Refining urban design governance: an investigation of the urban design assessment processes in Aotearoa New Zealand

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the urban design decision-making processes within Aotearoa New Zealand. It analyses the documents and terminologies in urban design assessments of residential developments and maps the professions that prepare them. It draws data from four cities: Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch. The findings reveal a core of referenced documentation but uncertainty regarding supplementary documents, a variety of terminologies, and a range of expertise and qualifications of those preparing the assessments. These findings suggest that further guidance and prescribed professional standards are desirable to refine the governance of the urban design sector in Aotearoa New Zealand.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban design assessment
• urban design governance
• urban planning
• statutory planning
• local government

Introduction

Urban design governance is the process of state-sanctioned intervention in the means and processes of designing the built environment in order to shape both processes and outcomes in a defined public interest (Carmona 2013, 2016). It reflects philosophical, legislative, cultural, contextual, and personal beliefs about how people should shape the environment. As such, it is highly dependent on explicit guidance and expertise to define the relevant processes and outcomes in specific contexts for its efficient and effective operation. With the recent legalization changes in Aotearoa New Zealand that emphasize urban design as a material consideration in the governance of the environment, there is a need to make explicit the relevant processes and outcomes within this national context to aid efficient and effective urban design decision-making. This article investigates the referenced documents and terminologies in urban design assessments of residential developments and maps the professions that prepare these assessments in Aotearoa New Zealand with the aim of defining the relevant decision-making processes and outcomes and providing recommendations to refine the governance of the national sector. The article firstly provides context to the research by presenting the role that urban design assessments have in the planning systems of the United Kingdom and Aotearoa New Zealand and, secondly, describes how researchers and practitioners have refined interpretation and communication processes to reduce inefficiencies and misunderstandings to date in these national contexts. It then introduces the core planning legalization in Aotearoa New Zealand, the recent changes to the legalization that emphasizes the need for explicit urban design governance processes and outcomes, and the state of the local urban design research and education sector. This research draws data from urban design assessments of residential developments in four cities: Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch, and analyses them through a cross-case analysis. The research discusses the findings, such as the type and range of referenced documents in the urban design assessments, the variety of terminologies and how they influence the decision-making processes, and the professions of those preparing the assessments. The article concludes with recommendations to refine urban design governance across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Urban design assessments in the decision-making process

Urban design assessments are textual and graphical documents that communicate urban design qualities of developments. In planning systems, they are often prepared by professionals on behalf of applicants, including applicants in the private and public sectors, and submitted to councils alongside planning applications for the determination of planning permission. Their contents vary depending on the demands of the development and the relevant planning system. In the United Kingdom, Design and Access Statements are urban design assessments that accompany planning applications and, at a minimum, explain the how a development is suitable for the site and its setting and is to be accessed. Design and Access Statements are required under The Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 (2015) to accompany planning applications for major developments and for developments within conservation areas and involving listed buildings with a few exceptions. Applicants may also provide these assessments to accompany applications for small developments. Such documents can be as short as a single page for small developments, while major developments may contain additional analysis, diagrams, and storyboards of iterative designs. National, regional, and local guidance documents supplement these statutory design considerations. The National Planning Policy Framework (2021) issued by Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities sets the expectations of how regional and local authorities are to deliver desirable urban design outcomes. The framework requires each authority to set out a clear design vision and design outcomes to provide applicants with as much certainty as possible about what is likely acceptable in the determination of planning applications. The National Design Guide (2021) issued by the same department prescribes ten characteristics for good design and is part of the national government’s collection of planning practice guidance. In addition to these documents, regional and local authorities provide supplementary planning documents in the form of design guides and codes that can be applicable to an area-wide, neighbourhood, or site-specific scale and vary in their focus, design philosophies, and desired outcomes.

In Aotearoa New Zealand, there is no explicit statutory requirement for urban design assessments in the planning system (Resource Management Act 1991, 1991). However, Section 104 of the Resource Management Act (1991) directs councils to have regard to any actual and potential effects on the environment, any relevant provisions within national, regional, and local planning documents, and any other matter that they consider is relevant and reasonably necessary to determine the application. Through this statutory opening, local councils can require urban design assessments to accompany development proposals. Some local councils are explicit in their planning guidance about the requirement for urban design assessments to accompany intensive proposals, such as multi-unit housing developments, while other councils decide on a case by case basis. Councils can dictate their desired design outcomes, required assessment formats, and assessment methods as there is no national prescription for design qualities, document structures, or assessment formats. As a result, councils can have in-house urban designers who assess applications as part of the statutory determination process or operate external and internal design panels that applicants must engage separately from the statutory determination process and who provide recommendations to the council decision-maker. Council-led urban design panels only operate in metropolitan centres, and prior sector reporting found that budget constraints and the availability of suitably qualified people are significant factors in the quality of the panels; some in-house experts do not contain qualified urban designers (Ministry for the Environment 2010). Each council in the country has mostly unique design provisions, document requirements, and assessment methods as a result, and delays in urban design decision-making and councils being inconsistent in their determinations are reported (Ministry for the Environment 2021). The role of the urban designer in this context is to access and interpret urban design guidance for their relevant local district and determine whether an urban design assessment is necessary, then design the development and prepare an urban design assessment document in accordance with the local guidance, document format, and assessment method. Local councils in Aotearoa New Zealand have the discretion to refuse to accept an application for determination on the basis of a lack of information if there is no or an inadequate urban design assessment submitted with the application and a requirement for such a document.

Urban design assessments often require professionals to make objective the subjective regarding environmental context, character, site layout, and building design (Bull et al. 2007; Kropf 2017). Urban design professionals rely on their training, guidance documents, and case examples to interpret these qualities and assess whether a proposed development delivers them to an acceptable outcome. Their training often defines the ideological lens through which they operate and reflect the normative discourse of their generation and society (Loukaitou-Sideris 2012). While these trainings offer no specific rules or regulations, they subconsciously influence urban design assessments. For example, scientific empiricism dominated the urban design practices of European colonialists in Australasia during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, subsequently designing the planned settlements of Adelaide, Wellington, and other cities on rationalized grid layouts (Brand 2004). In Aotearoa New Zealand during the mid-20^th century, modernism imported by European designers created urban spaces based on the concepts of rigorous functionality and aesthetics (Brand 2014). Water-sensitive design arguably became part of the normative discourse between 1990 and 2010 and had a predominant influence on urban design practices in that period (Brook 2005; Rashetnia et al. 2022). Urban design professionals rely on guidance documents and case examples to materialize acceptable design outcomes. These documents and examples embody the overarching normative discourse. The guidance documents contain graphical depictions of acceptable outcomes, and the case examples reinforce the viability of the designs. Urban design professionals interpret the guidance documents and case studies by reading or visiting them and utilizing their training to identify the primary messages and assess whether a proposed development is in general accordance with the guidance and examples or not (Oliveira 2016; Kropf 2017). As such, the interpretation and communication of context, character, site layout and other qualities depend on the professionals’ background and access to and understanding of guidance documents and case examples.

Decision-makers, such as private sector and local council planners, rely on urban design assessments to clearly communicate urban design recommendations so they can balance multi-disciplinary inputs and make a final decision about granting or refusing planning permission (Sternberg 2000). Decision-makers interpret urban design recommendations by reading the assessments, and occasionally through verbal communication such as in design panels or meetings, then using their expertise to understand what is being communicated (Beattie and Haarhoff 2018). When a decision-maker is deciding whether to grant or refuse planning permission for a development, urban design information has often undergone multiple subjective stages of interpretation and communication: the interpretation of training, guidance documents, and examples by the urban design professional and their communication of desirable outcomes for the design of the proposed development, the urban design professional interpreting the qualities of the proposed development and communicating a recommendation in a textual and graphical urban design assessment to the decision-maker, and the decision-maker interpreting the recommendation and communicating it in their final decision report. This process creates significant space for inefficiencies and misunderstandings to occur within the urban design decision-making process.

The refinement of urban design decision-making processes

Researchers and practitioners have refined interpretation and communication processes to reduce inefficiencies and misunderstandings. They have focused on building consensus about what constitutes desirable design outcomes, standardizing epistemologies and ontologies, and delineating urban design expertise. Building consensus has required agreement among professionals about what constitutes desirable design outcomes, and these agreements are often recorded in professional literature and guidance documents for others to reference (Sternberg 2000). There is arguably supra-national consensus about the current principles of urban design, such as those in popular texts of The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jacobs (1961) and Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space by Gehl (1987) as well as international movements like New Urbanism and, more recently, the 15-Minute City. International agreements and research have reached a consensus about the need for greater environmental sustainability and walkability in cities but determining which outcomes and design standards are to be delivered has been less reachable in some instances (Bull et al. 2007; Joss, Cowley, and Tomozeiu 2013; United Nations 2023). Localizations of global urban design considerations are criticized as colonial when imported from western countries and negatively impact or ignore indigenous and local values (Nejad, Walker, and Newhouse 2020). Localizations have also led to conflicts with realities of place, such as steep or constrained geographies that restrict walkability or conservation areas that prohibit the construction of more sustainable buildings. In these instances, public participation and cultural engagement practices established alternative consensuses before resolving local urban design solutions. In Aotearoa, indigenous Māori communities have established separate design guidance informed by their worldview, aspirations, and the Treaty of Waitangi (1840). The Treaty of Waitangi is the founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand and provides Māori with authority over their land, waters, possessions, and decision-making. Notably, the English version uses the word sovereignty, and the Māori version uses the word kawanatanga (governance), which leads most treaty relationships between Māori and western entities to rely on the principles of reciprocity, active protection, partnership, equity, and equal treatment (Waitangi Tribunal 2023). Like the western-informed urban design guidance, Māori guidance varies between region and locality due to different iwi (nation, kinship group, tribe) having mana whenua (territorial authority) status over areas. The guidance can also adopt specific lenses to address needs and aspirations, such as the provision of housing or landscape design. There is no universal indigenous design guidance adopted by all iwi or endorsed by the national government currently. For example, Te Aranga Māori Design Principles (Auckland Council 2023b) resulted from a partnership between iwi in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland) and Auckland Council to influence the city’s planning process with the values, principles, and aspirations of the local iwi. They proffer seven design principles: Mana: self-determination and authority of the iwi, Whakapapa: celebration of Māori names, Taiao: guardianship over the natural environment, Mauri Tū: protect, maintain, and enhance environmental health, Mahi Toi: capturing and expressing iwi narratives appropriately, Tohu: acknowledging significant sites and cultural landmarks, and Ahi Kā: securing iwi as an enduring presence within the district. The Ki Te Hau Kainga New Perspectives on Māori Housing Solutions and Pacific Housing Design Guide by the Housing New Zealand Corporation (2002a, 2002b), the forerunner of the present-day government agency Kāinga Ora, is an example of localization to serve a specific need or aspiration; the betterment of residential design for Māori and Pacific communities in this instance. Among other advice, this document provides guidance for papakainga (communal villages), which are low density with good opportunities for outdoor living, communal gatherings, gardens, and children play spaces.

Standardization of epistemologies and ontologies has refined decision-making processes by providing urban designers with a shared means to hypothesize, investigate, and conclude urban design outcomes (Sternberg 2000). For the urban design profession, this has been of interest as it has drawn new approaches and perspectives from adjacent urban professions, which then must be translated into the urban design body of knowledge. The use of qualitative enquiry methods and the tendency towards complex responses about the relationships between lived experiences, building typologies, forms, spaces, and environmental character have compelled the standardization of its approaches and understandings (Khan et al. 2014). Rowley (1994) identified three epistemologies of urban design: 1) urban development design, 2) environmental quality design, and 3) community urban design. Urban development design viewed the profession as a positive contribution to a place. Environmental quality design sought to minimize or avoid the negative aspects of a proposed development on the surrounding environment. Community urban design aimed to mediate between the development and the surrounding community and often sought public participation to resolve issues. In a similar vein, Banerjee (2014) categorized two epistemologies: 1) Platonic, and 2) Aristotelian. Under the Platonic approach, urban design interventions were a heroic act inspired by Le Corbusier, while the Aristotelian approach directed an anonymous anti-hero intervention through a collective and participatory effort. Carmona (2011) and Moghadam and Rafieian (2019) documented how different epistemologies altered the decision-making processes between urban actors, such as developers and planners.

The delineation of urban design expertise within the marketplace has enhanced its ability to develop a body of knowledge that is distinct from architecture and planning. Watson (2016) reflected on the emergence of urban design as a supplementary university qualification for those in architecture, planning, and engineering professions to its present state as a distinct ecosystem of dedicated undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, tertiary education schools, academic journals, studios, academics, and professionals. Lara and Evans-Cowley (2016) and Oliveira (2016) stated that the unique emphasis on urban morphology and context through immersion experiences, such as fieldwork and studios, separated urban design expertise from the building focus of architecture and the policy frameworks of planning. The ability to distinguish expertise enabled urban designers to operate and exercise power over a particular body of knowledge (Bagley 2010; Anselin, Nasar, and Talen 2011). However, Cidre (2016) noted that the lack of professional urban design institutions in the United States of America and the United Kingdom restricted the ability to manage the expertise beyond academia. Carmona (2019) highlighted that government-controlled and government-commissioned organizations, such as the former Commission for Architecture & the Built Environment (CABE) in the United Kingdom and present-day independent urban design panels in New Zealand and Canada, safeguarded the professional identity for urban design in these jurisdictions. However, in these instances, the government positions restricted their advocacy for urban design expertise outside of their design review functions.

National legalization and recent changes to the planning system in Aotearoa New Zealand

When the Resource Management Act 1991 (1991) was introduced in Aotearoa New Zealand, it was celebrated internationally as the first attempt to implement a planning system based on sustainability (Robertson 1993; Miller 2011). Its purpose was to deliver sustainable management by managing the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources in a way, or at a rate, which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-being and for their health and safety. It protected the natural environment, coastline, and areas of outstanding natural features and landscapes and installed similar safeguards to other natural resources as a matter of national importance. It also necessitated regard to the ethics of stewardship over the land, the intrinsic values of ecosystems, the maintenance and enhancement of amenity values, and other matters. Section 8 of the Act requires all persons exercising functions and powers under the legalization to take into account the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand. Local and regional governments were required to uphold these directions in their decision-making processes, including when issuing planning permissions; referred to in the Act as resource consents. Further national guidance documents, in the form of national policy statements and national environmental standards, were to achieve decision-making consistency across local governments nationwide. Between 1991 and 2015, four national policy statements were released pertaining to electricity transmission, renewable electricity generation, freshwater management, and the coastal environment (Ministry for the Environment 2023). National environmental standards on similar topics were introduced during that period. However, few national policy statements or national environmental standards eventuated regarding the urban environment, resulting in local councils adopting different approaches based on their limited resources and local political views (Palmer 2016). The lack of national guidance on urban matters has been argued to be the cause of poor design quality and low housing supply in urban environments across cities in Aotearoa New Zealand (Higgins 2010; New Zealand Government 2021).

Since 2020, New Zealand Government has introduced a package of new national guidance that addressed urban issues. The National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (2020), updated in 2022, directed local governments in the main urban centres to assess and plan for sufficient housing supply and tier-one cities to plan for building heights of at least six storeys within walkable catchments of rapid transit stops and business and retail centres (Ministry for the Environment 2022). The Medium Density Residential Standards, introduced by the Resource Management (Enabling Housing Supply and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021 (2021), increased permitted development rights. It was mandated that councils in tier-one urban centres were to permit up to three residential units per site, increase building heights, site coverages, and height in relation to boundary envelopes, and reduce setbacks and minimum outdoor living space requirements. In May 2022, the Ministry for the Environment (2022) issued the National Medium Density Design Guide, a non-statutory guidance document for medium-density housing. Additionally, the National Policy Statement for Highly Productive Land 2022 (2022) directed local councils to avoid rezoning highly productive rural land for rural lifestyle and urban land uses if greater intensification in existing urban areas was possible. In combination, these changes to the national planning system set the scene for cities in Aotearoa New Zealand to undergo intensification within their existing urban boundaries.

Before these recent changes, national-level decision-making guidance for urban design had been high-level and non-compulsory in Aotearoa New Zealand. The New Zealand Urban Design Protocol (2005) was published in 2005 by the Ministry for the Environment and aimed to improve urban design decision-making for governments, developments, and professionals. It established non-statutory principles of urban design based on the ‘seven Cs’: context, character, choice, connections, creativity, custodianship, and collaboration. The local governments of the main urban centres became signatories to the protocol, committing that they would adapt their local planning systems to incorporate urban design best practices. A methodology was published to support the protocol in the form of case studies, but no guidance was provided to local councils or professionals on how urban design was to integrate into the decision-making process under the Resource Management Act 1991 (Ministry for the Environment 2011). In the same year, the National Guidelines for Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in New Zealand, published in 2005 by the Ministry of Justice (2005), offered non-statutory guidelines on how planning, design, and place management strategies could reduce the likelihood of crime. Its audience was planners and designers working for local authorities and recommended that local councils adopt the guidelines as policy. The incorporation of this document into decision-making processes was also left to local governments and professionals, with councils adopting different approaches across the country.

Urban design decision-making at the local government level was a patchwork of approaches defined by local ambitions for intensification and planning control. Prior to their amalgamation in 2010, the seven councils within the Auckland region adopted various approaches to urban design. The City of Auckland District Plan provided guidance for select locations in the inner city (Auckland City Council, 2004). The North Shore City District Plan offered an urban design code for business centres, large-scale developments like malls, and mixed-used developments; solely residential land uses were omitted from the code (North Shore City Council 2002). The other districts in the region provided guidance for distinct locations, such as town centres or individual brownfield sites. The amalgamation of the region’s governance entities into the Auckland Council and the adoption of the Auckland Unitary Plan in 2016 directed urban design through zone-based policy rather than specific guidelines, and the council produced the Auckland Design Manual, an online resource that contained design advice for various typologies and land uses (Auckland Council 2023a, 2023b). In Wellington, the district plans of 1994 and 2000 and the 2022 proposed district plan contained urban design guides for the central and residential zones, subdivisions, and specific locations (Wellington City Council 2023a, 2023b). Other urban centres in the country adopted guidance for specific needs, such as residential infill.

Urban design research and education in Aotearoa New Zealand

Local academic research has advanced thought regarding urban design decision-making processes. Liu, Beattie, and Haarhoff (2021) investigated how the policy-based local planning system in Auckland affected the practices of developers and found that urban design outcomes in local plans have little to no impact on how developers anticipate developing a property due to a reluctance to engage with the policies, ambiguity about their meaning, and uncertainty about the role that policies have in the decision-making process. Their research concluded that explicit design outcomes and principles of development should be provided to developers in a straightforward manner. Beattie and Haarhoff (2018) evaluated the ability of local plans to deliver quality urban design outcomes under the rational conformance-based planning approach. They found that good urban design outcomes were largely dependent on market forces, including site-by-site developments that do not necessarily involve the range of highly skilled built environment professionals, and the planning system acted as a mediator with little impact on the overall design quality. Carroll et al. (2015) researched how urban spaces in Auckland affect children’s mobility, play, and social interactions. They found that the fear of traffic and strangers restricted independent mobility and rendered children’s outdoor play an increasingly adult-dependent activity. Carroll et al. recommended policy and practical considerations when designing the urban realm in line with the city’s then-recent commitment to a child-first policy. Paul and Kake (2019) provided an overview of Te Aranga urban design principles, a set of outcome-based principles founded on Māori cultural values that inform the design and development of built environment projects in Auckland. They criticized that the explicit consideration of Māori urban design outcomes is yet to be formally adopted in many local decision-making processes or integrated into the nationwide normative discourse for the profession. Higgins (2010) examined the effectiveness of planning policy and processes in achieving high-quality urban design outcomes, with a specific lens on the Resource Management Act 1991. Higgins discussed that the words ‘urban’ and ‘design’ do not appear in the legalization and finds that the Act is anti-urban and provides weak guidance to deliver its ambitious expectations of high-quality environmental management. Higgins recorded that the exclusion of urban design from the Act was deliberate as it was seen as too subjective and at odds with property rights. Therefore, Higgins concluded that national policy statements were required to provide guidance on urban and strategic matters; these only materialized from 2020 onwards as discussed earlier.

Research has also revealed a reluctance to urban intensification in Aotearoa New Zealand. Gjerde and Vale (2022) recorded that people in Auckland and Wellington responded negatively to tall buildings along a street, particularly when the buildings were grouped as opposed to dispersed with low-rise structures, and that respondents preferred building heights between one and three storeys. Kusumastuti and Nicholson (2018) surveyed the preferences of Christchurch residents to live in increasing urban densities and land use mixtures and concluded that residents preferred to live in low-density single-use residential neighbourhoods rather than medium to high-density mixed-use neighbourhoods. Ghosh and Vale (2009) documented that low-rise and high-rise apartments, attached townhouses, and terraces were recent additions to Auckland and that these typologies were not found in other urban centres in the country. At the time, they predict that intensification would only occur gradually and in a nodal pattern due to cultural and planning hesitancies towards denser living arrangements.

While recent policy changes and academic research have primed Aotearoa New Zealand’s urban centres for intensification, there have been few urban designers entering the market from local universities. The Master of Urban Design at the University of Auckland is the only post-graduate dedicated urban design qualification in the country (University of Auckland 2023a). Its first graduation ceremony occurred in 2006 with seven graduates and achieved a high of 19 graduates in 2021 (University of Auckland 2023b). Combined urban planning and urban design qualifications have been offered since 2017, with a maximum of 11 graduates in 2018. The short period that the University of Auckland’s urban design qualifications have been operating meant that there is a low number of graduates who have been in the profession for a significant time. Urban design-adjacent qualifications at other universities have supplemented the low number of local urban design experts. A Master of Urban Resilience and Renewal, which focuses on the increasing challenges of climate change and urban responses, is offered at the University of Canterbury (2023). Spatial design undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications are offered at Massey University (2023). No specialized urban design programme offers a core course on Māori urban design; however, a core course on Māori planning issues is present in the combined urban planning and design qualification at the University of Auckland. Urban design courses are also offered as part of architectural and planning qualifications across the country. However, these adjacent courses and individual papers do not provide in-depth training regarding urban design specifics due to their other specialized focuses.

It is evident that the recent legalization changes have emphasized the need for consensus among decision-makers and professionals regarding how to assess urban design outcomes, deploy decision-making terminologies, and determine relevant expertise. However, there is an absence of such guidance in local legalization, professional, and academic literature, and a seemingly low number of locally trained urban design professionals. Therefore, it is hypothesized that this has led to a disorderly approach to urban design decision-making in the country. The research reported in this article investigated the referenced documents and terminologies in urban design assessments of residential developments and mapped the professions that prepare these assessments.

Methods

The research adopted inductive and deductive analysis to investigate the documents and terminologies referred to within urban design decision-making in Aotearoa New Zealand and map expertise across the sector. As a method, cross-case analysis was implemented, involving comparing metrics within the urban design assessments (Eisenhardt 1989; Yin 2003).

Urban design assessments were collected from Auckland Council, Tauranga City Council, Wellington City Council, and Christchurch City Council, representing the most populous districts in the country, those councils that require urban design assessments in their planning applications for multi-unit residential developments, and a balanced geographic distribution across Aotearoa New Zealand. These assessments were documents submitted by applicants who were seeking resource consent from these local councils for multi-unit residential developments. These documents specifically addressed the urban design outcomes of the developments and are publicly accessible. They were obtained via electronic communication with the councils. The councils were provided with criteria to guide the selection process. Criteria were: 1) the associated resource consent application must have been granted between the period of 1 October 2021 and 1 October 2022, 2) the assessment must have assessed a residential development that contained between three and twenty residential units, 3) the assessment was to be a distinct report that exclusively addressed urban design matters, and 4) the assessments were to be prepared by different individuals. No more than six assessments per local government organization were requested to mitigate overweighing one district in the findings. The criteria enabled the research to investigate urban design decision-making from a recent period to obtain knowledge about contemporary practices, collect data of a similar character and scale of development to create a uniform dataset for analysis, and isolate the urban design decision-making process from the other decision-making processes in the resource management framework, i.e., those inputs prepared by planning, survey, and engineering experts.

Once the assessments were collected and verified as meeting the criteria, the assessments were read and references to documents and decision-making terminologies within each assessment were extracted via inductive reasoning. The data was tabulated and organized in Microsoft Excel. References to documents, such as design guides, were identified when they were specifically named in the text of the assessments. Terminologies were defined as words and phrases in the assessments that recommended urban design approval. The local districts, references to other decision-making criteria such as objectives and policies in district plans and supplementary documents, and the professions of those who prepared the assessments were also recorded.

The data in the Microsoft Excel table was analysed to deduce findings regarding which documents the assessments engaged with, the terminologies of their recommendations, and the professions of those who prepared the urban design assessments. The data was then grouped per district, terminology, and profession to synthesize a deeper understanding of why differences and similarities may have occurred.

Results

Eighteen urban design assessments were collected and verified as meeting the research criteria from the four local government organizations, including six from Auckland Council, three from Tauranga City Council, five from Wellington City Council, and four from Christchurch City Council. Tauranga City Council was only able to provide three relevant assessments, one assessment was excluded from Wellington City Council, and two assessments were excluded from Christchurch City Council. The councils were unable to provide additional assessments for those excluded from the research.

Out of the collected assessments, 11 (61%) referred to an urban design document or similar guidance prepared by the relevant local government. These documents were the Auckland Design Manual in Auckland, the Residential Design Guide in Wellington, the Residential Outcomes Framework in Tauranga, and the specific residential design principles in the Christchurch District Plan. The 11 instances included two out of the six Auckland assessments, three out of three Tauranga assessments, five out of the five Wellington assessments, and one out of the four Christchurch assessments.

Nine (50%) of the 18 assessments specified objectives and policies, including four from Auckland, three from Christchurch, and one from each of the other districts. A total of ten (55%) of the assessments referred to rules and standards in the district plan; all four assessments from Christchurch referred to rules or standards, three in Wellington and Auckland, and none in Tauranga. Regarding matters of discretion, they were engaged by two assessments in Christchurch and one from Auckland and another from Wellington.

Three (16%) of the assessments engaged the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol. Two Auckland assessments and one Tauranga assessment engaged this document. Five (27%) of the assessments referred to the National Guidelines for Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in New Zealand. These references were two assessments in Auckland, one in Tauranga, and three in Christchurch.

Regarding supplementary documents, one assessment in Auckland engaged the Roads and Streets Framework by Auckland Transport which is a 30-year strategic document for Auckland’s transport organization (Auckland Transport 2020). One assessment in Tauranga referenced the New Zealand Building Code, and another referenced national policy statements on urban design and contaminated land and a regional policy statement (Building Regulations 1992). In Wellington, one assessment mentioned the parking standard AS/NZS 2890.1:2004, and another assessment referenced the Wellington Urban Growth Plan, which was a non-statutory document published in 2014 projecting residential, infrastructure, and population growth until 2043 (Standards New Zealand 2004; Wellington City Council 2014). In Christchurch, one assessment referred to Building Sustainable Urban Communities published by the Department of Internal Affairs in 2008, and another referred to an area master plan in Christchurch (Department of Internal Affairs 2008). No urban design assessments engaged with Māori urban design documentation.

Each urban design assessment employed different terminologies to recommend urban design approval, resulting in 18 data points. Three categories of terminologies emerged. The first category was ‘merit-based’, which functioned as assessing the development’s intrinsic qualities, and included statements such as ‘acceptable’, ‘positive urban design outcomes’, and ‘high quality of architectural design’. The second category was ‘policy-compliant’ which assessed the development against criteria in the reference documents and included ‘meets the expectations sought for the zone’, ‘aligned with the objectives and policies’, and ‘consistent with the outcomes sought under the design guide’. The third category was ‘environmentally responsive’ terminologies that evaluated the development based on its response to the locality and included comments such as ‘appropriate design response to its location’, ‘resolution of site-specific design issues’, and the ‘effects arising from the proposal will be less than minor’. Some assessments utilized two terminologies to recommend urban design approval.

Six professionals referred to themselves as an ‘urban designer’ and six professionals identified as an ‘architect’ or ‘architectural designer’. Four professionals stated that they were an ‘urban designer and landscape architect’ and there was one instance of an ‘urban designer, planner and historic buildings specialist’ and a ‘landscape architect and urban planner’. Five out of the six urban designers were in Auckland or Christchurch, with the other located in Wellington.

Discussion

Referenced urban design documents

The data identified that most professionals referred to urban design guidance prepared by local councils. It signalled that these documents were core documents in the urban design decision-making process and that professionals were knowledgeable about their functions and can effectively engage with them (Sternberg 2000). The explicit references to these documents, i.e., by name and acknowledging them as the criteria for good design, signified that the professionals recognized them as separate documents from the district plans and placed a high priority on their inclusion in the decision-making process.

The instances where professionals did not engage with urban design guidance prepared by a council suggested that those individuals did not consider them in their assessments. This may have been due to the absence of a clear requirement to do so in those local planning documentation and systems. In Auckland, the Auckland Design Manual is a non-statutory document containing best practice design standards and is described as a how-to guide and for inspiration rather than a necessary consideration in the urban design decision-making process. In Christchurch, the link between the required assessment criteria and the design principles in the local plan may have not been evident to the professionals. Research by Liu, Beattie, and Haarhoff (2021), which identified vague provisions in local plans were barriers to engagement for industry professionals, supported these deductions.

The finding that half the assessments referred to objectives, policies, rules, and standards from district plans showed the desire of professionals to contextualize developments within a broad planning context. The professionals used the objectives and policies to establish the planned environment that they aligned their assessment against. In one assessment, a professional claimed that the proposed typology was in character for the area as it was mentioned in the planning policies of the district plan. The professionals also used objectives and policies to establish ontologies within their assessments. In these instances, they adopted expressions from the local plan that describe land uses and environmental effects and transport and retail centre hierarchies in their statements. Some professionals also utilized the permitted rules and standards as a definition of a good urban design outcome. For example, one professional stated that since the development complied with the site coverage standard then the development’s residential intensity was appropriate. It appeared to emancipate the professional from posing their own justification for the design.

The low engagement with the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol as a supplementary document marked that it was somewhat relevant in urban design decision-making in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, where it was referenced in the assessments, it was a core consideration; ‘The merits of the proposed development are assessed against desired qualities taken from core principles of the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol: The 7C’s’. A reason for not a higher relevancy could have been the duplication of its principles in local government urban design documents.

The modest presence of the National Guidelines for Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in New Zealand as a supplementary document indicated that it remained relevant for urban design decision-making 17 years after its publication. The document was primarily mentioned in the assessments’ introductions and concluding statements, which indicated that it was an overarching consideration that guided those professionals. Its primacy in the decision-making process was likely due to no other guidance documents within the local planning system directly addressing crime prevention through design and local council urban design guidance referencing the document. By being specifically mentioned in these guidance documents, it likely highlighted to urban design professionals that it should be considered. The localization of the document into the Aotearoa New Zealand context may have also helped it translate well and remain relevant for professionals (Nejad, Walker, and Newhouse 2020).

The presence of other supplementary documents, such as long-term urban growth strategies and the New Zealand Building Code, was common in assessments prepared by professionals who did not identify as solely urban designers. Instead, those who mentioned these documents identified as architects or as a combination of an architect and a landscape architect or an urban designer. No sole urban designer referred to these other supplementary documents. It indicated that multi-disciplinary professionals have the benefit of drawing on a wider knowledge base that is beyond the core remit of urban design (Bull et al. 2007; Joss, Cowley, and Tomozeiu 2013). Or, that they may not be certain of the suitability of these supplementary documents in the urban design decision-making process and include them as a contingency. Across the dataset, there was no other supplementary document that occurred more than once, which indicated that there was no consensus supporting the inclusion of other supplementary documents beyond the local urban design guidance, the New Zealand Urban Design Protocol, and the National Guidelines for Crime Prevention through Environmental Design in New Zealand.

The absence of engagement with Māori urban design documentation, such as Ki te Hau Kainga New Perspectives on Māori Housing Solutions, Te Aranga urban design principles by Auckland Council, or other such guidance, suggested that indigenous considerations were not prominent in the researched urban design recommendations. This finding validated the broader criticism made by Paul and Kake (2019) that Māori considerations are yet to be formalized and widely recognized in the national urban design decision-making process.

Urban design terminologies

The wide variety of terminologies across the assessments highlighted a lack of consensus in the sector regarding how to recommend urban design approval. It suggested that there was no established phrase or term for communicating approval in the decision-making process. This finding aligned with the academic literature that discussed the use of qualitative enquiry methods and the tendency towards descriptive and complex responses in the urban design profession (Khan et al. 2014). Across the cases, the professionals relied on their personal vocabulary to communicate their views rather than an established lexicon. Such an approach appeared problematic as it required the interpretation of a variety of phrases and terms, which increased the likelihood of miscommunication in the decision-making process. Markedly vague terminologies were present in the recommendations, such as ‘affordable’, ‘liveable’, and ‘good’. The use of the phrase ‘less than minor’ in one assessment was misleading within the context of the Resource Management Act 1991 as it was a legal threshold to determine whether to notify a planning application to a neighbouring party or not, rather than a dedicated term for the assessment of environmental effects. It was considered that the variety of terminology would be troublesome for decision-makers who consider inputs from multiple technical experts when deciding to grant or reject planning permission.

The three categories of urban design recommendations; merit-based, policy-compliant, and environmentally responsive; revealed differences in how the professionals viewed their role in the decision-making process. It aligned with the understanding that different epistemologies altered the decision-making processes between urban actors (Carmona 2011; Moghadam and Rafieian 2019). For example, the merit-based terminologies positioned the professionals as advocates of the developments as they highlighted the positive outcomes and downplayed adverse outcomes by claiming that these were of little concern or contained to the site. Reflecting this advocacy position, these recommendations contained many adjectives, i.e., ‘acceptable’, ‘positive’, and ‘high-quality’, which increased the subjectivity and variety of language in this category. In comparison, the policy-compliant terminologies situated the professionals as process-driven evaluators of the development, where they considered it against established criteria within urban design guidance. As such, their recommendations were mostly absent of adjectives and had a small variation of language as they focused on the binary decision whether the development met the objectives and policies or not and the specific wording and outcomes in the urban design guidance. They phrased their recommendations in a manner to avoid high levels of subjectivity and individual opinion. The environmentally responsive terminologies positioned the professionals as mediators between the development and the existing and planned environments. They often acknowledged external positive and adverse outcomes of the development and recognized the site’s opportunities and constraints. Therefore, their recommendations typically included a statement that weighed the outcomes and contextualized the development against geographies, the streetscape, and the present and future environments and utilized a moderate range of terminologies. These categorizations provided further examples and variations of how professional terminologies contextualized the epistemologies of urban design as identified by Rowley (1994) and Banerjee (2014).

Professional classifications

The low quantity of professionals who self-identified as an urban designer indicated that there was a lack of specialized professionals preparing urban design assessments in Aotearoa New Zealand; only a third of the experts recorded themselves as urban designers. This finding aligned with the academic literature that discussed how urban design expertise became less prominent beyond the academic setting due to a lack of professional institutions regulating and promoting the profession (Cidre 2016; Lara and Evans-Cowley 2016; Oliveira 2016). It also aligned with previous industry reporting by the Ministry for the Environment that there was a variety of professionals operating as urban designers without urban design qualifications (Ministry for the Environment 2010). The research found that architects and landscape architects were the dominant presence in the sector at present. However, the parity between the number of urban designers and architects who prepared the assessments suggested that urban designers could become the predominant producers of urban design assessments in Aotearoa New Zealand soon. The low number of planners who prepared urban design assessments, when compared with their otherwise established presence in the urban development sector and relevant transferrable skills, was notable. It was unclear from the research why planners were hesitant or what were the barriers for them to undertake urban design work.

The moderate number of professionals who identified as urban designers plus another profession implied that some individuals were transitioning between their qualified expertise into urban design. As such, the local urban design sector was moving professionals away from the planning and architecture sectors rather than solely materializing from local urban design graduates and oversea-trained arrivals. This trend reflected the emergence of urban design in the United Kingdom and the United States of America during the previous century when urban design was a supplementary qualification and skillset for other urban professionals (Watson 2016). The Auckland-based urban design qualifications appeared to be a main cause for this transition of experts as it offered the only dedicated urban design qualification in Aotearoa New Zealand. These qualifications justified the cluster of urban designers in Auckland. The cluster of qualified urban designers in Christchurch appeared to be related to the urban design certification process managed by the council that required urban designers to have a post-graduate urban design qualification. This finding drew similarities with the impacts of publicly funded urban design governance structures researched by Carmona (2019), where local governments could enhance the urban design skillset in their districts establishing training requirements. It was also considered that these centres’ large markets for medium-density and high-density developments accommodated a greater number of specialist urban design professionals than in the smaller urban centres of Wellington and Tauranga. Professionals in Tauranga and Wellington may have to provide other services, such as landscape design and historic conservation, to be financially viable between urban design projects. It was envisaged that even fewer urban designers would be within regional centres and rural districts throughout the country due to the absence of urban design tertiary programmes at their local educational institutions and the small-scale medium to high-density development sectors in their areas.

In Wellington, Tauranga, and other urban centres across the country, the finding suggested that individuals from other professions were filling the urban designer role, but these individuals perhaps had no specific urban design qualifications. In these instances, local councils seemed to accept non-qualified urban designers as experts. The use of non-qualified urban designers raised questions about whether the quality of urban design decision-making was robust in these jurisdictions.

Conclusion

This research investigated the urban design decision-making processes within Aotearoa New Zealand and mapped the professions that prepared these assessments across four cities in Aotearoa New Zealand. It utilized inductive and deductive reasoning and a cross-case analysis method that revealed problematic variety within local government decision-making processes and the urban design profession and provided a lens to discuss why these may have occurred and the implications for urban design decision-making in the country.

It was evident that urban design guidance prepared by local councils was the most important document for decision-making in the sector. The research revealed that professionals also engaged district plans and national urban design and crime prevention guidance in their decision-making, but the profession was unclear about which supplementary documents to consider if any. Māori urban design documentation was yet to become visible in urban design assessments. The research also found that there was no consensus among professionals on how to communicate an urban design recommendation, such as approval or refusal, in an urban design assessment. Recommendations spanned three categorizations; merit-based, policy-compliant, and environmentally responsive, which positioned the professionals differently within the decision-making process and influenced their recommendations. Lastly, the research found that qualified urban design professionals prepared only a third of urban design assessments. Architects and landscape architects and those with mixed professional backgrounds mostly prepared the assessments. Qualified urban designers were more consistent in their approaches to conducting urban design assessments and were primarily based in Auckland and Christchurch. Other professions mostly prepared urban design assessments in the other centres and the decision-making processes of these assessments varied.

The study had a few limitations. It is acknowledged that the sample size was small and that this would have impacted the recording of supplementary documents in the research data. It is expected that additional supplementary documents are referred to by professionals, especially those without an urban design qualification. It is also acknowledged that other urban centres have urban design guides, such as the other districts in the Wellington region, and they may reveal additional or competing findings. A study that included a larger number of assessments and additional cities would create a more detailed cross-section of the sector. The findings also relied on the synthesis of knowledge to direct the discussion. While the findings were contextualized by the academic literature, further research, such as interviews with the assessments’ authors, would confirm why the professionals engaged specific documents, deployed terminologies, and prepared urban design assessments.

To enhance the governance of the sector, it is recommended that explicit guidance is provided to urban design professionals regarding which documents are relevant and which terminologies are appropriate when preparing urban design assessments and stating their recommendations. Indigenous urban design documents should be an explicit consideration in the preparation of urban design assessments. It is also recommended that local councils require urban designers to have an urban design qualification. In Aotearoa New Zealand, such guidance and professional standards would enhance the decision-making process through clearer considerations, communications, and expertise expectations. It would also support the maturation of the urban design profession in Aotearoa New Zealand by encouraging further training for those currently providing urban design services.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).