Davids and the Goliath at Downtown: why central Auckland’s largest post-war urban renewal scheme could not be stopped

By the late 1960s, the recognition of community and heritage values increasingly led to the reconsideration of plans for comprehensive urban renewal projects that would have required the clearance of myriad old buildings. On the other hand, Auckland’s Downtown Redevelopment Scheme – New Zealand’s largest post-war urban renewal project of a commercial nature – was approved in 1968 and constructed in three stages until 1980. It was a subversion of the country’s first Professor of Town Planning, Robert Kennedy’s concept, and not resisted on heritage or community grounds. Objections focussed on the Stage 1 office building and the impairment of public amenity through increasing wind speeds at its base and shading the area earmarked for the Stage 2 public square. In two hearings, the Auckland City Council and the Town and Country Planning Appeal Board approved the planning application regardless, but the abiding outcomes confirmed the objections raised. The article seeks to understand the decisions made in a city still fashioning its planning processes and the accommodations made by all levels of government to facilitate the project before the hearings even took place – these effectively a foregone conclusion. Auckland has long been a commercial city, a developer’s city, despite extant planning processes.