Greater Ōtautahi

Tickets (free!): events.humanitix.com/stu-donovan-...

We’re proud to announce that Mark Gregory, Chartered Transport Planning Professional and chair of the Transportation Group, will be joining @StuartBDonovan for our panel discussion on a City of 1.5 Million on October 20.

Tickets are nearly sold out, grab one below 👇

Urbanists OUTSIDE North America Worth Following! Join the conversation

NEW STARTER PACK! This time I’m hoping to encourage and support global urbanists from OUTSIDE North America here on Bluesky, so hopefully this will help! Who’ve I missed? Just joined? Let me know! I’ll keep updating, so please keep checking & sharing this pack! And let’s try using #GlobalUrbanists.

Book here 🎟️ events.humanitix.com/stu-donovan-a-…...
Motu Research's Urban Economics Short Course: motu.nz/.../three-urba���
Become a Greater Ōtautahi Member (free!): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfAnW5n-n56kpnTlX_GIy1tWM77BgMNFXv5WDIKVcfb_nNIjA/viewform?

Stuart will be joined by a panel of special guests, with announcements coming soon on our social media.

To celebrate this event, Stuart is also offering Greater Ōtautahi members 50% off Motu Research’s Urban Economics Short Course, which he personally hosts.

Greater Ōtautahi is proud to welcome urban economist Stuart Donovan for a special event, A City of 1.5 Million?

Join us for an insightful event exploring why Christchurch needs to think bigger—and the benefits that come when we do.

More information and booking link below 🧵🔗

Want Light Rail? Think MDRS. Light rail has the chance to be a a defining feature that will shape our city. However, at a cost of $3-4 billion, obtaining funding will be tough — regardless of the flavour of government. NZTA’s exp...

greaterotautahi.nz/wantlightrai...

New post by Greater Ōtautahi: Want Light Rail? Think MDRS.

Councillors are currently deciding where medium density zoning will be implemented across Christchurch. However, their approach will actively risk mass rapid transit being constructed at all. Have a read below 👇

Keen for some kai and kōrero about all things urbanism? Come along to Greater Ōtautahi's July social hui 🏡

⏰ Thursday 17th July, 6:00pm

📍Little High

Everyone is welcome— we hope to see you for some great chats 🫶🏻

And to cap off a great day, The Spinoff did a piece on us and our mahi!

We're really excited by this outcome. It's what we've been advocating for over the last year, and it's incredible to see such a great District Plan for our city. But the journey is not over! Next is the decision on the MDRS for 12 December.

- the attempt to impose an effective heritage restriction character area in non-heritage parts of Papanui has been rejected, enabling more housing close to the northern city spine
- the Peer Street medium density zoning has been added back in

- the Sunlight Access rule has been approved, but with some changes that make it less restrictive
- upzoning and setback rules have been approved around urban centres, enabling more attractive urban design all over the city

Some highlights are:
- the Riccarton Bush interface QM has been rejected, so more housing is enabled around the urban centre at Riccarton
- restrictive height limits in places like Linwood and Hornby have been rejected

The minister has rejected nearly all of the overly-restrictive alternative recommendations sent to him by the council. This means that more and better housing is on the way for the people of Christchurch.

HUGE news today: Chris Bishop has made his decision on the council's Plan Change 14, and it's a massive win for the city. 🎉 🥳

Here’s what was approved and disapproved🧵👇

Awesome! We are unfortunately yet to start regular emails to our mailing list, but that is something we will get onto soon. Hope to see you tomorrow, or at a future social hui 🫡

Reminder — on tomorrow!

Weather is looking conducive for a meeting of the City's greatest urban ponderers, full of reckons to share (that includes you, dear Bluesky user)

Townhouses! Where will the kids go? Sometimes townhouses are presented as replacing housing that traditional families would otherwise have lived in — though is this actually the case? Firstly, there is some truth in this. In New Zealan...

Townhouses! Where will the kids go? greaterotautahi.nz/townhouses-w...

New article: Townhouses! Where will the kids go? 🏘️👩‍👩‍👧🌳

"Sometimes townhouses are presented as replacing housing that traditional families would otherwise have lived in — though is this actually the case?"

Have a read, linked below 👇

Keen for some kōrero and kawhe about all things urbanism and Ōtautahi?

We're back at Foundation cafe for May's social hui! 🫡

Everyone is welcome. We hope to see you there for an amazing time!

📍 Foundation cafe, Tūranga
🕛 Saturday, 24th May, 12pm

Cities and neighbourhoods undergo constant change — this must be expected so that we can build a city that functions equitably for everyone. Today's residents may have blocked some sunlight from yesterday's residents — why prevent that for tomorrow’s? This is unavoidable and isn't a right. ^Jack

This is certainly an
unfortunate outcome. While recession planes and setbacks mediate this to a reasonable extent. There are also inequities here. Blocking a percentage of sunlight may be unfortunate, but depriving people of a home is much more inequitable and a leading cause of the housing crisis.

Going it alone: The impact of upzoning on housing construction in Lower Hutt This paper studies a sequence of zoning reforms enacted in Lower Hutt, a constituent municipality of the wider Wellington metropolitan region of New Z…

Source for the Lower Hutt MDRS statistic: Maltman & Greenaway-McGrevy (2025) Going it alone: The impact of upzoning on housing construction in Lower Hutt: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

We'll be watching how Council approaches these changes with great interest. Even if Council opts out of MDRS, the opt out process itself will be painful, lengthy and will require upzoning — so stay tuned for the 12 December deadline!

A graph of rents in Lower Hut, showing that they are lower than projected, due to the denisty improvements.

The MDRS changes are designed to enable this growth in a way that is sustainable and affordable for us and future generations. Many towns and cities have already adopted MDRS, such as Lower Hutt, which has resulted in rents 21% lower than what they would otherwise be.

Our city is growing. Under high estimates, we may have a population over 700,000 by 2050, on our way to one million. It is crucial that we allow builders to build homes as demand dictates, rather than leave it to than the inaccurate guesswork of what demand might be.

An image of a three-story townhouse on a modern paved street. The townhouse is made of bricks, and the road is paved with cobbles.

We are glad to see that Minister Bishop has declined the Council's request for yet another extension on rules that would have allowed more homes to be built in areas where people want to live — delaying this would have been another attempt to kick the can down the road. 🧵

A new card scanner mounted to a Metro bus in Christchurch, New Zealand. The device is roughly square, with curved corners. On the top half is a screen. The screen reads "Tag below" with an arrow pointing downwards. Below this in the middle of the reader is a large blue diamond that reads "Motu Move". It has a contactless payment icon on it. At the bottom is a small icon of a QR code with an arrow pointing downwards. At the bottom are three holes, which house scanning cameras for reading QR codes. Text has been superimposed that reads "Hidden feature!" with an arrow pointing to the central camera hole.

Motu Move readers have a hidden feature!

The QR code reader at the bottom could be used for event tickets. Imagine scanning your Warriors game ticket to get a free bus ride to Te Kaha!

Integrating public transport like this will be critical for making Te Kaha a success.

Route map of the Christchurch Tramway Board tramway system in Christchurch, New Zealand as it was in the 1920s. N.B. The base road map used here is for reference only and no attempt has been made to make it commensurate with the era in which the tramway operated. Created by Matthew25187 at en.wikipedia in 2010, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 using an OpenStreetMap basemap licensed CC BY-SA https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16444255

Christchurch has a rich history of trams on our streets. It used to be how people got around the city quickly; now it's a tourist attraction. But what if we had a modern tram system like Amsterdam or Melbourne?

Check out this video from #NotJustBikes all about trams

youtu.be/bNTg9EX7MLw