### ODT Online Sun, 18 Aug 2013
Sea changes in district plan?
Source: The Star
The effects of climate change and sea level rise are about to have an impact on Dunedin with a policy proposed for inclusion in the Dunedin City Council’s latest district plan. Dan Hutchinson looks at the ban on new development in southern suburbs and the risks to some of those low-lying areas.
A ban on new subdivisions in South Dunedin is proposed in the Dunedin City Council’s second-generation district plan while it looks for a solution to rising sea levels.
Large swathes of South Dunedin and surrounding suburbs are built on reclaimed swamp and some areas are only 30cm above the water table. One solution being considered is a series of wells, drains and pumps to artificially lower the water table throughout South Dunedin. Council sustainability adviser Maria Ioannou said the halt was a “holding pattern response” while they worked out what needed to be done. She said a report on engineering solutions to the problem was being finalised by staff but one option was to use a network of large pumps and drains. Staff were also working out a dollar value of the areas affected, including critical city assets like the Tahuna Wastewater Treatment Plant. Ms Ioannou said they did not want to “panic” people in the densely populated residential area and they were talking in time frames of 50 to 100 years.
Read more
Dunedin Webmap: High density housing in South Dunedin
![South Dunedin - aerial 1 [odt.co.nz]](https://dunedinstadium.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/south-dunedin-aerial-1-odt-co-nz.jpg)
South Dunedin – aerial [odt.co.nz]
![South Dunedin cottage [bayleys.co.nz]](https://dunedinstadium.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/south-dunedin-cottage-bayleys-co-nz.jpg)
Peripheral Space: Detached cottage, South Dunedin [bayleys.co.nz]
District plan proposals [odt.co.nz]
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Intensification? Relocating South Dunedin households? Raising building heights? The absolute extremes to consider at Vancouver…
[Say NO to the 27-storey apartment/hotel tower at 41 Wharf St]
### sustainablecitiescollective.com Posted August 12, 2013
Do High-Rise Towers Destroy Community?
By Jillian Glover
When I first moved into a high-rise condo tower in Downtown Vancouver several years ago, I remember my excitement at being able to enjoy great views of the city, a central location close to transit, and access to a pool, gym and sauna – just an elevator trip away. Unfortunately, I soon realised this lifestyle wasn’t for me.
I didn’t like being so close to all the action of downtown (the condo I lived in was next door to two stadiums popular for rock concerts and hockey games, and a Skytrain station where we could hear – loudly – the first and last train of the day); a lot of the people in my building were transient renters that weren’t very neighbourly; and ultimately, I wanted to live somewhere where I could step out my front door into a neighbourhood with a better sense of community at a smaller scale. I ended up moving to a duplex near a more bohemian, diverse, tight-knit community called Commercial Drive.
This is my personal experience living in a high-rise condo. It certainly does not reflect everyone’s experience. For example, my parents once lived in a fancy condo in Vancouver’s upscale Yaletown neighbourhood. Every morning and night, they witnessed spectacular sunrises and sunsets around English Bay, they knew many of their neighbours, a community open house for residents was held in the lobby twice a year, the concierge was a gem, the place was quiet, and every day they could step out their door and be near the seawall and several parks and beaches.
Regardless of one’s experience living in a high-rise residential tower, in many cities like Vancouver they are becoming difficult to build outside of the downtown core, where well-established neighbourhoods view them as a blight that will destroy community.
Read more● Jillian Glover is Communications Chair of the Vancouver Public Space Network, and a former Vancouver City Planning Commissioner.
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Related Posts and Comments:
18.7.13 Dear DCC: Dunedin’s [choke] $47M cycle network
12.6.13 Dunedin housing: building up or Brown-like sprawl #intensification
30.4.13 DCC governance = management ?
2.4.13 Dunedin: Developers stoop to resource consents instead of private plan…
29.3.13 Reykjavik, Iceland: The strongest mirror [speculative apartments]
3.3.13 RNZ Sunday Morning | Ideas: Re-imagining the Urban House
25.2.13 DCC binge spending alert: Proposed South Dunedin cycle network
22.2.13 DCC: Significant Trees
27.11.12 Dunedin Amenities Society on district plan review
29.10.12 Govt to open up more land for houses
18.9.12 DCC ‘vision’ (spatial plan chess)
7.8.12 Waterfront hotel: DCC to notify resource consent application
30.7.12 ORC on hazard risks and land use controls
21.6.12 DCC Long Term Plan 2012/13 – 2021/22, and $more
14.4.12 How perverse is the New Zealand housing market?
8.2.12 Dunedin City district plan review
8.12.11 interest.co heats NZ housing debate – listen up
7.12.11 Spatial Plan consultation #Dunedin
25.11.11 South Dunedin and other flood zones
9.3.11 Dunedin earthquake proneness
16.2.11 South Dunedin – better not wreck it
26.12.10 New Zealand housing, a sorry tale
30.11.10 South Dunedin Retail Centre
27.11.10 LIM “site hazards”
24.11.10 South Dunedin main street
21.5.10 Have your say: South Dunedin Retail Centre Strategy
7.4.10 DCC Media Release – South Dunedin
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
High-rise tower blocks didn’t work. Sure, in a battery-hen way they did but not in any humane definition of “working”. What has worked is re-use of big buildings, where people have ignored the rules and moved into rooms that are not approved “residential”. There are good reasons to forbid this – fire risk being an important one – and even better reasons to find ways to make it safe >> permissable. Not everyone wants a lawn. Not everyone wants to live upstairs in the middle of offices and light manufacturing. Isn’t it best to leave people the freedom to choose for themselves? Where it goes wrong is when one party restricts the reasonable freedom of others e.g. where a building is repurposed as residential then the activities in the surrounding area get curtailed because of noise, traffic etc.
Intensive housing with no workplaces, no shops, studios, cafes, hairdressers etc turn out with a high probability of being socially sterile, and high-rise blocks are at highest risk.
Oh really? Deal to existing groundwater conditions, forget Jinty and crew’s theory on sea level rise.
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### ODT Online Sun, 25 May 2014
Sea level rise subject of study
By Dan Hutchinson – The Star
A major engineering project designed to protect South Dunedin from rising sea levels will not solve the problems many residents already face. The council has commissioned consultancy firm Beca to study what options are available to protect the city’s most densely populated area from a sea level rise of 0.8m-1.6m over the next 76 years. Corporate policy team leader Maria Ioannou said they were looking at the area of South Dunedin and the harbour edge through to Forsyth Barr Stadium.
Read more
DCC SHOULD BE LAUGHED OFF THE GLOBE
(greenie fuckwit councillors’ end is nigh lemming complex)
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### dunedintv.co.nz July 24, 2014 – 5:56pm
Planning and regulatory committee considers report on climate change
Dunedin City Councillors have started discussing how to protect the city from the effects of climate change. The council’s planning and regulatory committee has considered a report about climate change adaptation. And it shows there are ways to protect South Dunedin from sea level rise.
Video
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Tabled at DCC Planning and Regulatory Committee today:
Report – PRC – 24/07/2014 (PDF, 8.4 MB)
Climate Change Adaptation – Harbourside and South City (Formerly ‘South Dunedin’) Update
I see in today’s dead-tree ODT letters that Calvin Oaten is continuing to go on about sea level rise, comparing observed rises with theory. There is another factor to consider, the effect of evidence drift. Unreliability of eyewitness testimony in criminal courts is now well-established thanks to the work of Elizabeth Loftus and others including OU’s own Harlene Hayne. This knowledge has floated into Otago Harbour, leading to the inevitable conclusion that theoretical modelling is the truthiest factuality you’ll find in a month of Sundays, or indeed a lifetime of Ramadans. If modelling shows that by the time we reach retirement age our front doors will open onto salt water we would be foolish not to plan accordingly, budgetting to sell the family car and buy boats. Restoration of the Aramoana jetty, far from a relic preserved by sentimental dreamers, is one example of intelligent forward planning. What with cycleways and rowboats Dunedin could be leading the world in planet-saving transport options. All we need are faith in theoretical modelling, and more spending by Council.
Hype. Can I get in your boat? I am not prepared to invest in one of my own. The odds don’t look attractive enough, and I am not into fishing, other than for bites.
### ODT Online Wed, 5 Aug 2015
Acoustic mapping shaking things up in South Dunedin
By John Gibb
Trail-blazing geological research which started yesterday is expected to shed light on previously unknown earthquake risk factors, including a possible ancient fault zone, under South Dunedin. […] The study [by University of Otago researchers] aimed to help identify the positions of fault zones and to assess the likely intensity of shaking, based on underlying ground conditions.
Read more
Just havin’ a retro. The sensible parts of Maria Ioannou’s suggestion are topical. Dig and drain. It beats abandoning the Flat.
There was and is No Need to believe the Cull Crap about abandoning South Dunedin – as colleagues have been saying: infrastructure spend is the Election Weight upon any intending Candidates.
Those who won’t make it their individual and joint policy to strongly slew council budgets away from Cull and Jinters’ fripperies, to the core infrastructure cause (to include with urgency the re-engineering of the St Clair seawall and coastal dune defences for Ocean Beach) aren’t worth the paper they’re written on nor the privilege of representing Dunedin residents and ratepayers.
In another language, can’t think what planet (?), we’d term the green opportunists utter dumbf***s.
I see. I get the pitcher. Roll tape, telecine “Ideas. Who invented ideas? Were they invented? This evening, or whenever you’re reading WIfD, we posit that ideas, good or bad, have intrinsic value. Take the metaphorical. M.I, a Corporate citizen, announces that she ‘can’t wait to go drag racing’. Now, the conventional older reader will assume this racing involves hot rods at parallel speed and Natalie Wood types. But no. The racing is by pedal power. Whether one supports cycling, or doesn’t support it, an assumption has been challenged. This kind of thing sharpens cognition. So, there is always something positive in human communication, whichever ‘side’ we take”. cut
(Excuse me, where are you taking me? Look, I got better! No, I don’t think I’m Napoleon Bonaparte. Help, help, Im bein’ repressed! Able was I ere you took my elbow…)
“Plans to raze an uninhabitable flood-damaged Forbury house and build two homes in its place have been dealt a blow after being opposed by a Dunedin City Council planner….. The Otago Regional Council is opposed to the proposal as the site is at risk of flooding and liquefaction and more intensive housing would put a greater number of people at risk. However, owner Laurence Prattley said the house was uninhabitable in its present state as it had no bathroom or kitchen.
“The house was under eight inches of water [during June 2015’s floods],” he said.
“I bought it from a lady at what it cost her five years ago because it was too much for her to cope with.” …….. Ms Lindsay said the proposal was “contrary to the key relevant objectives and policies of the Dunedin city district plan” and was likely to “give rise to adverse effects that will be more than minor”…….. The hearing is set down for July 21.
http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/388898/builder-bitter-over-council-s-opposition
Note – 8 inches flood water, heard that elsewhere recently?
Hint, if system had been well maintained and working property, water level would have been —— lower.
Shades of 2GP – I hope not!!!
Lyndon, methinks you hope in vain!!!