*(Note this Digest is "Super King Size" because I leave for Bali on Friday and 
will not return until the following Saturday – so this is designed to provide 
busy reading for nearly two weeks.)*

*Activities.*
Activity 1: Returned from "Recovering from Smart Growth" conference in San Jose.
Activity 2:   Preparing for attendance at Bali UNFCC conference as Chair of the 
Policy Panel of the NZCSC.

*Request for Further Proposed Reforms*

*Items*.
Item 1:   NBR Column on Commissioners of Councillors for Hearings Committees.
Item 2   Demographia Study compares Urban Fringe Prices in Sydney and Dallas/Fort Worth.
Item 3:  Two More Nails in the Coffin of Planning Lore.
Item 4   Joel Kotkin on the "Rise of Family Friendly Cities".
Item 5: Cox, Kotkin and O'Toole on Urban Governance.
Item 6:  Will Alexander's Letter to the British High Commissioner.

Entertainment 1:Squatters' Rights. (Actually, entertainment for masochists.)

Funding:   Even a Dollar Helps! 


ACTIVITIES

Activity 1: Attended "Recovering from Smart Growth" conference in San Jose.

The Centre has already covered the major points of this conference in two 
special Media Releases referring in particular to the coverage of our three 
papers on Randal O'Toole's Antiplanner website. The Centre strongly recommends 
Randal's latest book The Best Laid Plans available from the Cato bookstore 
here.  The opening chapters on planning in the US 
Forest Service should fascinate anyone connected to the forestry sector.
I shall be drip feeding more papers and links as time goes by. But in the 
meantime the Centre strongly recommends the webpage of Professor Richard Gordon 
 whose academic works are a 
gold-mine for all those seeking solid research to challenge the planning lore 
lurking behind the ARC Policy Change 6 and the like.
If you have any problems downloading the Centre papers from the Antiplanning 
site let me know.

Activity 2: Preparing for attendance at Bali UNFCC conference.

I leave for this conference on Friday and return the following Saturday. I am 
joining a group of about a dozen of the CSC colleagues from around the world to 
challenge the UN world view. I cannot say too much more at this stage because 
there will be planned media releases from the conference to generate maximum 
effect. However, I can say that none of us are being funded by tax payers (or 
the oil companies) and of course I have my pretty certificate of 1,000,000 
carbon offsets purchased from freecarbon on the web. My role is to challenge 
the presumed linkages between climate change and land use, urban form and 
agriculture in New Zealand and related policy issues. This conference focuses on 
policy rather than science - although the two are inextricably linked. It is 
difficult to generate sound policy from poor science.

*Request for Further Proposals for the RMA Reform Bill*
The Centre has collected all the proposed reforms from numerous sources to date 
and gathered them into one document. The RMA Reform Forum met for the first time 
last week and the Centre has been asked to write up all the proposals within a 
single reform Bill.
So if you have any ideas you would like built into such a package, or any 
problems you want addressed within the package, please send them in as soon as 
possible. 
Read the full collection here. 
documents/RMAAgendaGen.pdf

*ITEMS*

Item One: Hearings Committees – Commissioners or Councillors?

A few weeks ago our NBR column presented a list of "Tips for Mayors". This was 
well received and many successful candidates have acted on it. There are some 
tense battles going on as some councillors attempt to wrestle back their right 
to govern from their executive. However, those "tips" also generated requests 
for some analysis of another vexatious issue – who should sit on hearings 
panels. Does democracy demand Councillors do the job, or does democracy equally 
demand the separation of powers? So last week 's column addressed this issue 
and finally came down n favour of choice – the applicant's choice.

Item Two: Demographia Compares House Prices in Sydney and Dallas/ForthWorth.

The 3rd Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey 
<http://www.demographia.com/dhi-ix2005q3.pdf> released January 2007, of the 159 
major urban markets of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, United States, 
Australia and New Zealand, found that Sydney households require 8.5 times 
their annual household income to house themselves. The Dallas-Fort Worth 
households only require 2.7 times their annual household incomes. Thus, a Sydney 
household pays more than three times as much for housing, relative to its income 
as a Dallas-Fort Worth resident. This equates to a total additional 
cost, including mortgage interest of more than $800,000 for a Sydney 
household. Demographia’s research illustrates 
<http://www.demographia.com/db-syd-dfw-rls.pdf> that the reason some urban 
markets are experiencing housing stress, is because affordable housing is not 
being built on the fringes. 
*
Demographia is planning a similar survey next year comparing House Prices in 
Auckland with Dallas/Fort Worth.

Item Three: Two More Nails in the Coffin of Planning Lore.

The San Jose conference was dominated by presentations of serious data and 
surveys by economists, transport engineers, and other genuine experts in urban 
affairs. A common question was "how come today's planning professionals are 
given so much credibility in the courts and elsewhere when they actually have no 
expertise in any of the matters they talk about?" Indeed one definition of the 
planning profession is "a group of professionals who claim to know how to plan 
cities even though they have no knowledge of how cities actually work". 
One of the common claims in favour of Smart Growth is that people will react 
with each other more if they live at high densities and avoid the isolation they 
experience in the dreadful suburbs – which are guilty of every sin known to man.
 A new study puts this piece of planning lore to rest. 
<http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkbrueck/socinteract.pdf> 

Social Interaction and Urban Sprawl by Jan K. Brueckner (Department of 
Economics, University of California, Irvine) and Ann G. Largey, (Dublin City 
University Business School Dublin 9, Ireland) is a major piece of work (and may 
take some time to download – be patient) which provides useful counter-evidence 
against another of the claims made in newspapers, and even the courts, every day.

 The authors' final paragraph concludes:

"the paper’s findings suggest that
social-interaction effects should not be included in the panoply of criticisms
directed toward urban sprawl. In fact, the results suggest an opposite line of
argument."

The banging sound you hear is another nail being driven home.

And this report from Australia

<http://sustainability.nsw.gov.au/information/common/pdf/alts_adds_req/energy_mu_study.pdf> provides 
even more music to the ears of those challenging ARC Policy Change 6 and other 
foolishness. The report "Multi Unit Residential Buildings Energy & Peak Demand 
Study" by Energy Australia, looked into the relative energy consumption of 
high-rise apartments, medium rise and low density dwellings, villas and town 
houses and detached housing, on a per capita and per household basis. Now we all 
know – because the planners tell us so – that higher densities save energy and 
that suburban detached housing is energy profligate. Well, it seems we are all 
wrong – again. Low density housing outperforms high density housing in energy 
consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Peak demand showed no obvious correlations.

Item Four: Joel Kotkin on the Rise of Family Friendly Cities

This essay by Joel Kotkin opens: 

For much of the past decade, business recruiters, cities and urban developers 
have focused on the "young and restless," the "creative class," and the 
so-called "yuspie"--the young urban single professional. Cities, they've said, 
should capture this so-called "dream demographic" if they wish to inhabit the 
top tiers of the economic food chain and enjoy the fastest and most sustained 
growth.

This focus -- epitomized by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's risible "Cool 
Cities" initiative -- is less successful than advertised. Cincinnati, Baltimore, 
Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and Memphis have danced to the tune of the hip and 
the cool, yet largely remain wallflowers in terms of economic and demographic 
growth. Instead, an analysis of migration data by my colleagues at the Praxis 
Strategy Group shows that the strongest job growth has consistently taken place 
in those regions -- such as Houston, Dallas, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham -- 
with the largest net in-migration of young, educated families ranging from their 
mid-20s to mid-40s.

New Zealand cities should take note. Read the whole essay here. 
<http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110010911>

Item Five: Cox, Kotkin and O'Toole on Amalgamation and Urban Governance.

The Government has announced a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Auckland 
Governance. The Honourable Peter Salmon QC is the Chair of the Royal Commission. 
Dame Margaret Bazley and David Shand the Commissioners. 
The terms of reference are suitably broad and the commissioners are well 
qualified. However, the news media and most commentators seem to assume that the 
outcome will be some variation on the Super City with the nature of the 
amalgamations being all that has to be determined. Again it is to be hoped that 
we can learn from the experience of others. A good place to start is the recent 
report by Wendell Cox on the costs of local government in Philadelphia.

The Demographia page explains:

*PENNSYLVANIA'S EFFICIENT TOWNSHIP GOVERNMENT*
*Study Shows Smaller Governments Have Far Lower Costs per Capita* 
<http://www.psats.org/local_gov_growth_report.pdf>* (It's a big file so take a 
coffee break while it loads.)*
In this report commissioned by the Pennsylvania State Association of Township 
Supervisors, Wendell Cox shows that the Commonwealth's smaller local governments 
have by far the lowest costs per capita, even when attributable spending is 
added and spending financed by state and federal sources is subtracted. This 
conclusion is in opposition to the "conventional wisdom," which is that larger 
governments are more efficient. In fact, the only "economies of scale" in larger 
governments are for special interest, which are able to exert control over 
larger government organizations with less effort and expenditure than would be 
necessary to control a myriad of smaller local governments. At the same time, 
smaller local governments are more effective because they are "closer to the 
people." This report on Pensylvania is mainly about outcomes while Wendell's 
report on Montreal is mainly about process. It is depressing reading. 
<http://www.publicpurpose.com/pp-montreal.pdf>

Both reports deal with governance and structure. Then our friend Joel Kotkin, 
in Back to Basics, 
<http://www.joelkotkin.com/Urban_Affairs/NAF_GrowthStrategy.pdf> writes about 
what such bodies need to actually do.
To complete "the terrible trio", in Unlivable Strategies:The Greater Vancouver 
Regional District and the Livable Region Strategic Plan, Randal O'Toole points 
out that the best way to manage infrastructure is to have dedicated bodies who 
deal solely with their own task, just as the Reserve Bank deals solely with 
monetary policy.
The "integration" can take place in public debate rather than behind closed 
doors. The problem with multi-functional governance is that one pressure group 
usually comes to dominate all activity and everything gets brushed aside "in 
favour of the favourite fad". This is how all those train sets get 
built. Download Randal's report here. 
<http://www.fraserinstitute.org/commerce.web/publication_details.aspx?pubID=4923> 
We need to get all four reports in front of the commissioners before they sit 
down to hear all the advocates of amalgamation for Auckland and encourage yet 
another wrong decision in the history of Auckland.

*Item Six: Will Alexander writes to the British High Commissioner.

WJR Alexander is Professor Emeritus, Department of Civil and Biosystems 
Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa.  Email 
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
  
<mailto:
 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 > 
In this letter to the British High Commissioner to South Africa, written in 
response to a scientific mission evidently charged with scaring South Africans 
about the effects of climate change, Will opens his argument with the somewhat 
provocative statement:

"The subject of the discussions relates to the science of climate change. I am
obliged to inform you that for a number of reasons, knowledge on this subject
is further advanced in the applied sciences in South Africa than in the UK and
other northern hemisphere countries that experience milder climates."

And later:

"Despite alarmist predictions to the contrary, based on inadequate global
climate prediction models, sub-continental Africa has just experienced two
successive good years. There were beneficial, widespread heavy rainfalls during
this period. Rivers flowed strongly and dams filled. The countryside in our arid
regions was wetter and greener than at any time in recent memory. There were no
signs of the predicted desertification of this region.
There were no losses of our unique indigenous plant and animal species.

Together with colleagues I have demonstrated that claims that human activities 
have had an adverse effect on rainfall, river flow, floods and droughts with 
consequent adverse effects on the natural environment, have no substance. There 
is no measurable, regional scale, synchronous, multi-process, multi-site 
evidence to support the alarmist claims. None at all." 

This is a carefully worded, restrained and thought-provoking letter from a 
genuine expert in African climatic conditions and their impact on agriculture, 
power generation and flood control. He gently chides the British High 
Commissioner for the UK's condescending and patronising attitudes to South 
African science while respectfully requesting "more trade and less aid". Most of 
what we hear about Africa today comes from expert celebrities like Bono, 
Madonna, George Clooney and Leonardo DiCaprio. For a different voice go to:
Letter to the High Commissioner

I am pleased to say I shall be meeting Will Alexander in Bali when I arrive 
there on Saturday. I am even more pleased to say that the Centre played a major 
role in promoting his attendance at the UNFCC conference where we are sure he 
will have a major impact. He focuses on the impact of the Kyoto policies on 
agriculture in Africa. We have much to learn from his approach and his 
experience and knowledge.

Entertainment – Squatters Rights?

Many of you will be generally aware of the world-wide assault on property 
rights. Most of us were shocked by the Keloh decision of the US Supreme Court 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/23/AR2005062300783_pf.html> which 
found that 

"local governments may force property owners to sell out and make 
way for private economic development when officials decide it would benefit the 
public, even if the property is not blighted and the new project's success is 
not guaranteed."

 Many are not aware that a key reason for the justification of 
this taking was that the city was working to "a plan".
Fortunately, here in New Zealand, cities have not attempted to take private 
property for such "public purposes" – our property is more likely to be taken to 
protect "natural features" or increasingly to protect someone's belief in their 
"right to a rural view" - aka "protecting rural character". (see for 
example: /Merton v Rodney District Council 2/2/07, Judge Jackson, Commissioners 
Manning and Mills, ENC Auckland A008/07/)

However, you can depend on Americans to innovate and who would have thought 
squatters' rights could be used to take your neighbour's property? Only in 
America - surely?  But don't relax – I am sure DoC has read this case with 
interest. <http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=302%23more-30>
And when you have finished, go to the Antiplanner home page and get up to date 
with more papers from the American Dream conference at San Jose.
While it is comforting to imagine "that could never happen here" ponder section 
5 of the RMA and what it was meant to mean, and remember how in the Third 
Reading we were told this was the end to "the direction and control of the use 
of land". Then, while you are feeling smug and comfortable, go to the Western 
Bay of Plenty District Council web pages and examine their Omokaroa Proposed 
Plan Change 69 
<http://www.wbopdc.govt.nz/Projects/OmokoroaUrbanisation/PlanChange69.htm> and 
take a look at the structure plans prepared by Becca Planning.
Go to Plan Change 69 – Part One, and look at the lists on page 9, and page 13 
and then the minimum density rules on page 14. And don't you love this?
6.3.3.1 Activity Performance Standards for Activities in the Commercial Zone 
the Omokoroa

Stage 2 Structure Plan Area

(a)A Comprehensive Development Plan for the whole zone shall be prepared 
by the District Council prior to development of individual titles. This plan 
shall define the compliance with the performance standards and criteria listed 
below and the location of buildings, traffic and pedestrian cycle paths and 
parking areas and shall specify integration within the commercial zone and to 
the adjoining Industrial Zone and public reserve. You might think that either
Becca Planning or the Council must own all the land 
on this peninsula but, it is all in private ownership – owned by people who 
never wanted to be "urbanised" and who were quite happy with their 
rural-residential horticultural small farming lifestyle and environment. 
I gave evidence to the Environment Court in which I challenged the whole theory 
of Smart Growth and challenged its legitimacy because it clearly required "the 
direction and control of land use". Under cross-examination Council's planner 
explained that this was not so – Council had simply figured out where future 
populations would like to live and was providing for them, hence enabling them 
to achieve their goals.
This satisfied Judge Sheppard who threw out the appeal on the plan and found 
heavy costs against the appellants.
I wonder if the Judge ever gets to look at these documents and wonders if they 
are about "the direction and control of the use of land"? Go to the pages 30 to 
33 and pages 1 and 3 of Part 2. 
You might also look at Appendix IX of part 2 which the Centre has appealed. 

Whatever happened to these landowners' right to the quiet enjoyment of their land?
How do we change the RMA to make such "taking by planning" clearly unlawful?