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16 April 2021: Issue 19 of the Building Better newsletter is out now, packed full of research news and views from Building Better researchers.

Articles include:

• Life when renting for older Māori;

• Quality of life ultimate goal for ‘smart’ communities;

• Building the foundations of collaboration: From housing development to community renewal;

• Supporting geospatial decisions;

• Financialisation of NZ’s housing market driving house price increases; and

• 2020: A Year without Public Space.

"2020: A Year without Public Space under the COVID-19 Pandemic" is a webinar series which includes presentations and moderation by BBHTC Urban Wellbeing researcher Manfredo Manfredini, Associate Professor in Achitecture and Planning at the University of Auckland. Read all about it in the latest Building Better eNewsletter. Photo: Edwin Hooper, Unsplash.

31 March 2021: Collaborative governance and planning are usually seen as an improvement on technocratic “top-down” approaches, but they can be criticized for exacerbating power imbalances, failing to be inclusive and/or impartial, and for ignoring historical conflict. A team of Building Better Researchers Drs Zohreh Karaminejad, Suzanne Vallance, and Roy Montgomery from Lincoln University investigated how strong foundations for collaborative housing-renewal may be built to address these concerns and facilitate broader community-renewal ambitions.

State houses in Aranui, such as this multi-unit building, were designed without consultation and with reduced cost in mind. The dwellings caused widespread dissatisfaction because of the lack of privacy and limited private outdoor spaces. They were monotonous and the proximity of several multi-unit buildings promoted territorial gang wars and created safety issues for other residents. Some have been replaced, some still remain, and they remain unpopular. Photo: Zohreh Karaminejad, Lincoln University.

30 March 2021: The proportion of Māori aged over 55 years living in rental accommodation is likely to rise as home ownership becomes less attainable. To examine what the future of rental accommodation may hold for older Māori, Building Better Researchers Dr Fiona Cram and Morehu Munro interviewed 42 older Māori renters in the Hawke’s Bay region of Aotearoa New Zealand about their experiences.

Participants had moved to their current home to be closer to whānau or out of necessity, and their whānau had often helped them make the decision to move. While some found paying their rent manageable, they often struggled with other living costs. Some struggled with the cost of rent.

“Until the mid-1970s, the proportion of Māori households whose members owned their own home exceeded those who lived in rented accommodation, but this has now been reversed,” says Fiona.

Between 1986 and 2013, the proportion of Māori living in rental accommodation increased from 41% to 77% of Māori.

17 March 2021: The knowledge of what is going on with infrastructure in a city helps city managers to anticipate and plan for changes needed to investment and operations. For this, good geospatially-referenced data is crucial to making good decisions. City managers also need the capacity to analyse, diagnose, and communicate in order to improve quality of life for citizens – the ultimate goal of being ‘smarter’.

The management of public assets faces a similar challenge of ensuring that the goal of managing assets is to improve quality of life for the communities they serve.

A Building Better project by WSP’s Vivienne Ivory, Kai O’Donnell, and Phil McFarlane investigated how smaller local authorities can harness the power of smart data to analyse and diagnose infrastructure performance and allow communities to participate in decisions over the whole life of assets.

3 March 2021: In Aotearoa New Zealand, our housing stock is now seen as a commodity and this financialisation of the housing market is driving exponential increases in house prices. At the same time, home ownership is a dominant aspiration for New Zealanders.

Evidence from Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities National Science Challenge shows that it is not land costs that determine whether houses are built or not, it’s what people can sell those houses for on the open market, and a profit margin that is attractive to banks and equity lenders.

The reality of undersupply: This infographic shows that in the 1960s over 35% of new builds in Aotearoa New Zealand were in the lowest quartile of value. By 2003, only eight percent of new builds were in the lowest quartile of value.

1 March 2021
What: Stuff article, part of a series called Off the Ladder on housing affordablity, by reporter Geraden Cann

In March 2018, home-ownership was at its lowest in almost 70 years. Since then the median price has almost doubled and rent is up by a quarter. Stuff’s Off the Ladder series talks to those priced out of the market.

This article about legally blind student Roamen Humphris's struggles to find a flat mentions work undertaken by the Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities Affordable Housing For Generations (AHFG) programme, led by researcher Kay Saville-Smith, which also found older people in rentals were much more likely to be disabled than those in their own homes.

Roamen Humphris is now on a waitlist for social housing and hopes to have a place of his own in time for university in 2022. Photo: Monique Ford/Stuff.

24 February 2021: Urban planning is complex. How do you address population growth in cities without degrading the local environment, while promoting social and environmental sustainability, liveability, health, and wellbeing? Decisions should be informed from the current evidence for better social, environmental, and economic outcomes at the city and neighbourhood scales.

However, planners face the challenge of having to comply with planning processes and regulations which don’t necessarily have an integrated approach to environmental, social, and economic assessment of planning and regeneration scenarios. There are also significant pressures to urban transformation, with the rise of national and transnational standards and neoliberalism which can see business interests directly influence local development decisions at the expense of other considerations.

5 February 2021: Gradon Diprose has a curious mind, he has always questioned the world around him. Now he is a geographer working as a social science researcher at Manaaki Whenua—Landcare Research. He is a key researcher in Building Better's Huritanga research team and was a key researcher on the Delivering Urban Wellbeing project. He is passionate about communicating solutions to social and environmental issues in an accessible way.

BBHTC early career researcher: Gradon Diprose. Photo: Royal Society Te Apārangi.

1 February 2021: 2020: A Year without Public Space under the COVID-19 Pandemic is a webinar series which includes presentations and moderation by BBHTC Urban Wellbeing researcher Manfredo Manfredini, Associate Professor in Achitecture and Planning at the University of Auckland.

The videos are now available on the BBHTC website.

The World is temporarily closed. Photo: Edwin Hooper, Unsplash.