Your elected members are there to represent your interests. But to do that, they need to show up at meetings. — Let me start with a full disclosure. From February 2009 until May 2014 I was a staff member at Whangarei District Council. As the person responsible for preparing the town plan for the district, I needed to attend a lot of council meetings. These meetings are important, because this is…

How we’re looking after the participants at GovHack Whangarei — Free food is just one of the reasons to head along to your nearest #GovHackNZ event next month. Although it may be free, the saying “you get what you pay for” definitely doesn’t apply! …

Litter really annoys me. It’s not just that it is environmentally damaging and a horrible eyesore. It’s not because it also highlights the presence of socially irresponsible people in my community. It annoys me because I’m constantly having to pick up other people’s litter from my lawn. McDonald’s packaging, drink…

Dropping the jargon from my planning evidence on the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan — There has been ongoing coverage on the topic of housing supply in Auckland and the effect of this on housing affordability. The government has recently announced a new National Policy Statement on Urban Housing Capacity in response to the growing concerns expressed by commentators and many an aspiring property owner.

A story about problem definition — It’s been several months since writing my last blog on the Place-as-a-Service project, but a lot has happened during that time. Here’s a recap. The local community group Tu Ake Te Karaka Community Committee had done a lot of work to develop a Community Plan for Te Karaka. …

My journey through the underworld of planning regulations — A few of my clients are specialist property professionals. They are either property developers, investors, agents, or brokers that spend a lot of their time trawling through town planning documents and property reports. By “a lot of their time”, I mean they do this practically every day. They are power…

In the third week of February 2014, I did something that has never before been attempted in local government anywhere in the world. Using the Google Ventures design sprint format, and a hyper-transparent approach to service design, we drafted a regulatory town plan in just five days. The whole event unfolded on Facebook, and you can still check out the page for the Kamo Place Race to see how it went.

I have it on good authority that the average transport engineering conference is, … well, … fairly average. When I was first contacted by one of the IPENZ Transportation Group’s conference organisers (and former work colleague who shall remain nameless), he confessed that there were only so many presentations on…

“Um, right, okay, cool. Have you been there yet?” — That was often the first reaction of people who had been to Te Karaka, immediately after telling them about this awesome project I am doing with this amazing community. I won’t lie. That response was a little disconcerting as far as first reactions go. The matching expression on their face…