While 4000 people celebrated the genius of Prince in the Aotea Centre just across the square another epic was being played out in the Auckland Town Hall.

After an extraordinary 7 hour meeting the Council voted to reject the Unitary Plan's housing density proposals known as the “out of scope” changes. While there was understandably some concern about the democratic process of such changes I worry that we may be in the middle of throwing the baby out with the bathwater due to noisy vested interests. Not the first time either, Auckland. 

Last year I wrote about how New Windsor's secret was out.

A suburb just 10 kms from the centre of Auckland and about to be connected with the Waterview tunnels had languished for decades until a few years ago. Massive 1000 square metre sections with 3 bedroom houses were suddenly seen in a new light and house prices have exploded.

New Windsor is one of the suburbs affected by the out of scope changes and an article in the Herald earlier this week mentioned it by name. People were concerned. But to my eyes New Windsor is a prime candidate for intensification. This suburb could provide the much needed affordable housing we are all seeking. Major arteries like Maioro St, New Windsor and Tiverton Roads appear to me to be profligate wastes of land that could easily support 3 times the population. It makes much more sense for this to be happening in New Windsor than what has already happened around Botany Downs.

While the council bickers the market is already forcing changes. At the site of the old Avondale RSA a new project with 91 apartments is currently for sale. With apartments starting at $375,000 and 10 per cent of the apartments needing to be “affordable” under SHA rules the project is a wnner. Right by a rail station with easy access to Auckland and Henderson it's a real option for first home buyers. New Lynn is similarly booming.

If New Windsor had a secret so does the leafy suburb of Remuera. For a long time it has been quietly intensifying. Drive Remuera Road and note apartment complex after apartment complex. Mum and Dad raise a family in a leafy house and then when the kids leave they decamp to the ridge leaving the stand alone houses for the next generation. Paul Holmes did that and he loved it. So did the restaurants of Remuera. Meanwhile the Remuera empty nesters grabbed the Newmarket apartments on the old railway land but these days the market is changing as a new generation sees them as first homes not last.

The same thing is happening along Great North Road above Grey Lynn and Ponsonby and the apartments there make more sense for that road than the light industrial that has dominated the streetscape for the past 50 years. If I had the time I could give you a list of 50 places that are sitters for civilised intensification that would enhance the city and not turn it into a motley collection of ghettoes.

This has happened all over the world and will happen here. I have friends who lived in a lovely house in Sydney's leafy Rose Bay. They've now moved to intensified Double Bay and they love it. So too friends from London's Surbiton who are now in a mews house in Chelsea.

The fact is that intensification will not kill the leafy suburb but save them. Appropriate intensification in appropriate areas will provide options for first home buyers and empty nesters leaving family villas for families.

The Council is guilty of acting too quickly to the cacophonous calls for change to provide the much needed housing stock and have been defeated but the idea, of itself, is not wrong. The Council was always going to be damned if they do and damned if they don't.

I hope they get back to the drawing board and quickly identify the right places. I hope ratepayers think not just about today but about 30 years time. Auckland is an awesome place, 3^rd best in the World apparently, but if it has a failing it's a blinkered view of the future.