{"id":323152,"date":"2026-03-10T22:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/323152\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T22:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T22:37:09","slug":"auckland-mayor-says-inner-city-suburbs-are-ripe-for-housing-intensification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/323152\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland Mayor says inner-city suburbs are ripe for housing intensification"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4JSYOUX_Image_10_jfif.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Generic\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nWayne Brown and councillors met on Tuesday after the government u-turned on 2 million homes for the city. File picture.<br \/>\nPhoto: RNZ\/Marika Khabazi\n<\/p>\n<p>Auckland&#8217;s mayor says the city&#8217;s oldest suburb can expect intensification after a &#8220;long and painful&#8221; meeting to mull over how to grow the city.<\/p>\n<p>Councillors met on Tuesday after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/political\/587300\/government-weakens-housing-intensification-rules-for-auckland\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">government u-turned on plans<\/a> for 2 million homes for the city.<\/p>\n<p>It last month cut that to 1.6m.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll send them a letter on the 17th of March,&#8221; Wayne Brown said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll just be handing them &#8216;this is the process we&#8217;re going to go through&#8217; and if you don&#8217;t like it we&#8217;ll stick with 2 million,&#8221; he told Morning Report.<\/p>\n<p>He was asked what would happen if the government did not like the plan from councillors.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re just the government, and they live in Wellington, and they should just spend their time wandering around the coast picking up the lavatory paper that they put into the harbour,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And we&#8217;ll carry on running a big city.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brown said with 180,000 votes, he represented Aucklanders more than Parliamentarians did.<\/p>\n<p>But he said he was &#8220;not really grumpy with the government&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The back-and-forth on future development in the city has been a divisive debate.<\/p>\n<p>Housing Minister Chris Bishop has previously said he was frustrated by resistance from some for the government&#8217;s push for greater intensification.<\/p>\n<p>After pressure from people worried about heritage homes and infrastructure, he announced last month Cabinet had agreed to lower the 2m number.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We decided on some policies about how we would go about reducing the number from 2 million to 1.6, but we didn&#8217;t do anything about implementing it,&#8221; Brown said of Tuesday&#8217;s meeting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re not going to actually do any work about that until the government passes the legislation, so we&#8217;ve decided some sensible rules.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Brown said there would be no intensification in suburbs &#8220;that haven&#8217;t got everything needed&#8221; and that are more than 10-kilometres from the central city.<\/p>\n<p>But he said there would be in places with good public transport and infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just sensible, it will end up with a city which looks like a city, not the world&#8217;s largest suburb,&#8221; the mayor told Morning Report.<\/p>\n<p>Brown said &#8220;vocal constituents&#8221; had no more influence than local councillors did.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Parnell has a railway station, bus service, and is on the upgraded sewage area so it will certainly be involved in intensification,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just like Mount Eden, Epsom, Ponsonby, and all the other areas that are close into the city that actually have a lot of it already.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you have a look, if you visit Parnell, there&#8217;s a multi-storey apartments everywhere, same with Ponsonby where I live, I&#8217;m in a multi-storey apartment as we speak so they&#8217;re just sensible things make it into a nice city.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/radionz.us6.list-manage.com\/subscribe?u=211a938dcf3e634ba2427dde9&amp;id=b3d362e693\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wayne Brown and councillors met on Tuesday after the government u-turned on 2 million homes for the city.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-323152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}