Appendix C: Verbatim
Q27. What would you say were the main things influencing or assisting the acceptance and utilisation of urban design advice in your council?
Intelligent Councillors, good built examples.
Growth and the need to meet requirements of the community.
CityScope - urban design strategy prepared by a cross-industry working group, championed by the mayor. Subjected to scrutiny through the LTCCP and receiving wholesale endorsement.
Community feedback through consultative processes surrounding District Plan and LTCCP and resource consent applications.
Good presentations on an issue that won't be controversial and won't cost the council money.
Development pressure.
Examples of good outcomes.
The political climate and resourcing. Not adequately funded to pull in specialists, generally. Also, lack of growth ... easy to promote UD in new developments, more costly and problematic to retrofit concepts to an existing form.
Becoming a signatory to Urban Design Protocol raised elected member awareness and acceptance of urban design. CPTED promotion has also raised urban design awareness.
The existing chaos in the CBD.
Access to urban design expertise for specific projects and higher-level development of strategic policy.
Budget and desire of politicians to get the job done quickly and independently.
Seeing the consequence of little or no urban design. Seeing the benefits accruing from taking it into account. Greater national awareness and push over the last few years.
The need to ensure public acceptance of our work.
Awareness of the positive role good urban design principles can play in the project and how it integrates into the community in the future
Influencing (negatively): uninformed management & elected member. Assisting advocacy from technical staff.
Degree of public and stakeholder support for the project concerned.
Not really applicable in terms of "utilisation of urban design advice". But Regional Policy Statement and Regional Land Transport Strategy are the main policy documents that seek the implementation of urban design principles.
Mainly a lack of need due to lack of urban areas.
Public opinion relating to the poor quality of new development. Politicians with urban design as part of their agenda. Urban Design Protocol - Action Plan.
Urban design projects that are perceived to be successful. Kudos for these gives Council confidence to continue doing projects from an urban design approach.
At [council] we have a policy of containing and intensifying growth within our existing settlements. With the large amount of anticipated growth in the next 20 years there is a growing realisation of the need to ensure our existing settlements are developed wisely in accordance with the principles of good urban design.
Willingness of council to support the design protocol and promote good urban design outcomes.
Subdivision in the urban areas.
The existing "currency" of urban design together with the strong heritage townscape legacy that is relatively intact for a NZ city, and provides both framework precedents for sound urban design practise.
Understanding as to what urban design is. It runs the risk of becoming a "catch-all" phrase. Getting good practical advice in implementation.
Structure and amount of expertise.
The main thing is the level of concern and understanding of effect of urban design on our regional council interests. Note we do not directly manage urban form as a regional council, so our role is chiefly to see that urban design activities in the region take our interests and concerns into account.
A community desire to reinvigorate the district.
Whether there is a need for involvement of this Council in such matters.
Community and developer desires
The high profile being placed on urban design by Councillors. The formation of an urban design panel which has raised the profile and acceptance of the role of urban design.
Urban Design Protocol, growth centre planning, [council] Growth Strategy.
Having now got an urban designer on board in combination with Strategic policy.
Return on investment. Community buy in, community outcomes.
Political and personal commitment to the principles and importance of urban design to community development.
Experience of consultant, cost.
Starting a structure planning process. Political pressure.
1. Having people with the knowledge. 2. Having people that seek to implement that knowledge within their respective roles. 3. Having Government raise the awareness through policy.
Showing value commercial, social, and environmental.
Council has adopted High Quality Urban Design as one of its top strategic priorities. Being a signatory to the UDP.
Staff time & resources.
Credibility of advice. Good environmental outcomes that can be politically justified and funded.
Council commitment to UDP. Determination of councillors and some staff.
Increasing requests from TLAs for regional leadership on infrastructure, hazard management.
Interest shown by one councillor in Urban Design. Where there is a large project requiring a multidisciplinary approach and large capital input needed then there is greater acceptance of need for specialist urban design skills.
The desire to create a better urban environment for our residents.
Q28. In your opinion, what are the main barriers to increasing the understanding and application of urban design in your council??
Silo approach to applying expertise in specific asset areas.
Resourcing.
Timescales within which to see meaningful change. Costs (predominantly land) required to achieve good urban design outcomes on public realm projects. Need for alignment of Council strategies, aspirations and regulatory documents.
No significant barriers.
It is too theoretical at the regional level for councillors to grasp and even if they did get it, the project would need to be implemented for the most part at the district level and then it has to be cost effective and non-controversial.
Cost and available resources.
Time, across Council networking
As above - slow growth, mostly.
$$$ for projects and for staff training.
Cost and unrealistic pretty pictures.
Concern over imposing further regulation on private developers. Concern over imposing further costs on private developers. Concern over imposing time delays for developers if resource consents required.
Lack of budget for training and isolation from other centres. Recognition of issues and need to up skill not matched by budget.
Resources; Corporate approach to using consultants in preference to internal staff.
Resourcing.
Developing a wider appreciation of the positive benefits improved urban design can bring to the city.
Ignorance. Lack of vision. Politics.
Lack of need for urban design. Until recently growth and development was extremely slow, which limited the number of situations where it could be applied. Likewise lack of resources to hire consultants and inability to justify a full time person in-house.
Urban design "application" is not a key regional function. The role and relevance of urban design principles in policy documents (RPS and RLTS) is however, not well known/understood by staff.
Lack of need.
Understanding exactly what urban design and process. Lack of city vision. Not sufficient resources put into raising its profile at management level.
Proof that an urban design approach is value for money. Reluctance to approach things differently and consider other methods. Lack of knowledge and training.
We tend to have an ad-hoc approach to urban design issues at present. We are a relatively small Council and use consultants to provide specialist advice as required (usually in response to consent applications). We would struggle to recruit and retain a person with suitable skills.
Need to enhance multi-disciplinary approach to projects.
None.
Isolation - & relative absence of development pressure lead to a perception that contemporary urban design principles are less relevant here.
Seeing the benefits of it. Making it mainstream and not something that automatically goes with one part of Council.
Its priority within what is a provincial city.
Lack of time - too much to do! Other priorities, especially for councillors. Lack of integration between disciplines and time to address overlaps and consistencies.
Other higher priorities for time and spending, lack of TA acceptance of regional council role in urban design planning, political difficulties between regional council and district/city local government authorities, lack of good training re urban design for staff, weak regional council policy re urban design issues (much of our policy is out of date with respect to this issue).
Lack of knowledge in-house.
Lack of focus on urban design as an issue for this Council to address. Lack of statutory clarity about role of Council in such matters.
Staff resources and funds to devote to developing good design principles.
Lack of need for daily involvement in urban design at all levels of the organisation.
Lack of qualified urban designer to obtain advice from either as urban design panel members, consultants or as staff.
Design guidelines in our District Plan. Lack of in-house knowledge Developer led utilitarian designs.
Ignorance and an unwillingness to change the way in which processes are undertaken because it is too much bother.
Financial Selling the Why for urban design.
Lack of resources to up skill and impart the principles to staff and external parties, and create a culture of urban design within the community.
No barriers to increasing understanding, but cost is a barrier in application.
Lack of skills.
Location.
Elected Members. Lack of specialist urban design skills.
General lack of identifying where urban design is relevant.
Staff time & resources.
Cost of fulfilling design requirements.
Lack of understanding about good and bad design Lethargy - stick to business as usual. Transport planning emphasis on motor vehicles. Lack of imagination/knowledge about good things could be.
Functional relationships and roles between regional council and TLAs.
Lack of awareness by politicians and senior managers that urban design within the [coundil] needs improvement.
Funding.
Q29. Finally, what other additional comments, if any, do you have regarding the subject of this survey?
Urban Design is about the design of streets, intersections, and transport networks too.
There is a serious risk of urban design being hijacked by professionals and becoming elitist. It's all about common sense. It's about being able to read an environment or express a view on it. To that extent it's just about giving people the right vocabulary and then the opportunity to use it.
Question 21's responses left out one important variable. The Council provides time off and financial support for taking courses, but there are no urban design courses available in close proximity to Christchurch. The political will to undertake urban design must be promoted more actively throughout NZ and having real tools that can be readily integrated and implemented into all planning programmes is important.
A focus on consultants and surveyors by [the Ministry] would be useful as they imitate a number of projects.
It would be wrong to suggest that UD is the domain of the specialist. An awareness of the concepts is important because that encourages questioning of the way we do things now.
Three dimensional planning falls between the land use planner and the architect. Both claim professional jealousy and work against each other.
For many small low growth TA's urban design opportunities do not present themselves very often hence it is difficult to embed it in the culture of the community or the organisation.
There is a chronic lack of it in Marlborough
This survey has not been prepared to be particularly relevant to regional council involvement in urban design. Regional Council's have a key role in seeing that good urban design gets applied appropriately at a regional level (or locally to achieve regional urban design outcomes). This is carried out through key policy documents (RPS, RLTS). The survey, as written, will not find out what barriers there are to effectively applying these principles through these mechanisms.
The benefits of utilising urban design principles needs to be espoused across all disciplines so that practitioners can work understand the gains to be achieved through working collaboratively, in open discourse.
Urban design is all good in theory but often, with consent applications in particular, we end up having conflicting advice from consultants (some work for applicant, some work for Council). Like much of planning, often seems to come down to subjective judgements. It is good that we are finally being more pro-active with urban design via design guidelines, etc - cuts down misunderstandings, etc.
Need for visionaries, need to inspire people with ideas of what can be done. Need to be practical, need to get runs on the board.
Our District is mostly rural.
The main blockage to progress in the wider context is the intransigence of the key disciplines that determine urban form, particularly traffic engineers & surveyors.
I have had to take a guess at many of the answers due to lack of knowledge of processes and people in some parts of the council. I did not have time to set up a cross-council group to complete this survey!
Note that we have a number of staff who give advice to TA staff, developers and contractors about urban design related issues. However our expertise is related to matters such as water quality, earthworks, ecosystem protection, transport and so on. We have very little knowledge about urban design as such. We would probably benefit from having more training in this area as it may provide us with other options for meeting our objectives that we are currently not aware of. However the training would need to be relevant to regional council staff - we don't actually want to become urban design experts in a range of areas which we don't work in.
The survey was off target for regions like ours which are outside the main centres...there is a different context for urban design in these regions compared to Auckland or Wellington or Christchurch.
This is a small Council that outsources almost all technical skills. Urban design is of lesser importance in our mainly rural environment.
This issue is clearly becoming very important for a large number of Local government authorities in New Zealand and there is a strong need for accessibility to urban design training programs.
Urban Design is a fairly new component in this organisation. The development and adoption of the Urban Design Strategy will lead to a whole new range of initiatives within Council. Its adoption is programmed for May 2006. One of the key areas lacking personally is the need for a stronger network of people to be involved in. Most of the focus is on the larger city centres.
Small Local government authorities have very limited resources and are already stretched with delivering the basic necessities, e.g. roads, water & sewerage. Do not have the time or "luxury" of employing specialists when there might be only one street upgrade per year for a small town of 500 population. That's the perception anyway. So we (small local government authorities) need a hand to spread the word and promote the wide-ranging benefits of getting it right through urban design. Suggest presentations (ppt) be designed that we can use locally to promote to staff and communities.
Given this district has a declining population and lack of new development urban design is not a high priority either in understanding or implementing.
The term urban design is confusing when used in terms of "is it being applied" as everything we do, which relates to the built environment involves urban design.
Enhanced role of RPS will make second generation RPS more comprehensive and provide strategic direction based on LTCCP outcomes and other community related information.
