Palmerston North case study
Case study: amenity monitoring
Purpose and process
Non-residential development in Palmerston North’s Inner Business Zone has some negative effects on amenity. A number of documents, like the District Plan and CBD Design Guidelines, contain measures that aim to minimise those adverse effects. The Council wanted to learn how well those measures worked.
The formal objective of the Amenity Monitoring project was:
‘To determine the effectiveness and suitability of the measures that are used to address the adverse environmental effects on amenity from non-residential development in a defined Inner Business Zone case study area.’
The work involved:
- surveying residents, retailers, and public interest groups to learn about local amenity values
- using information from the survey to assess the proposed District Plan, the Urban Design Guidelines for the CBD, and the CBD Revitalisation Strategy
- developing an assessment matrix to summarise the results.
Surveying amenity values
Council staff surveyed 53 residents, retailers, and public interest groups to learn the importance of selected amenity values. Staff then developed a long-form survey for 10 local stakeholders, testing possible approaches to amenity delivery.
Creating an assessment matrix
Having identified the amenity values, staff then assessed how well the proposed District Plan, CBD Urban Design Guidelines, and CBD Revitalisation Strategy addressed these values. They used an assessment matrix to present the results.
A review of the assessment matrix showed that overall, the Council’s policy framework had a good focus on the priority amenity values. The review also enabled staff to make recommendations for the policy framework and its implementation.
Resource: Amenity values survey [Word doc 83kb]
Resource: Long-form amenity values survey [Word doc 146kb]
Resource: Assessment matrix [Word doc 28kb]
