Massey University researcher Thomas Nash thinks public transport should be at the centre of communities in New Zealand, with housing, shops and public spaces nearby.
"If you can cluster people around the public transport that you already have, it's much better value for money in terms of the cost of infrastructure, but it's also better for those communities.
"They have more people around them. They have more life around them. They look better. They're more fun and it's just the way every sensible city in the world is moving," he said.
These are called transit-oriented developments and Nash said there are economic, social and environmental benefits to building cities in this way.
The former Green Party affiliated regional councillor has years of experience in transport, including as Transport Chair from 2022 to 2025. He's now based in France.
"New Zealand has kind of already decided to do transit-oriented development but it just hasn't put the mechanisms in place to make it a reality.
"My research is looking at what are those steps, what are those specific steps that we can take, how can we learn from the UK in the sort of step-by-step process of going from not being organised around transit-oriented development to actually getting them built," Nash said.
In his report, Station Cities – UK Lessons for Building Cities Around Public Transport, the adjunct lecturer made the case for New Zealand to adopt this approach. It noted the public transport systems of Auckland and Wellington were equipped for such developments, and Christchurch would be a possibility if the Government funded mass rapid transport there.
Nash visited Birmingham, Stockport, Bristol and Cambridge to learn about their transit-oriented developments between November last year and April this year. He met with planners, developers, local authorities, transport agencies and property developers.
He said population-wise, Birmingham was broadly comparable to Auckland. Cambridge and Stockport compared to Wellington while Bristol was comparable to Christchurch.
"In some ways, it makes me a little bit jealous of what they've got here because I think, in New Zealand, people would embrace the kind of development around railway stations that we are seeing in the UK. It's just convenient, right?"
Seven steps to transit-orientated cities
He made seven recommendations to the New Zealand government in his report including:
- Designate areas where transit-oriented development should occur based on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch's existing development strategies and lock them in with funding before announcements drove property values up
- Designate areas near train stations where there was default permission for build housing and there were benefits such as government funding required infrastructure such as roads and wastewater
- Amend the Urban Development Act to allow local authorities to create Urban Development Corporations, which would be tasked with delivering transit-oriented development. Nash sid there should be a few pilot entities, starting with Auckland's stations on the western line from the central business district to Swanson which were identified in the Government and Auckland Council's recent landmark city deal.
- Ensure the land value increase from being situated near transit-oriented developments flowed back to authorities, not just private landowners, with a standard model. Nash said the Crown uplift tool in the Auckland City Deal was a starting point.
- Direct National Infrastructure Funding and Financing, which first rolled out ultra-fast broadband as Crown Fibre Holdings, to use its financial model for land that hadn't been developed for transit-oriented development land that has previously been developed.
- A stocktake of the land the government and council owned in transit areas
- Change New Zealand Transport Agency Waka Kotahi's methodology for calculating benefit-cost ratios from transit-oriented development such as boosting the local economy, lower infrastructure costs for central dwellings compared to urban fringe housing and improving productivity
Auckland CRL a 'missed opportunity'
The reports stated the Auckland City Rail Link was currently a "missed opportunity" as a transit-oriented development.
Nash said the country's largest transport infrastructure project wasn't set to make the most social, environmental and economic return of the $5.5 billion its development cost. Of the four stations, currently only Te Waihorotiu Station near the Sky Tower was a transit-oriented development, with apartments and retail above the station.
Nash said local councils were hampered by funding constraints and political capital and specific authorities, staffed with commercial development experience, were needed for this approach to building cities. He said these authorities should be tied to local councils, as government decision making could be short term when different parties came into power.
"That's what they're doing in the UK. They're getting what they call Mayoral Development Corporations and they have the power to do all the consenting, to bring all the land together in one package, to borrow against it and to do all the commercial aspects and get those buildings built and let out and it's working.
"All of the examples I'm looking at... are examples where you can see that devolving power from the central government in London to these cities and regions has helped to develop these sorts of railway station lead developments. It's been able to happen because of that devolution," Nash said.
He said at the moment, responsibility for projects such as this in New Zealand was fragmented across different government agencies and authorities.
"It's nobody's job to do it. Nobody owns the outcome of redeveloping and building up around our railway stations."
In Cambridge, UK , there were numerous transit-oriented developments attracting residents and big businesses to the city. The wider area included rural and urban spaces, which was also why Nash chose it as a case study to be comparable to New Zealand's wider city areas.
History and big tech side-by-side
The central Cambridge train station – where many people arrived from London – was surrounded by office space, shops and eateries, a hotel, apartments and space for bicycles. Big technology firms such as Microsoft and Apple occupied the space.
In 2010, before the area was developed, 8% of the city's economic output came from the area. In 2022, the figure had risen to 27% of Cambridge's economic output.
"It doesn't mean everybody needs to live in an apartment near a railway station. It's just for the people who want to do that and I think there are a lot of people, especially in our big cities like Auckland and Wellington who would like to have the convenience of a highly connected apartment right by a railway station and right by their work," Nash said.
The report stated New Zealand should learn from the UK's successes and failures with infrastructure.
It states New Zealand shouldn't and can't copy the country's model exactly with a different history and population density.
"What it offers, rather, are some concentrated examples of what happens when a national government decides to treat public transport investment and urban development as interdependent rather than sequential.
"[It's] what happens when government stops waiting for development to justify public transport investment and starts using public transport to shape development."
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