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Wellington City’s Draft Spatial Plan, currently out for consultation, asks where the city might find room for another 50-80,000 people over the next thirty years. The challenge is bigger than that. Read more

Too much money is spent on education. New Zealand invests billions into schooling its children. Read more

It wasn’t that long after the Christchurch earthquakes that the calls for rent control came. The earthquakes had destroyed thousands and thousands of homes. Read more

Free parking isn’t free. Whether it’s an unmetered on-street parking space, or a parking space that comes bundled with an apartment or house, or the off-street parking space in front of a shop that you’ve not had to pay to use, they all have a price. Read more

We all know the analogy about barring gates after the horse has bolted from the barn. It speaks to the futility of doing something too late solve a problem. Read more

Making sense of Wellington Council’s prioritisation of a new convention centre, while the city’s wastewater pipes crumble and streams fill with sewage, is a bit tough. It isn’t how you’d run a household: the new kitchen might take a back seat if the rest of the plumbing is wrecked – and especially if your partner had just been made redundant. Read more

The United Nations is correct to consider New Zealand's housing crisis as a substantial human rights issue. But while the UN is often excellent at seeing problems, it isn't so good at suggesting appropriate solutions. Read more

Solving New Zealand’s housing crisis is hard. Writing good policy reports is too. Read more

Moving Auckland’s port might make sense – someday. But I do wonder about some of the talk of moving Auckland’s port to put in a waterfront stadium, or museum, or other large, iconic, and expensive facility. Read more

The greatest social scandal of our time barely raises eyebrows anymore. Every year for the past 16 years, urban consultancy Demographia releases their international ‘Housing Affordability Survey’. Read more