Whangārei District Council - mapping future housing capacity

Housing availability and affordability are significant issues here in Aotearoa, and local government has a critical role to play in providing for future capacity.

At MRCagney, our team recently partnered with the Whangārei District Council to develop a user-friendly, interactive tool that analyses and maps future housing capacity.

We caught up with Danielle Gatland to explore the project and the value it could unlock for other organisations.

Who did you work with at Whangārei District Council?

We worked with the Council's planning team (an excellent client!), including former Manager – Strategy Tony Horton and Robert Burgoyne, the Manager - District Plan.

I should also mention Researcher and Developer Alex Raichev from our team at MRC, who led the web interface development.

Why did the Council reach out to MRC?

The government's implementation of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) required councils around Aotearoa to update their housing assessments.

We had previously built the Whangārei District Council, an Excel spreadsheet-based tool to undertake housing assessments around the region, but recent technological advances meant it required a significant upgrade to make it more user friendly.

The council was still using the old tool extensively to inform their housing decision-making, but it had become challenging to get meaningful results as quickly as they wanted and to share those results internally and externally. So, a new approach was needed.

What were the other drawbacks of the older model?

Because the tool was based on an Excel spreadsheet, it was slow to deliver results when assessing around 40,000 sites across the district using 12 different development options.

Achieving a result could take several minutes, which is much slower than ideal from a productivity perspective.

While fit-for-purpose at the time, the Excel tool was also complex and challenging for new users to pick up and use and interpret.

What solution did MRC develop to solve the problem?

We built a web-based dashboard that is available to the staff from anywhere with internet access.

The tool enables planners to see at a glance where future housing supply is likely to be through maps and summary tables. It analyses two components of housing assessments:

• How much plan-enabled housing capacity there is, and its location
• Importantly, how much of that plan-enabled capacity is economically feasible for developers to develop

When planners load the website, it shows them their housing capacity model results in a default scenario.

It has a map showing what sites are feasible for developers and how much housing the model expects might be built in the district. It also has a control panel to switch through different metrics and run a range of scenarios, including changing the zoning rules for a particular area or changing the cost assumptions based on developers' assessments.

Users can change other parameters to display results from searches, including how you could build a wide range of different building types in a defined area and whether you're undertaking an infill project or redeveloping the whole site.

How does the tool help the Council make better housing decisions?

It makes evidence gathering for housing decision-making much faster, easier and allows planners to access previously unavailable information. The tool can also be shared with other parts of the organisation to help inform decision-making, such as infrastructure provisions.

This tool has helped the Council answer questions such as:

• What are the critical planning rules that are supporting or hindering development capacity and feasibility?
• How will a resource consent application, private plan change, or a submission on a plan change impact housing supply?
• What factors influence housing development patterns and growth, and what levers can we pull to support growth effectively?

Do you think other organisations could benefit from a similar approach?

Our approach gives users the power to develop various scenarios to help understand housing supply across a specific area or a whole district.

Using the tool, we can:

• Look at alternative District Plan zones and rules,
• State whether demolition of existing buildings should be considered,
• Test a range of development costs and sales prices, and alter the assumed developers' objectives (such as maximising profit or net added dwellings).

I think it would work incredibly well for other councils in the process of monitoring their housing supply. It could also benefit government agencies like the Ministry for the Environment to keep an eye on housing development at a national level.

What problems has it helped solve?

Importantly, it has allowed the Council to support housing growth efficiently and effectively across the entire district and inform planning decisions to enable sufficient housing capacity based on typologies and locations.

If you'd like to check the tool out and get a demo of its capabilities, please get in touch with Danielle Gatland at MRCagney.

Webinar recording:

Recently the MRC team, together with Whangārei District Council, ran a webinar outlining how our housing model works. You can view a recording of the webinar here: https://bit.ly/MRCagneyHousingModel