11 December 1985 Centre for Resource Management contribute to UNESCO study

Help in developing yardsticks to determine if a country or region is over or under developed has been given by the Centre for Resource Management at Lincoln College to UNESCO research into urbanisation.

Lincoln College Council meeting was told today a report on urbanisation management by a CRM research team had been received by the college
research committee.

Full title of the report is Management of the Urbanisation Process in Planning for Sustainable National Development.

An interdisciplinary approach was used for the study, commissioned by UNESCO earlier this year, and involved economics, sociology and
energy analysis.

One intention of the UNESCO study is to assess the implications of growing population, and how a country can meet energy and resource requirements.

An objective is to better understand relationships between population, resources, environment and socio-economic change.

Methods developed by the CRM team could be used experimentally by UNESCO in two or three countries.

New Zealand is highly urbanised by world standards, but the trend to greater urbanisation? since the 1970s has not brought about coherent response to manage what is happening, according to the report.

"Sectional vested interests and institutional inertia" are the main obstacles to a science-management approach to examining the urbanisation
process.

The CRM study team set out to define urbanisation in the New Zealand context, review and interpret urbanisation in this country, and identify associated problems.

The intention was to suggest a method of managing urbanisation by social and economic development, within environmental constraints.

The centralised nature of government in New Zealand and the many single purpose government agencies work against a coherent approach to urbanisation.

There is confusion and uncertainty at regional government level, and funding is not adequate.

Apparently random jurisdictional boundaries of different agencies are a further complication.

The report says that New Zealand has shown little interest in long-term planning and futures studies, although urbanisation management had to be examined at this level.

The Commission for the Future existed only briefly, and whether the N.Z. Planning Council has taken over longer term responsibilities is not yet clear.

Growing "more-market" philosophy in general economic management is not helping long-term planning, according to the report.

Such an approach is essentially short-term, giving less emphasis to longer-term management criteria.

This economic philosophy has not looked at or for urbanisation issues, so effectively seems to be a decision not to manage urbanisation.

Urbanisation has been going on in New Zealand since last century when the N.Z. Company sponsored English settlements.

Concentrated settlement was assumed in N.Z. Company planning, but shortcomings brought about a dispersal of population.

Until early this century, between 1911 and 1921, settlement in New Zealand was characterised by rapid increase in urban places with populations  of more than 1000.

Places were reclassified from rural to urban because of over-all natural increase and high immigration.

Since 1921 the manner of urbanisation has changed markedly, with internal migration becoming dominant.

Geography, technology and resources have shaped settlement and economic development.

Regional urban hierarchies have developed since early settlement.

Early European settlement in New Zealand was based on regional ports providing access to and from the inland for development services and for export trade.

Land transport between regions developed slowly because of natural barriers and poor technology.

Soils, rainfall and a temperate climate are the most extensive natural resources in New Zealand, allowing extensive pastoral farming.

Pastoral farming developed in the South Island in the middle of the last century, then moved gradually north until the 1940s.

Towards the end of the 19th century family farms were settled and public works and other infrastructure were developed.

At the same time discoveries of gold brought about early industrial development, concentrated at Dunedin.

As a result, industrial capitalist and working classes emerged.

Wool and gold production was matched by local manufacturing in the city.

New Zealand had few exploitable stock mineral resources other than gold and coal.

Gold rushes in Central Otago, Westland and the Coromandel showed how available and accessible resources brought about settlement.

But economic development was mainly determined by colonial links with the rapid emergence of foreign trade as economically predominant.

Refrigeration technology in the 1880s added meat and dairy produce to wool in foreign trade, and by 1900 these were the staple exports to Britain.

Even as late as the 1960s this primary produce, raw and semi-processed, made up to 80 per cent of N.Z. foreign income.

This economic development was conducive to high urbanisation in New Zealand.

Growth of the pastoral industry stimulated the development of urban based industries.

Urban centres, national and regional, evolved from these primary-producing regions, with the need for servicing and processing output.

Income from agricultural exports provided many opportunities for founding manufacturing industries with imports of capital and raw materials.

Most changes in the economic structure in New Zealand came in the first 70 years of this century.

This was in the growth of population, employment, incomes, production, consumption and trade, and industrial complexity.

Central government activity and spending increased, along with gross domestic product.

Agricultural employment peaked in 1936, while manufacturing made the biggest relative gains between 1921 and 1951, and the biggest absolute gains between 1951 and 1971.

This big shift in employment had effects on settlement, but economic growth and development still came mainly from extensive soil and water resources, and increasing access to convenient energy.

The highest rate of population increase and the biggest increase in urban settlement was in the first 20 years of the century.

After the Second World War growth in agriculture led to growth in other industries, and increasing government involvement brought parallel growth to both private and public service enterprises.

Since the Second World war there has been increasing urbanisation of the Maori people, and, later, of Pacific Islands Polynesians.

Energy supply has also been important in New Zealand development, with coal the most significant stock mineral.

However, coal exploitation peaked in the early 1920s, gradually being replaced by hydro-electricity and oil.

Urbanisation in New Zealand has been distinctive because of the relatively small population and regional development of low-density settlement.

Auckland did not become the major city until after more than 100 years of European immigration, although population growth was high by world standards.

In the 1950s and 1960s Auckland dominated population growth, compared with Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The involvement of central government has also been distinctive in urbanisation through the development of the welfare state.

Governments of both political parties have concentrated on urban employment, along with developing roads and railways, mining and electricity supply.

The biggest developments in urbanisation and planning since the 1890s were the establishment of regional authorities in Auckland in 1963 and Wellington in 1980, legislation in 1974 providing for regional councils, town and country planning legislation, and the setting up of the New Zealand Planning Council in 1977.

The N.Z. Planning Council is an important adviser to central government in looking at the longer term.

Government also gets advice from 38 government departments, about 1268 quasi non-governmental organisations, and many other advisory groups.

Because of the complexity of this advisory structure there is confusion in planning, management and development of overall strategies for urbanisation in New Zealand.

Expecting co-ordinated policies to evolve for managing urbanisation seems unreasonable, according to the report.

Further information from Mr James Baines, Centre for Resource Management, Lincoln College