The Commission's recommendations (Part 5 Section 24) promote "Place-Based Planning" – albeit without referring to it by name.

But Spatial Planning, Urban Design Panels, Urban Development Agencies, and detailed Structure Plans for commercial and industrial centres, add up to the Space Based Planning package – all on top of the Commission's insistence on MULs, densification and radial rail transport routes for the residential areas.

These policies will lock us into recession.  

Why would anyone go through all the hoopla of getting a resource consent only to find that a condition of consent is that your project must be approved by an urban design panel (a censorship panel) which will simply exercise aesthetic judgment and burden your project with costs?

On page 533 the Commission recommends an Urban Development Agency, and says:

The Urban Development Agency would give effect to the spatial plan and infrastructure plan, and its activities must be consistent with the RPS, regional transport plan, and regional economic development plan. This agency could also have a role in ensuring that the more complex urban renewal in planned nodes and corridors is achieved. Compulsory acquisition powers for the Urban Development Agency should be considered under the Public Works Act.

In other words we should adopt the Keno vs New London decision of the US Supreme Court, in spite of the outrage that decision has caused in those US states which have accepted the decision rather than written their own legislation to overturn it.

Why bother owning property if the Urban Development Agency can use a modified Public Works Act to compulsorily purchase your property and sell it to another developer who will develop it according to Council's whims rather than to your own assessment? 

We know that the worst thing to do during a recession is reduce investors' confidence in their property rights. Such agencies have been tried in the US and found severely wanting. We should not be surprised. The Council proposed to exercise these powers is simply a larger one than the one that brought David Beckham to Auckland.

On page 532 the Commission reports:

Dense cities use less energy per person than the more dispersed model. For these reasons, the MUL is a key policy and the consequent control of land use will require significant enforcement efforts.

Sorry, that is simply not true. The ground breaking report "Consuming Australia" put that theory to rest when it found that carbon footprints are not "space related". A report published today, "Suburbs and Climate Change: a Homegrown Brawl" updates the debate. 

And on page 546 we learn:

In most of the cities we visited, there was a realisation that building more roads is not the appropriate answer to the problems that cities face. Various commentators have likened building more roads as a cure for traffic congestion to loosening one’s belt as a cure for obesity.

Auckland is desperately under-roaded. We have congestion because we have built only about 40% of the network which was meant to have been completed by 1985, and in particular we have not completed the Western By-Pass.

If extra roads are not the solution then presumably closing State Highway One would reduce congestion.

Under the chapter on waste management the report makes no reference to waste-to-energy as a means of converting waste into a resource. None. Not even in passing.

While I do not like the proposed One City  structure it now seems to be a fait accompli – but surely we can postpone all the planning and operational recommendations put forward in Part Five.

Most of did not expect the Commission to be telling the newly formed Council how to carry out its tasks.

Many of us are up to our ears making submissions on the RMA Amendments and have little time to analyse this new document over the next few days. Also I hope to get an update on the application of  these ideas to the Governance of Seattle and Vancouver at the American Dream Coalition conference at Seattle, 15th - 17th April. 

Certainly this Royal Commission report should not set the framework for the RMA Amendments. 

The Centre believes any of the Commission's recommended changes to the RMA should be "noted but put on hold" as well. With no private plan changes allowed for years, private land owners have no way of countering Placed Based notified plans during the transition period. 

We need to encourage new development – not tell everyone to wait until the plans are finished.

This is what delayed the rehousing of the people of New Orleans.

A Commission report should not preempt the Select Committee process.

If the Government buys into this report it is buying into the policies of the last Government – for the biggest city in New Zealand.  And also their consequent application to Wellington and Christchurch. Which doesn't leave much room for the rest of us to enjoy freedom and property rights.

There is little point in changing a government if we inherit the previous one's belief in central planning, intervention, and social engineering.