislative changes to public transport provision to improve the system.

Urban form, design and development

Aim: Encourage, promote and guide more sustainable urban form, design and development.
• Sustainable standards – input into the Building Code review and sustainable building indices
• Sustainable practice – convince public agencies to build Sustainable Public Buildings by 2007; promote good examples of sustainable buildings and urban design
• Applying research – connect research on sustainable development to end-users (e.g. to councils who can use the information); address social implications of intensification and Auckland’s affordable housing needs
• Infusing sustainability – promote the Urban Design Protocol and Year of the Built Environment 2005; support changes to the Regional Policy Statement and Unit Titles Act.

Regional child and youth development

Aim: Demonstrate how central and local government can work together to support long term development for children and young people.
• Northcote child and youth project – working with the community, young people and across agencies to provide youth services that are relevant and effective
• Regional child and youth engagement – encouraging young people to participate in democratic processes
• Child and youth development forum – sharing information and learning about “what works” to support child and youth development.

Regional Settlement Strategy

Aim: Develop an agreed long-term plan to achieve sustainable settlement outcomes which contribute to social cohesion in the Auckland region.
• Develop a strategy to support migrant and refugee settlement in the region
• Ensure the strategy will be implemented and developed further by appropriate agencies.

Sustainable Communities

Aim: Using a sustainable community development framework, support communities to build their own sustainable development.
• Two locally based demonstration projects: one building community strength in Project Twin Streams in Waitakere City; one based around community engagement in achieving community outcomes in Papakura District.
• Learning forum – share experiences and ideas relating to sustainable community development.

Urban Centres and Economic Performance

Central government and the Auckland region local councils working together with the aim to better understand the nature of the Auckland region economy, and its drivers, and to provide a better understanding of the role of cities and urban areas in economic development.

The future

Future central-local government initiatives now have a platform of partnership, established via the Auckland Sustainable Cities Programme. Central, regional and local government collaborative partnerships will continue to develop through the local and regional councils’ community outcomes processes. This work is driven by the Local Government Act 2002, which requires councils (and other agencies) to respond to community outcomes within a sustainable development framework.
Specifically, this Programme has been a catalyst for a multi-party project that aims to develop a long-term framework for sustainability for the region. This is called “START”: Sustaining The Auckland Region Together.

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AUCKLAND SUSTAINABLE CITIES PROGRAMME
A regional partnership with the Sustainable Development Programme of Action