Dedicated to democracy, enjoying and restoring the Mahurangi, meaningful climate action, and curiosity—
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Sustainable management in Rodney
Rodney District Development Design Guide What is social, economic, and cultural well-being? The Resource Management Act definition of sustainable management (section 5) focuses on social, economic, and cultural well-being. This is a very broad outcome and people with...
Urban design as a way to balance all interests
Rodney District Development Design Guide What is urban design? Urban design is broadly defined within the Ministry for the Environment’s Urban Design Protocol: Urban design is concerned with the design of the buildings, places, spaces and networks that make up our...
Nuclear power fan-death phobia
It will shortly be four years shy of half a century. In November 1965, the United States president’s science advisory committee warned: “Carbon dioxide is being added to the earth’s atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas at the rate of…
100% pure space mission or motorway madness
It would cost about 7% of the planned Pūhoi–Wellsford motorway. But rather than generate more greenhouse gases and trust to luck that its ministers will never have to face an international climate court, the government could fund an urgently…
Fascination with the beauty of models
There is nothing put at risk, bar the possible dashing of preconceptions. Such is the beauty of models; they allow scenarios to be explored virtually, at very little cost—once the software has been written, the model can be run again and again with…
No time to lose picking winners
Dogma continues to dog civilisation. An example is the market-forces mantra that governments should resile from picking winners, because they invariably get it wrong. Such dogma flies in the face of the wealth of examples of governments getting it gloriously and...
Visitor strategy vision more of a mission
As visions go, it is less than galvanising. It presumably is not intended to form part of any promotional material for the area. Aside from being bland, the 58-word vision statement set out in the draft Pūhoi to Pakiri Region Visitor Strategy 2012–2017 could apply to...
Shweeb and/or rail-saving trail-with-rail
Aotearoa must urgently re-invent its tourism model. Currently it is heavily dependent upon air travel, which will increasingly become cripplingly expensive thanks to peaked oil and user-pays for greenhouse gases. Aside from the obvious need for more…