Wellington City Council and consultants Boffa Miskell have won a major award for their joint work on a recently-released review of inner-city residential areas characterised by pre-1930s houses.

City Council staff took the stage along with colleagues from Boffa Miskell at the New Zealand Planning Institute awards evening in Napier on Friday. The Council’s Principal Advisor Planning, Kate Pascall, was there to collect the much coveted ‘Best Practice in District Planning’ award for the work on the Pre-1930s Character Area Review released earlier this year.

The review turns an in-depth analysis of more than 5500 residential properties into a visual, well written, and carefully structured virtual tour of the city’s important character areas. Its award winning edge comes from an innovative approach to making technical information colourful and accessible.

“This could have been a dry and technical report, but what we’ve ended up with is a really amazing tool to engage with our community,” says Kate. “It’s really easy to understand, and I want to thank Greg Vossler and the team at Boffa Miskell for doing an amazing job.”

The report was commissioned by the City Council to better understand the make-up of the city’s inner-suburb character areas, and how well these have been preserved over time. It is part of the research and preparation work being done as part of Planning for Growth – the new Council initiative that aims to prepare the city to sustainably accommodate a significant population increase in coming decades.

“We are expecting up to 80,000 more people to be calling Wellington home in the next 30 years, and lots of people want to live in the inner-city suburbs,” Kate says.

“So one of the things we need to think about is how that growth might affect the integrity of our character areas, and how comfortable we are as a whole community with that idea. Of course the first step was to find out what we have, and that was the purpose of this report.”

The timing of the award is perfect, with Planning for Growth engagement getting underway today.

To see the report, and scenarios relating to inner city growth and the trade-offs we need to consider, visit our website.

The Planning for Growth submissions period is open till 10 May.

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