The urban intensification proponent urges Aucklanders to embrace the city's new unitary plan.

New Zealand is a very young country by world standards, and like most adolescents is conflicted.

Developers are convinced New Zealand needs to intensify development within  existing cities to get the national economy moving but passionate heritage and community groups are often anti-intensificaiton and vocal about their desire to keep suburbs unaffected.

Horror stories of promising property developments falling over have been hitting news headlines, along with gloomy figures that show construction of new homes and sales of existing homes have dropped. Meanwhile, the population is at 4.3 million and rising.

While National’s promised changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) should improve consent processes and costs, delays have been driving developers up the wall and holding up subdivisions in recent years.