The Franklin District Growth Strategy is part of the Council’s commitment to sustainable development. The long term vision for Franklin is of “a country lifestyle in harmony with our environment.” It is a vision of “a diverse people living within defined, planned and serviced country towns and villages surrounded by countryside, offering great living, working and recreational options, connected to cities by well developed transport links.”
As the precursor to future district plans, the District Growth Strategy (DGS) is designed to ensure that the strategic direction is consistent with national and regional policies and plans, while refl ecting the particular needs and circumstances of the District. It lays out a blueprint for the next 50 years which:
- identifies where growth (residential, rural, commercial, industrial, and recreational) can be accommodated
- sets out a staging plan for the establishment of any new development areas
- guides infrastructure planning including transport, water supply and wastewater
- identifies areas/features for preservation and protection
- provides certainty for the community and landowners, outlining what type of growth is needed and where.
- provides guidance to other infrastructure providers through identifying location and scale of future growth.
The strategy is proactive, recognising that there are economic, social, environmental and cultural benefi ts to be gained from managing growth, rather than adopting a laissez faire approach allowing ad hoc development across the District. Analysis of the community outcomes of different growth patterns undertaken in preparing the strategy
clearly shows the merits of this approach.
The strategy identifies sufficient land to accommodate a projected population of 117,000 people by 2051 (just under double the present population, estimated to be between 63,000 and 64,000). This rate of growth is faster than the “high” projection in the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy. It was considered preferable to explore the effects of more rapid population growth as most of the risks of managing growth relate to underestimating rather than overestimating the pace of change. If population growth is slower than projected, then the release of land for new development and building of new infrastructure can be postponed.
Future growth will be accommodated through infill and redevelopment in existing urban areas, greenfield development and rural living, with some of that occuring in close proximity to villages. A higher share of the District’s future population will be accommodated in the Northern sector, making use of significant areas of available zoned land and existing infrastructure, while at the same time reducing pressures on the coast. Future growth in the Northern sector also provides the opportunity to achieve a high level of integration between employment, transport infrastructure and population growth at the district-wide and local levels including support for public transport through increased densities in the towns.
Strategy development
The foundations for strategy development were laid by the Council over the last decade. The Franklin community has made valuable inputs into a range of plans and studies. The most important of these was the Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) consultation which led to the Council’s Vision, Mission and Community Outcomes and the Rural Plan Change 14. A wide range of reports and submissions prepared by Iwi were also taken into account. All this material has meant that consultation during the preparation of the strategy has been able to build on a considerable body of knowledge, rather than starting from scratch.
Preparation of the strategy went through three main stages. The first step involved the collation and analysis of existing information covering a wide range of environmental, social, economic and cultural aspects of the District as well as the Regional and National policy setting.
At the core of the strategy development was a sophisticated evaluation framework which enabled the team to test how well different patterns of growth across the District achieved the community outcomes. Different growth scenarios ranging from concentrating growth in Pukekohe to widespread dispersal across the District were tested in the second stage of strategy development. These clearly demonstrated that more concentrated development (if not extreme concentration, as the approach recognises the village qualities of our settlements) achieved better results across the full range of economic, social, cultural and environmental outcomes. Some of these changes will be implemented prior to Franklin's division between the Auckland and Waikato Councils.
The results of the evaluation were then applied to the District’s main settlements and rural areas in the interpretation stage. The evaluation framework defined the scale of growth while detailed examination of development opportunities and constraints defined the location of both intensification and new development. This third stage was completed by specifying a range of actions, including changes to the District Plan, that will be required to implement the strategy.