“A complete balls up”. How about that for what might be quote of the day?  

That’s how Christchurch city councillor Andrei Moore is describing the council’s handling of the housing intensification row. 

It’s a row that has been shut down for good by Housing and Resource Management Minister Chris Bishop, who has rejected Christchurch’s bid to have its own, separate housing intensification rules. 

Which I have no problem with. If he had given-in to Christchurch, it would’ve opened the floodgates right around the country. So good on Chris Bishop. 

It’s a final decision too, by the way. No correspondence will be entered into. The council can’t blow any more money running off to the environment court. So Christchurch has to like it or lump it.   

What it’s going to mean is high density, multi-level residential housing in the CBD (good), Riccarton (good), Hornby (good) and Linwood (good).  

Even if it means neighbouring properties losing sunlight. Which is not necessarily good - but that’s just reality. We need to get over that. 

Not that I’ve felt that way from the outset. When these new rules were first proposed three years ago, I didn’t like the sound of them. 

And there was no shortage of people saying they felt the same way. And I suspect that a lot of people will still be very unhappy about the prospect of a new place going up next to them and losing their sunlight. 

But that’s just reality. I accept that now.  

Because what other option is there in a city where the population is only going in one direction? 

Do we want the city to spread out even further, chewing up land that is much better used for things like growing food? Of course, we don’t. 

If there’s one very small example of how the city has just kept on spreading outwards, it would be Musgroves - the second-hand building supplies outfit in Wigram. 

I’m still amazed at how that place is surrounded by buildings now. When I remember it being pretty much in the wops not all that long ago. 

And, if we don’t allow the city to become more built-up, we’re just going to see more and more houses built in places like Rolleston and Prebbleton. Which aren’t in Christchurch - they’re in the Selwyn district.  

Which means more and more people travelling into the city every day, using Christchurch’s roading infrastructure but not paying a bean towards it. Because they pay their rates to Selwyn. 

But let’s come back to councillor Andrei Moore - who is saying today that the council has ballsed this up.     

He said back in April that he thought it was nuts that the council was insisting on pushing back on more intensified housing in Christchurch. 

He said - and I agreed with him a hundred percent at the time (and I still do) that “it’s high time we wake up and deal with the reality of city growth”. 

What’s more, it hasn’t been cheap. The most recent, available figures show that the council has spent about $7 million fighting the Government’s proposals. 

It’s not a total loss for the council. Three of its ideas have been accepted by the Government, which include increasing the building height limit on the old stockyards on Deans Ave to 36 metres. 

Mayor Phil Mauger says: “We obviously wanted to get our alternative recommendations approved. So, to only have three of them get the tick, is a kick in the guts.” 

As a result of the Government telling the city council to pull its head in, we’re potentially or eventually going to see 10-storey apartment buildings within 600 metres of suburban shopping areas. Even if it means neighbouring properties losing sunlight. 

Urbanist group Greater Ōtautahi thinks it's brilliant and gives the city certainty.  

They say the quarter-acre dream of a standalone house on a large section is unsustainable. 

Spokesperson M. Grace-Stent says: “Not everyone wants to live the exact same lifestyle. Allowing more housing to be built allows people to make that choice for themselves.” 

They say: “We want people to be living near the city centre,  near the amenities, not pushed out further and further into the Canterbury plains”. 

 And they’ll get no argument from me. 

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