Risking the peninsula
Banks Peninsula’s landscape is at risk of insensitive development as attempts to come up with new planning rules drag on, writes PAULA SMITH.
In a worrying report on the state of the nation’s landscapes under the Resource Management Act, called A Place to Stand, Raewyn Peart, of the Environmental Defence Society, described the Banks Peninsula landscape as “vulnerable” because of Banks Peninsula District Council’s 12-year-long struggle to effectively address landscape- protection issues.
Two years after the amalgamation of Banks Peninsula District with Christchurch City the situation has not changed. The highly valued landscapes of Banks Peninsula are still just as vulnerable and the cumulative effects of inappropriate subdivision and site-by-site development continue.
The city council now has responsibility to provide for protection of outstanding natural landscapes in the enlarged city, and for the preservation of the natural character of the peninsula’s lengthy coastline.
But the Banks Peninsula District Plan is still the mechanism being used to protect and preserve these critical areas. Under the plan, areas of outstanding natural landscape and coastal protection areas are mapped, and the rules for subdivision and development in rural land are set down.
The first proposed Banks Peninsula District Plan, made public in 1997, identified extensive coastal and landscape- protection areas with quite strict controls on buildings and forestry. There was strong opposition, especially from rural landowners, so a rural taskforce was set up to resolve the issues. The taskforce’s report redrafted sections of the proposed district plan including chapters on outstanding natural landscapes, the coastal environment and the rural zone. The accompanying map showed a much reduced area of protected landscape.
After considering the taskforce recommendations, and taking advice from others, the district council notified a variation to the proposed District Plan (variation 2) which included some additional areas of outstanding natural landscape and coastal-protection areas. Many people were unhappy with the council’s decision and a large number of appeals to the variation 2 decision have been made to the Environment Court.
Faced with the large number of conflicting appeals, the Environment Court instructed the local authority, now the city council, to go back to basics and supply a comprehensive landscape assessment of Banks Peninsula. The brief included a requirement for effective public consultation.
The Banks Peninsula Landscape Study, prepared by consultant landscape architects Boffa Miskell Partners has just been completed and has been adopted by the city council for use in a mediation process set up to try to make some progress towards resolving some of the issues before the court hearing, which has been set down for later this year.
Meanwhile, concern grows about how the peninsula’s landscapes are changing, especially the way buildings are appearing scattered over hillsides, permanently altering their natural character.
Many expected that the outcome of the Environment Court process would be landscape- protection provisions which would at least improve on the existing ones. Now, with the release of the Banks Peninsula Landscape Study, this does not look so sure.
If the landscape provisions recommended by the study become the basis of a revised city plan, only a small area at the tops of the hills and a limited length of coastline will have the highest level of protection.
All the rest of the rural land on the peninsula, including most hillsides, will be available for subdivision and development under more permissive visual-amenity landscape rules.
The consultants identified four new landscape categories: outstanding natural landscapes; coastal natural character landscapes; historic landscapes and visual amenity landscapes.
It is not always clear from the report how the study team arrived at its decisions when defining the protected landscape areas. Where explanation is provided, the arguments justifying value judgments are not always convincing.
The outstanding natural landscapes include mainly the tops of the hills and coastal natural character landscapes are limited to those strips of coastal land with the least human modification, generally in the more remote parts of the peninsula.
All the remaining rural land, including nearly all the peninsula’s hillsides, has been categorised as visual-amenity landscape where “a reduced level of control is anticipated”.
The more permissive rules advocated for the visual-amenity landscape are justified by the assumption that all the rest of Banks Peninsula is a topographically variable landscape with lots of nooks and crannies, covered by a small-scale patchwork of pasture and bush, which is capable of absorbing lifestyle housing development.
While this may be true of some parts of the peninsula, the visual amenity landscape also includes extensive areas of bare hillsides. These slopes would be vulnerable to the type of development permitted by the management mechanisms proposed in the study.
In Lyttelton Harbour, for example, there is an observable landscape boundary between the inner harbour and the outer harbour (along an imaginary line between Purau and Gollans Bay). Parts of the inner harbour have the mosaic of different vegetation types and variable topography which might be capable of absorbing more buildings and roads, but the outer harbour, is open and sparsely vegetated, has less topographical variation and is still largely natural in character.
This landscape simply cannot absorb the type of development likely to be approved under the rules proposed.
In addition opportunities for public input on a site-by-site basis will be fewer because under the management mechanisms proposed, fewer applications will be publicly notified.
In a public-preference survey, commissioned as part of the study, over half of respondents believe peninsula landscapes are deteriorating, many citing loss of rural character due to subdivision and development as a major concern.
But the findings of the public-preference survey are hardly referred to in the Landscape Study Final Report and do not appear to have had much bearing on the evaluation process or the report’s recommendations.
However, the views of Environment Court appellants, many of whom are rural landowners on the peninsula, seem to have been given considerable weight.
The Banks Peninsula Landscape Study has turned out to be unhelpful in meeting the objective of increasing protection for the highly valued landscapes of Banks Peninsula.
It may prove to be especially unhelpful to the Christchurch City Council which desperately needed an objective, convincing, robust, authoritative landscape assessment as the basis for future planning to ensure our shared landscape resource is managed sustainably into the next century.
* Paula Smith from Diamond Harbour chairs the Lyttelton Harbour Landscape Protection Association.
Tags: amenity, amp, fence, landscape, landscape architect, lifestyle, natural landscape0
