It’s easy to blame bad traffic, disconnected suburbs, or missing infrastructure on poor planning — and to some extent, that’s true. But if you scratch just beneath the surface, you’ll find a deeper issue shaping the future of Auckland: land bankers and their political influence.

These aren’t shadowy figures in smoke-filled rooms. They’re often large, well-connected developers or investment interests who own swathes of land just outside the city’s current boundary — and who stand to make millions once it’s rezoned for housing. And so begins the game.

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Sprawl Isn’t Just a Mistake — It’s a Business Model

What we’re seeing in places like Flat Bush, Ormiston, and Drury isn’t unplanned growth. It’s a pattern:

New suburbs are built far from high-capacity transport, like trains or rapid buses.

Local arterials — like Murphys Road or Ormiston Road — are too narrow, too few, and not built to handle thousands of cars.

Public transport, if it exists at all, is usually added years after people move in, when the pressure becomes unbearable.

The result? Car dependency. Long commutes. Expensive retrofits. And a mounting cost for ratepayers and the environment.

But here’s the kicker: these suburbs often aren’t even cheap anymore. The land is sold at a premium, with infrastructure costs baked into house prices — or offloaded to future taxpayers.

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The Politics Behind the Planning

Anecdotally (and increasingly, openly), council insiders admit they’re often under immense pressure from developers to unlock greenfield land. If the council hesitates — say, due to infrastructure concerns or planning goals — the developers often go above their heads.

They lobby central government, often through sympathetic MPs, especially in election years. They argue that councils are “blocking housing supply” — a political trigger point. In return, governments (especially pro-growth ones) threaten to override local plans, cut funding, or fast-track development through new legal tools.

It’s a tactic that works. Councils frequently cave, even when their long-term plans say: this land shouldn’t be developed yet. And so, Auckland sprawls — not because it must, but because a few powerful interests benefit when it does.

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Who Pays for This?

We all do.

In time: longer commutes, worse traffic, fragmented neighbourhoods.

In money: through rates spent retrofitting infrastructure, rather than building it right from the start.

In opportunity: because the money going to fix sprawl isn’t going into dense, transit-friendly growth that could transform the city.

 

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It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

We could plan around transport first. We could focus development where rail, rapid bus, and frequent service already exist — or at least build those networks before the people arrive. We could require developers to co-invest in the infrastructure they benefit from. We could stop treating housing as a volume game and start treating it as a city-shaping opportunity.

But we won’t get there unless we confront how decisions are really being made — and whose interests they serve.

Auckland’s future shouldn’t be determined in backroom meetings or last-minute zoning changes. It should be shaped by people — and for people.