Nga Rauemi / Tools

The Zero Waste Network and Manaaki Whenua teamed up to research organics processing systems in New Zealand, including conducting a national survey of operators. The report Scaling-up, scaling-out & branching-out: Understanding & procuring diverse organic materials management models in Aotearoa New Zealand - summarises the findings. The report adds to current understanding of the scale, scope and nature of organics collectors and processors across Aotearoa, with a focus on composters. It is primarily designed to support those at central and local government charged with making investment and procurement decisions in relation to the infrastructure and services for collecting and processing organic materials. The national survey of operators showed a lot of diversity in the sector so, to help decision-makers navigate the options for organics materials services, the report develops a shared language to talk about different operating models, presenting this in a simple taxonomy that distinguishes operators based on factors most relevant to procurability and scaleability. This taxonomy is then used to explore the various challenges, impacts and outcomes for each type of operator. The research was funded by Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities National Science Challenge, and the Zero Waste Network.

Housing Accords and Special Housing Areas were introduced in 2013 as a ‘laxative’ to local planning. They were to accelerate residential new builds. This study shows the Housing Accord in Rolleston over-promised and under-delivered. There is little evidence of accelerated builds. Price suppression was minor and limited. Numbers were small and less than promised. Assumptions underpinning Housing Accords of a chain between house prices, build costs, and public planning regimes are not sustained in Rolleston’s Special Housing Areas. Accelerated building as well as affordable housing requires purposeful action rather than generalised land release.

In this paper, Building Better researchers Dr Nick Taylor, from Nick Taylor and Associates, and Dr Mike Mackay, from AgResearch, have developed a comprehensive practical guideline to Social Impact Assessment (SIA) to help councils and community groups learn the basics about how to conduct an SIA, contribute to an SIA, use the results of an SIA, and judge if an SIA is fit for purpose. . .

This paper explores how spatial governance models oriented to the well-being of the more-than-human might better enable Indigenous peoples' capacity to live-well-with and care for our more-than-human whanaunga (kin). The paper considers how a culture of holistic ecological well-being might be spatially emplaced through well-being-led planning tools that ground these ontologies in neighbourhoods, cities. . .

Building Better researchers examine the interlinkages between social impact assessment and evaluation and, in particular, realist evaluation. They draw on recent research in the South Island, in which they link social impact assessment and elements of realist evaluation in the study of rural and small-town regeneration. The research identifies connections and makes suggestions regarding methods in social. . .

This paper describes a method for delineating functional labour market areas (LMAs) in national commuting networks. Identifying functional, rather than administrative, LMAs is important for analysing spatial patterns of economic activity. Functional boundaries capture the geography of interactions among employers and employees, whereas administrative boundaries typically ignore such interactions...

This research focusses on assessing the environmental sustainability of neighbourhoods. It further develops and tests a framework for post occupancy evaluation of the planning and delivery of a neighbourhood’s environmental sustainability. The matrix developed to examine Hobsonville Point is the underpinning methodology. It categorises environmental performance measures...

This report complements ‘Activating Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) for healthy, resilient communities’ research that aims to enhance capability and to address current barriers to the uptake of WSUD. It explores how WSUD in Aotearoa New Zealand values, recognises, and provides for Te Ao Māori and how it could do better. It shares experiences and knowledge of the authors to help integrate Māori. . .

This paper asks how an indigenous-Māori cultural perspective might expand wellbeing discourse with positive effect for wellbeing-led governance. It attends to mauri ora as an indigenous wellbeing construct. For Māori, ora is life, health, and wellbeing, while mauri is that interpenetrating life force which is “immanent in all things, knitting and bonding them together” as a life-field. . .

Water sensitive urban design (WSUD) is often perceived as an expensive option for stormwater management in both the long and short term. This research looks at the implications of the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management on the costs of WSUD and explores drivers and misconceptions around cost and maintenance. It also investigates the cost burden across the full life cycle. . .

This think piece explores energy strategies and policy in relation to its generation, usage patterns, and outputs, all within a holistic wellbeing-led framework. The piece emphasises a home-focused energy approach that considers housing, local energy generation and storage, and electric vehicles as a circular zero carbon ecosystem. The researchers investigate a low-carbon Tāmaki Makaurau...

By 2040, 25% of people living in Aotearoa New Zealand will be aged 65-years and over. The He Kāinga Pai Rawa project aimed to find out what made Moa Crescent Kaumātua Village in Kirikiriroa Hamilton, a healthy housing community for Kaumātua. The result was this toolkit designed for anyone working with urban, rural, marae and other communities, who aspires to co-design and build culture-centred. . .

Over half of residential development in Auckland now involves attached housing types such as terraces and apartments. This working paper presents residents’ perceptions of living at higher density in Hobsonville Point. Despite being 2-3 times the density of a typical suburb, respondents in the survey express a reasonably high level of satisfaction with their dwelling design, and the relationships with their neighbours...

The potential benefits of water sensitive urban design (WSUD) usually include better hydrology and water quality and healthier aquatic ecosystems. However, assessments of the benefits of WSUD that focus solely on these water-related outcomes are incomplete in scope. WSUD has the potential to deliver a wide range of other environmental and social co-benefits. This paper suggests WSUD should be. . .

This report describes the More Than Water (MTW) assessment tool, developed for evaluating the benefits and costs of Water Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) projects. The name of the tool reflects the notion that WSUD can deliver multiple co-benefits and cost-related advantages, in addition to more familiar considerations associated with management of the hydrological and water quality effects. . .

This report looks at why the concept of neighbourhood is important. Key ideas include neighbourhood planning (development, growth, and transit-oriented development), neighbourhood units and boundaries, neighbourhood walkability, neighbourhood (and in some cases residential) satisfaction, and neighbourhood change. Studies that look at both location and sociological factors will...

This report provides an overview of the application of Post-Occupancy Evaluation at the neighbourhood scale, focusing on environmental performance and liveability. Post-Occupancy Evaluation is a useful way of confirming the actual performance of the built environment. The researchers present the main international and national methodologies and examples. Existing assessment and certification...

How do people talk about a place? In this paper, the researchers present a new character-level convolutional neural network model that can classify multilingual text using any character set that can be encoded with UTF-8 - a standard and widely used 8-bit character encoding. To test the model on the geographic classification of text, the model was tested on four crowdsourced data sets. . .

This paper explores the strategies being developed by Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities: He Kāinga Whakamana Tangata, Whakamana Taiao (BBHTC). BBHTC is taking an innovative approach to Māori research and development, operating across academic, cultural, and social sectors. The paper presents a model for conducting research with and for Māori, that is empowering and mutually...