Auckland housing and land use geo-data

Project team: Associate Prof Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy, Dr James Jones, Research Fellow, Dist Prof Peter Phillips, Economics,
Faculty of Business and Economics
Geocoding support: Nick Young and Andrew Leathwick, Centre for eResearch

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Auckland housing and land use geo-data

Introduction

Auckland is our most populous city and the economic hub of the country. It also has some of the most unaffordable housing in the world, particularly when measured relative to local incomes.

Unaffordable housing is a problem. It constrains economic growth, exacerbates existing wealth inequalities, and undermines the resilience of the financial sector. It has the potential to undermine social cohesion and open up new political fault lines between the haves and have-nots.

The challenges

Restoring housing affordability is therefore critical to the ongoing functioning of our economy, our society, and the maintenance of the implicit social contract that has been integrated into the national identity for most of the last century.

But balancing housing affordability goals against the preservation of natural amenities of the metropolitan area, while maintaining commitments to reducing carbon emissions and providing equitable access to jobs and urban amenities will be challenging.

The Centre for eResearch

Nick Young from the Centre offers the geocoding and visualisation expertise to assemble a geo-referenced dataset of housing market indicators to understand how housing markets function in Auckland. The team intends to use the outputs to assess a variety of policies that affect housing affordability, including changes in land use and zoning. The dataset will also be used to examine attendant problems of public transportation and road network access, infrastructure funding, financing, greenspace and coastal access amenity provision.

The project

It is policy-oriented, with many of the project outputs either evaluating housing, land use or public infrastructure policy, or simulating potential policy impacts on urban development, housing, transport and population.

Manhattan distance from centroid to Skytower Mdist_skytower

Acknowledgement

“I have really enjoyed working with Nick and Andrew. I found them to be highly responsive, dedicated and professional. They identified problems that I did not foresee and often suggested viable solutions. I will recommend your team to others. ” – Ryan