9 September 2004

Auckland City strongly supports draft New Zealand urban design protocol

Auckland City’s City Development Committee yesterday approved a submission on the draft New Zealand urban design protocol which will be forwarded to the Ministry for the Environment.

The submission supports the Ministry for the Environment initiative in developing this protocol and endorses its purpose ‘to accelerate quality urban design to create places that work and people use and value’.

Auckland City has also made a commitment to sign up to the protocol and an action-orientated statement binding the council to ‘creating quality urban design and recognising our role and responsibility in achieving this’. In signing this statement council agrees to develop a set of actions to implement its commitment and monitor these actions annually.

“This national protocol will bring a greater commitment to urban design throughout the country,” says Councillor Juliet Yates, chairperson of the City Development Committee.

“Auckland is one of the most intensively developed of all cities within New Zealand, and is the second fastest growing city in Australasia. These facts make it even more paramount that we take regard for good urban design in any future developments,” she says.

The key points of Auckland City’s submission focus on: supporting the protocol visions of making our towns and cities more successful through quality urban design, and supporting that quality urban design must create buildings, places, spaces and transport networks that are appropriate to local character and context, and which are innovative and long-term.

ENDS

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