With regulations in Auckland controlling the minimum size of new apartments and requiring all newly built apartments to have balconies, is it time to move outside to the gardens?
When more and more junk food is thrust upon us each day, it has never been so important for tenants and home owners alike to have access to fresh fruit and vegetables.
In Auckland, many homes enjoy ready access to sources of free Vitamin C through easy-care citrus fruit. And unlike the proverbial, this literally does grow on trees. Unfortunately, this opportunity is not available to all.
We could fix this with new Gardening Regulations. These could require all rental properties and all newly built houses and apartments in Auckland to have at least two of a lemon, orange, mandarin or grapefruit tree, and a dedicated irrigated space for growing vegetables of no less than, say, four square metres per bedroom. New apartment buildings with no backyards could be fitted with rooftop gardens.
These regulations would not only improve the physical and mental health of residents of New Zealand's most crowded city, but the greenspaces they created would also make it more liveable.
If you are concerned the new regulations might have some impact on the cost of new houses and apartments in Auckland, rest assured that these are likely to be far less than the estimated $40,000 - $70,000 cost of requiring all apartments in Auckland to have balconies. And also less than the proposed minimum parking requirements in the Auckland Unitary Plan of either one or two off-street parking spaces per residential unit (at a cost of the same order of magnitude).
They say an economist knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Perhaps, then, urban planners know the value of everything and the cost of nothing.
Either way, if what we really want is affordable housing, instead of balconies, carparks and gardens, maybe prospective Auckland apartment dwellers should be allowed to manage with parks and buses - and the local fruit and vege shop.