As one of the country’s fastest growing cities, a big opportunity, and challenge, for Tauranga City Council is managing the effects of growth while ensuring our city remains vibrant, affordable, liveable and productive. In simple terms, that means addressing our city’s chronic housing shortage and continuing to invest in the infrastructure and community facilities needed to maintain the lifestyle, natural environment and economic opportunities that make our city attractive.
Mahe Drysdale
Our Council’s aspiration is for Tauranga to be the best city in New Zealand, and effectively managing growth will help us achieve that goal. Central to being the best is proactive, long-term planning, supported by the investment required to support sustainable growth. We need to stay ahead of growth and have more influence over how, what and where it occurs.
Affordable housing and an effective transport network are always at the top of people’s lists when it comes to challenges facing the city, but we also have to keep our water, wastewater and stormwater services up to the necessary standard and ensure that our facilities keep pace with the needs and expectations of our fast-growing community.
Our plans to accommodate future residents are shaped by the Western Bay’s SmartGrowth strategy. This emphasises coordinated land use and transport planning to foster connected, vibrant communities and seeks policy alignment across local and central government to streamline implementation and delivery. A key focus of the strategy is on living, learning, working and playing in local areas, through well-connected local centres.
At present, there is limited land ‘greenfield’ development land available in the sub-region, which makes future intensification and high-density living around main centres a key pathway to coping with the expected increase in population, while continuing to balance the lifestyle and character of our city.
With the house price to income ratio in Tauranga one of the country’s highest, enabling more affordable housing also requires building processes to be simplified and targeted infrastructure delivered more cost-effectively – which we are working to solve.
Successfully managing long-term population growth needs continued collaboration with our partners, including our neighbouring councils and central government, to align growth strategies and implement integrated solutions.
Underpinning this is the City and Regional Deal currently being negotiated between the Western Bay of Plenty sub-region and central government. The proposed deal represents a major opportunity, with a significant focus on enabling housing and business land development, along with key State Highway transport improvements needed to support growth, offering a pathway to address some of our most pressing challenges.
We believe a Regional Deal will provide certainty and confidence, encourage long-term investment decisions and enable sustainable growth, productivity and prosperity. Our Council is also exploring funding partnerships and innovative investment mechanisms to accelerate future infrastructure delivery. Again, this will be crucial to future rates affordability and our ability to work within any rates cost increase cap introduced by the Government.
We look forward to advancing our plans for the city of tomorrow through the current calendar year and I’ll keep Bay of Plenty Business News readers up-to-date with our progress, as key milestones are achieved.
