Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Robert Heinlein on Bad Luck

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) is fond of this quote:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”

Saturday, November 22, 2014

A Little Battle hymn

What Labour needs is a Rallying Cry, so, to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, here's one.  That first line is filched from Tom Waits' 'Whistling past the Graveyard', in case y'all was a' wonderin'....

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the draining of the ditch
Which some aver we dug ourselves And filled with Carp and Bitch
But excavation's over it's a Brave New World of which
I'm Leader! Marching On.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Tory! Tory! Sock it to ya,
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
The Left is marching on!

The housing bubble rattles on, All FHB's aghast
Their Kiwisaver pot falls short of Land Inflation's Blast
The worker suffer at their desks, Poor dears, their lot is Cast
With Labour's fate. March on!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Labour's here to listen to ya
If you're Boss-class, gonna screw ya
O-ver you, we'll March On!

The cleaners and the rest-home workers slave away each day
Their toothless unions cry aloud 'We can't live off their pay'
The power bills are swingeing, and the rents have shot away,
The Destitute March On!

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Labour's here to dish out Moo-lah
Where it comes from, well, Petunia,
Trust Us, March blindly On!

Monday, November 10, 2014

RMA and Housing Unaffordability

 This (RMA and housing unaffordability being linked) is a sad but in hindsight predictable trajectory.

I won't retrace all the steps (I've thoughtfully assembled them all here) but two great streams are evident.

1 - The RMA was intended from the outset to be Effects-based.  This should have meant that small effects = wave it through, effects offset by e.g. paying off those affected = problemo solvato, and in general, a risk-based approach to everything.  Small risks = small costs, quick process times, small economic externalities.

But the TLA staff of that time, and indeed ever since, would not adjust to this (admittedly, radical) methodology.  They had always run off Plans, Zones, Rules, Regulations and in general, 'things wot could be looked up'.   Risk assessment and judgements about Effects, (including the first and most obvious question:  'So What?' ), were and remain completely beyond their training, intellectual capacity, experience, and inclination.  So none of the effects-based stuff really ever happened except for nationally significant cases.  Where, and by no coincidence, the intellectual horsepower was indeed available.

So, in reaction and by (staff, not elected Councillor) design, what we got saddled with was what we have (and which the Productivity Commish has brilliantly skewered in their latest tome):
  • Arbitrary, lengthy, costly and opaque processes
  • Thousands-pages long Schemes and Plans which take expensive consultants weeks of paid-for time to interpret for applicants
  • Schemes and Plans which rely totally on spatial zoning, massive schedules of haram and halal uses, (most of which are cheerfully ignored by those with high fences and quiet work habits):  the old, repealed Town and Country Planning Act schtick, revivified and shambling around like - well, in fact, Being - a baleful zombie attack.
  • Schemes and Plans which are frequently internally inconsistent, are subject to constant amendment via scheme changes and case law, and are, maise naturellement,  wildly inconsistent across TLA boundaries.
  • All of which imposes simply staggering economic deadweight costs on unfortunates such as your good self, who get to wrestle the Hydra and pass on the associated costs into house /plot purchase prices.

2 - As if this was not sufficient, there is a further, more subtle and even more dispersed economic externalilty caused by the TLA's adherence to spatial zones.

Zones and monoculture uses, cause commutes.  It's as sad and as simple as that.

So by not being able to live over the shop, bunk down in an employer-supplied donga in the far corner of the yard on a construction site or meatworks, live a bike ride away from the mall, walk to the brewery, and in general do everything that any of us Boomers can remember from their youth, there is Cost upon Cost imposed upon, oddly enough, the least able to accommodate it:  the young, poor, indifferently skilled, or really old.

In darkest Invergiggle in the late 50's, within walking distance of our Ythan Street home there was:
  • A church across the intersection
  • A fibrous plasterer's yard next to that
  • A garage-sized small grocery right next door (milk dipped out of the can, flour out of the bin)
  • A flour mill
  • A butcher
  • A fishmonger
  • A primary school, a Tech, an intermediate and a High school
  • A railway line (unfenced)
  • A Municipal Baths
But, in them far-off days, TLA's did roads, streets, drains, three waters, bridges and a very few Parks.  Nothing else.

Mixed uses.  No apparent zones.  And, hey, it worked a treat.  Until the Planners and Improvers (UK motto"  'We Finish what the Luftwaffe Started!") got a hold of everything.

For our Own Good, of course.

Monday, November 03, 2014

Plans 'Inadequate' - Gubmint to CCC

Response to a Stuff article:  Govt-slams-planning-changes-as-inadequate

The plannerista do not understand four fundamental things about our world:

1 - the RMA talks only about Effects of any activity.  There is nothing, zip, zilch, nada, about spatial Zones and other squiggles on maps.  Zones are an artifact of the old Town and Country Planning Acts which were repealed coupla decades ago.  Time the real intent of the RMA, there from Day 1 - to measure Effects and effects alone - was recognised in practise.

2 - Economics 101.  Several effects:

2a:  Zoning (say a rural/urban boundary) immediately causes massive economic value movements:  urban zoned land completely unimproved is worth around 10 times rural land.  Guess who pays the difference?  Guess who benefits from the unearned increment?

(This is, BTW,  a prime driver of housing unaffordability:  your 600 sq m section is worth, at rural land prices of $50K/ha, allowing 1/3 loss to roads, reserves etc, around $4,550.  Guess who Pays)

2b:  Time=money - a fact universally acknowledged, especially by your Banker.  Yet planning, consenting, inspecting and other Council flapdoodlery cheerfully injects massive Time into processes.  This causes costs but, quelle surprise, not to the Councils.  So they have zero incentive to minimise Time, yet are oblivious to the costs caused elsewhere.  Ask any builder or developer what these delays cost.  Guess who Pays?

2c:  There is a massive number of staff, all beavering away at monstrosities like the District Plans.  This has two results, neither useful.  One is that rates and/or recoveries need to fund a large staff base.  Guess who Pays?  The second is that very little actual value is added from all this busywork.  Take a single-storey residential build.  The risk is absolutely minimal:  no-one was killed in the quake sequences because of catastrophic structural failure (exogenous factors, chimneys and URM excepted) in a single-storey house, yet most were either unconsented (too old) or lightly consented (1950's to 1980's).  Added value is negligible, cost is substantial.  Guess who pays?  A risk-based approach would be preferable.  Both of these outcomes can be classed as Deadweight in an economic sense (ask Dr Google for a definition).

3:  Plans. regs, and other screeds of paper, have become so voluminous that even the Plannerista cannot always follow them.  The Plans are frequently outmoded, internally inconsistent, or simply badly expressed.  The response is - always - "well, this stuff is So Complex that we recommend you use Consultants, have a long series of Pre-Application Meetings, and we'll come to some arbitrary decision in six or seventeen months".  Guess who Pays.

4:  The pity of it all is that, for all the Planning, Planners and Plans, they still don't understand that Councils compete with one another.  While CCC spnds $33m on the Plan Revamp, Waimak, Selwyn. Ashurton and Hurunui DC's are busy eating CCC's lunch, as evidenced by consents issued, population shifts, and expressed human preferences.  After all, why subject yourself to a Planning Nightmare, when just across yet another squiggle on a map, a much easier future awaits?  Preferences trump Plans.....

Now, what would a sensible Plan say?

Build anything Anywhere, subject only to the RMA and Building Acts.

But that is far too sensible, and besides, scores of Planners have a Patch to Protect.

Theirs.

Guess who Pays?

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

A Fool speaks out

The Left Honorable Sir Larry Fool, president-for-life of the Small-Nation Association For Urbanista (SNAFU), has taken strong exception to Wild Bill Dipton's recent pronouncements about the role of Councils in causing various social woes.
 
The Fool notes, in protest, that Councils cannot be expected to take into account the economic consequences of activities such as planning, subdividing, consenting, building, or inspection.
 
'Our duty is quite clear', he said, hands visibly trembling and ashen faced.
 
'It's to minimise anything - Anything - that falls into the 'Rates Required' bucket in our LTP's.  Our democratically elected masters - Councillors - have made this consistently clear.  And who are We - mere unelected Minions - to subvert Democracy by thinking about anything else?'
 
'And, so there,  it isn't as though we have any economic expertise anyway.  Why, the sight of anyone with Economic Credentials throughout Local Gubmint, is as rare as Rocking-horse Poo.  (Which, by the way and let me be Perfectly Clear, is banned from deposit on Roads, Verges and Public Parks, anyway in the interests of Public Health and Safety - have you any idea how slippery that stuff is?)'
 
' Until such time as we have a better understanding of such arcane things as why it happens that land one side of a squiggle on a map is ten times the value of that on the Other side - a subject that will take a great deal of expert assessment, public consultation, numerous reports, and finally a considered decision to find the nearest carpet edge and sweep the whole stinking mess under it - '
'Hey, wait - is that mike ON?  Right, boyo, I'm outta here, and one word, ONE WORD in the Media, and , and, - well I'll never give You another interview again.'

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

TLA's are oblivious to two aspects: UOMI and CG created by lines on maps

There are, RMA reforms apart, two lines of action available to start to effect the needed changes.

1 - impose a UOMI calculation and reporting regime on Councils.  At present  (and quite apart from the injection by TLA's of direct cost into e.g. land subdivision via DC's and other levies) there is no measurement of the economic costs TLA's impose by the injection of Time into processes.  Most land development involves significant, early costs, and rather extended timeframes.  So, as a thought experiment, a land purchase of $10M on Day 1 of a seven-year process, at a commercial WACC of 10%, is going to double that single cost by the time the seven years are up.  Land $10M, interest on that another $10M.



TLA's are oblivious to this rather basic Time=Money equation.



It's time they were made to think it through, measure it, report it and (another delicious thought) be taxed on it.



2 - It is a truth universally acknowledged that a squiggle on a zoning map creates CG out of thin air for owners on the right side of said squiggle.  The Productivity Commission puts the ratio (measured a few clicks either side of a MUL/RUB) at 8 to 10 times.  So a rural raw land price of $50K/ha transmogrifies into $500K/ha.

Cui bono?

The landowner on the urban side of the RUB.
Via revaluations, sales, hearsay and pure osmosis, every existing landowner in (in order) the vicinity, the suburb, the city gets an unearned CG kick on the land value alone.
The Council, via rates levied on the now increased values
Who pays?

FHB's
To the extent that value increases factor into rates and then rents, Renters
Who mostly comprises FHB's and renters?

the lower deciles.


So, a Re-distribution of said CG would seem to be in order.  But as a CGT on property-holders seems politically out of the question, complex, easily avoidable (e.g. by never selling), why not head to the Source of the CG:  the TLA map-spigglers?

Tax away, from the Councils who create it, the CG their MUL's, RUB's and Zones create.
Make it a Deemed value, using e.g. a Productivity Commish-style annual survey of current market rates to avoid the 'realised increment' loophole on a CGT.
Use the taxed-away CG to pursue policy that actually assists FHB's:  multi-proof factory builds would be a good and do-able start.
This action will, and possibly quite rapidly, significantly alter the incentive structures around TLA's, their Plannerators and Zonerizers, and several useful outcomes might even come to pass:

Zones, MUL's, RUB's cease to be attractive and the drawers-up of these economic distortions could be released to productive work:  factory builds for FHB's for example.
Environmental effects can be handled by the RMA - that's why it is worded the way it is.  A Build-Anywhere-Appropriate ethic would soon arise, and drive away the current 'Build-Anywhere-We-Unelected-Staffers-Tell-You-To schtick.
The judicious re-distribution of the Confiscated Council-Generated CG's (perhaps we need a new acronym:  CCGCG?) to Worthy Causes would soon arise:  politicians are if nothing else, expert at sniffing out the best electoral results for a given dollar.
The taxed Councils, meanwhile, would after the initial shock passed, quickly realise that rating so as to penalise the land-bankers who are sitting on perfectly buildable land, to recover that tax just levied, could be a useful spur to getting it built on....


Now this is all just a rough draft, but what's not to like in the general concept?

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Why does an urban section cost $200K plus???

Posted as a Stuff comment to a David Killick article.

This is something the Productivity Commission noted in their Housing Affordability report. Land values 2 km outside a rural/urban zone boundary are something like 10% of the urban side of that squiggle on a map. 

Good rural land is worth around $50K/ha - that's $5/sq metre. Allow 33% loss for roads, utilities and reserves, and that one hectare will yield 11 600 sq m plots: that's a raw land price of 50,000/11 or $4,545 for your urban section.

 What pumps it up to (typically) $180-$300K?

 Well, first of all, that zoning boundary instantly inflates the raw land cost by say 8 times: $36K

 1 - Time taken - interest will double any early costs (like land purchase, survey, consenting etc) every 6-7 years. Allowing say $5K/plot for plans, survey etc, so land value is $41K. Allow 7 years from pony paddock to sale, and the raw land cost is now $82K for that one plot.

 2 - Council development contributions. Ostensibly for reserves and green space, these have blown out over the years to include all manner of social and cultural objectives. Allow $40K per section. Raw land cost is now $122K/plot.

 3 - Of course there will be services, roads, etc to apportion. Allow $50K per plot. Raw cost is now $172K/plot.

 4 - Nobody does any of this for free, so allow a developer's margin of 20% or $34K/plot. Cost is now $206K/plot.

 5 - And then there's GST on the sale price at 15% so add $31K tax" plot price is now $237K.

 See? The magic of compounding.

 Now if any developers are reading this, I issue a challenge. As a comment, tell us a typical per-plot breakdown......

 And if any planners are reading this, tell us, with a straight face, that your squiggles on maps don't have an inflationary effect on raw land prices, and have arguably set off this baleful ratchet effect.....

 And if any consent wallahs are reading this, tell us that injecting Time into processes does not incur use-of-money costs via direct interest on capital committed, or opportunity cost if funded from raw cashflow (could have banked that money and gotten interest).

 It's a simply dreadful cycle of local authorities' economic cluelessness, I'm afraid. Firstly by creating artificial boundaries which create capital gain for the landholders and a direct cost to home purchasers, secondly by injecting direct cost (DC's, consent fees, etc), and thirdly by injecting Time (= money in the real world) into each and every process step.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Councils and Consents

The issue with consents is quite simple:  there is zero risk-assessment in the process, the way Councils run them.  Schedule 1 IS risk-based:  it exempts small structures, unattached, garden sheds and low decks.  

But Councils are terrified of a risk-based system where low-risk=low fees, minimal inspection, and hence lower Power to Obstruct.  

And one can imagine their intake of breath once they realise that the world is gonna haveta go multi-proof consent (Councils don't get a look in except for foundations), for factory-built houses, to end-run the slung-up-by-drug-addled-hammer-hands-at-massive-expense approach currently en vogue.

Christchurch has demonstrated to the world that single-storey residential construction, whatever the method (and of course excluding URM chimneys and exogenous impacts like rockfalls) is perfectly safe in a risk sense:  it has not killed one single person.

Despite the many and varied 'qualifications' of the builders.

Despite the fact that many such houses (Norman Kirk's was the most famous) were buil;t by the owners.

Despite the fact that many of those houses did indeed become uninhabitable:  they took the hits BUT their inhabitants did not.   That's the definition of 'failing gracefully' which is the point of most design.

And despite about 60-70% of the housing stock being either unconsented at all (too old), consented during the post-war to 1980's period (when TLA's were responsive beasts staffed by common-sense folk).

The remainder, of course were consented (lately, expensively and interminably) by overstaffed empires full of cardy-wearing nit-pickers whose ideas of customer service came straight out of the Obstructiveness for Dummies playbook.

Gah.....

Additional note:  Schedule 1 Building Act 2004 has the following (and, I'm told, rarely used) clause (my italics):



2Territorial and regional authority discretionary exemptions(a)(b)
  • Any building work in respect of which the territorial authority or regional authority considers that a building consent is not necessary for the purposes of this Act because the authority considers that—
    • the completed building work is likely to comply with the building code; or
    • if the completed building work does not comply with the building code, it is unlikely to endanger people or any building, whether on the same land or on other property.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Another cold-eyed but well-argued Spengler piece

In this magisterial article, David P Goldman argues that America has bungled everything for a decade-and-a-half, and is frankly now incapable of affecting much in the world.  Worse, and this has been an emerging theme, the USA has so burnt its old allies, from the Saudis through the EU to the UK, that it will find out about stuff after the deals have been struck, and after the events have occurred.
No-one could have walked into the Oval Office in 2001 and told then president George W Bush that his job was to manage the inevitable decline of Muslim civilization: to humiliate the Iranians, to hobble the contending parties and to leave as much power as possible in the hands of abhorrent military or monarchical governments. No-one could have gone to American universities and recruited the soldiers, spies and diplomats to execute a plan which preferred the slow and inevitable spread of human misery to a cataclysmic alternative.
In another thread from his recent thinking, he argues
It has become nearly impossible in America to ask the question: Which cultures are viable and which are not? Individuals of all cultures are viable Americans, but that is not necessarily true of the culture they left behind. 
This question, of course, is one that NZ must increasingly ask itself, as we are confronted with visibly destructive (albeit and mercifully, not widely geographically distributed) cultures.

Spengler's view is simple:
It is a fool’s errand to stabilize them; the best one can do is to prevent their problems from spilling over onto us. 

Friday, April 25, 2014

CBD rebuild stall - blamed on Private Developers!

There are two very fundamental reasons why the commercial rebuild of the Christchurch CBD has not occurred.

1 - the precincts idea and the amalgamation of smaller into larger titles, and the expectation that one Ring to Rule each Block could somehow thereby be plucked from the rubble. This is a deeply uncommercial proposition, because any development, large or small, needs 60-80% commitment from prospective tenants before funders will look at it. That has been the consistent stumbling-block for every single development. Even our sentimentalist (Sir Bob Jones' characterisation) who is building the Terrace complex has tripped over this chunk of reality. And the time taken to demolish, amalgamate, issue RFP's and consider the results, takes much Time. And time=money, a fact which CCDU and CERA are blissfully unaware of: their salaries arrive with the regularity of sunrise. So construction costs inflation rattles along at 10-15% pa: so a replacement build of say $30m in late 2011, is going to cost $42.5m today (assuming cost inflations of 10, 12, 15% over each of those three years respectively).

2 - Retail in particular has to sell stuff Today, to be able to pay staff next Week. So denying retailers access to their inventory, tools of trade, and back office systems in the early days of the CBD lockdown, was always a lose-lose action. Denied a living, there are only two choices: relocate and start afresh, or fold entirely and go work for someone else. Both have of course occurred: the business deaths from the lockdown are still being counted, and the New CBD - the Sydenham/Addington/Middleton/Riccarton/Hornby/Airport arc, plus the block bounded roughly by Victoria St/Cambridge Tce/Avon River/Bealey Ave - is roaring ahead and is extremely disinclined to decamp to some Precinct with uncertain foot traffic, years of construction disruption, and building values and hence rentals, 2-4 times their current outgoings. So, and inevitably, the Justice (Government) Precinct is the only one which seems to have tenants with deep enough pockets to stand the costs. And those pockets are, of course, full of your and my tax dollars, quel surprise.

This will all settle down in the decades to come, of course. But the notion that the Precincts will survive in the big-block dream sense, is surely fading away. It will be replaced by the Jane Jacobs (the Death and Life of great American Cities author) patchwork: many small plots, many smaller developments, each rhyming with its neighbours, and at human scale.

So, the Baron Haussmann notions are going to have to be deep-sixed, and sanity prevail.

Eventually.

But not before the current crop of ineptocrats have driven their steamroller right into the swamp.

Friday, March 07, 2014

Mike Greer and Spanbuild to do Factory House Builds

Great news. Factory builds are tighter, more accurate, use CNC machines instead of drug-addled hammer hands, and are manufactured under cover. Same as cars and boats, actually.

Yes, of course the factory builds will put some people out of work. That's precisely why the unit costs will be smaller, on the sort of volumes Mike Greer is talking about.

Another thing the article probably did not twig to is (and I'm guessing here...) the enterprise will be self-certified. No mo' CCC contracted-in inspectors needed for a Certificate of Compliance! Which is really only a ten-year warranty anyway. Heck, Mitsi cars offer that....

Now, to persuade the Clueless City Council not to levy the insane Development Contributions taxes, and we'd have ourselves a true game changer. Mike Greer (Press article coupla years back) estimated $75K per house for CCC charges. Roll That back too, and watch the punters roll through the doors!

Or, and sadly much more likely, watch from the CCC sidelines as Selwyn and Waimak take advantage, and continue to eat CCC's lunch....http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/business/the-rebuild/9800386/Factory-built-homes-on-way

Friday, February 28, 2014

MUL's, RUB's, Zones and other Unearned Capital Gain drivers

The thing the Clueless Councils have never twigged to, is the economic effect of a zoning squiggle on a map.

The Productivity Commission Final Housing Affordability Report estimates the rural/urban price differential for Auckland at roughly 10 times - P9 - a direct quote follows:

"In Auckland the MUL is a binding constraint on the supply of land for urban growth and has increased section prices within the city. This is indicated by the large differential between land prices 2 kilometres inside and 2 kilometres outside the MUL (Figure 0.9), which suggests that Auckland Council’s proposed compact city approach, based on containment of the city, undermines the aspiration of affordable housing."


Effects:
  • Instant CG handed to the landowners of 'urban zone', the moment the squiggle is put into effect. Rural land prices (say, top-end dairy) run around $50K/ha. Urban undeveloped land prices, using the PC's figures, start at around $500K/ha.
  • The Urban land price (thus inflated) transmits successively across the market for the adjacent area, the suburb, and the city. After all, if you owned a shack on a formerly rural plot, for which you paid $17,500 in the days of yore, whaddareya gonna sell it for now that it's Urban zoned, and the neighbours on a subdivision where average house/land prices are $750,000?
  • The price is also transmitted directly via the operation of land agents (recent sales), city valuations (entire areas, also based on sales and rules of thumb), and hearsay (did ya hear what ol' Bloggsie got for that darned Shack???)
  • Every such price increment is a minor CG (for the accounting types, a Revaluation rather than a Cost asset component), and added across all sites, this becomes a substantial sum.
  • Now, what do we expect our FHB to buy? Why, a Modern Shack, at Urban land prices which inevitably contain a massive CG component (as distinct to actual rural-land raw costt). And pay for that via a mortgage, delivered by bankstaz eager for the interest revenue stream on that inflated sum, whereupon as much will be expended in Interest as was paid in Principal.

So ignoring, as the Clueless Councils do, the economic effects of artificial squiggles on maps, nevertheless has real-world results, which in the way of this wicked old world, fall mostly heavily upon the young, the poor and the start-ups.

The accounting equation is startlingly simple.
Starting Position:  Raw per ha cost of rural land:
50K debit, asset.  Other side: 50K credit - Landowners equity.

Event 1:   Revalued once urban boundary moved: 
Debit 450K Asset Value      Credit    450K landowners equity Revaluation Reserve  (this is Unearned, just a book entry)

Event 2:  Owner sells the plot:
Debit Landowners Bank Account 500K (which for youse non accounting types is a Credit on der Bank Statement - yum yum), Credit Asset Value 500K

The Asset is now zero for the original landowner, because it's sold to someone else.
(That somone else (assume paid in cash) will then have a Starting Position of:
Debit Asset $500K, Credit Bank 500K.
Note that this new owner has had to account, and fork over cash, at the cost price - this is how CG crystallises).

Original Owner's equity is still 500K - it's now just in the form of Cash, not Fixed Asset. In effect, the $450K Revaluation Reserve has been cashed up.....hence my characterisation as Capital Gain (CG).

Unearned by the original owner.

Untaxed by the Benificent IRD (if the landowner is correctly structured...).

Placed there by a squiggle on a map caused by Planning Fads in a Clueless Council.

Multiply this small but perfectly formed example, by the number of land plots in Auckland, to form some opinion as to the extent of the Unearned Capital Gain which resides within the Cost of Housing.


Placed there, unasked for, by the Economic Cluelessness of Councils, and their Zonerating and Plannerising Teams of Earnest Drones.


And we call this 'Godzone'......

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Roads, Cars, Tiwai and EV's: a Singularity approaches?

I'm always amused by the antics of the anti-roads brigade.  My initial reaction is simple:  don't these clowns realise that public transport (buses, taxis, and rentals) plus essential freight (food, exports, FMCG to yer local supermarket) all need - Roads?  I mean, whadda they expect - a Light Rail branch to every shopping mall?  Pallets of food (organic, naturally) carried hither and yon, on Cargo Bikes?   Bikes and rails chuffing up hills like wot they have in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland?    Gaah....

So it is with Great Glee that I stumble across an article trumpeting yet another breakthrough in EV's which leads straight on to thoughts about an Impending Singularity here in Godzone.

Just the facts, ma'am.

  1. Tiwai Point smelter (Rio Tinto owned) is marginally economic:  it's COGS is around $USD16-1800 per unit, while the world price for the stuff hovers around $USD1900.  Once transport is factored in, it's hard to make a buck where SALES = COGS, no matter how much volume ya pump through. 
  2. Tiwai is a way of exporting electricity, as the NBR article notes.  It is around 1/7th (that's 14.28% for youse metric types) of total NZ generation capacity.
  3. Now, let's assume that Tiwai (disclosure, I carted  fabricated steel stuff there in ma Tonka Toy phase during TP's construction, so I have an interest in the show, plus I'm a Meridian shareholder) closes sometime between 2017 and 2022.  That releases a lotta electrons from potline slavery.  Hmmm.  What to use 'em for?
  4. EV's, of course.  My guess is that, over that same planning horizon, the likes of Zytek, the hundreds of Chinese makers of everything from forklifts to trucks to cars to scooters, the Japanese, not to mention Ford, Toyota, GM and Tesla etc - will have such volumes and width of product lines available, that EV's will be the Cars and Trucks of the new era.
  5. So we have ourselves a Potential Singularity here:  the EV cavalry (vehicles, power supplies, roads) ride into town at just the point where dino juice starts its inevitable price climb/volume degrade.
  6. Hmmm.  I'd been hankering after a small hybrid (Prius C or similar).  Mebbe I'll just wait and see:  run the existing fleet into the ground....and go pure EV, to heck with hybrids.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

The stock reply to the Unaffordable Houses threads everywhere...

So, go convince your local Clueless Council not to do the two things that have done most to make houses unaffordable:

1 - draw zoning squiggles on planning maps, thereby ensuring a 10 times raw land price differential between one side of the fence (rural, no builds) and t'other (urban, build away). The difference is pocketed by the lucky land-owner, and guess who pays? Right, the eventual house/section buyer.

2 - levy development taxes on every section/house. Mike Greer, here in Christchurch, estimates direct Council costs as $75K per house/land sale. Guess who pays. Right, you, the house/land buyer, and with oncosts, interest, developers margin on top.

Of course, banks just love increased costs, too, but they aren't the ones who set this whole dreadful ratchet effect in motion.

The Economically Clueless Councils did.

There. Fix these two things, get Affordable houses.

Easy, weren't it?

Wednesday, February 05, 2014

The Christchurch rebuild.

Can Cera handle the Christchurch rebuild?

The rebuild has already happened in commercial terms.

The New CBD (the Sydenham/Addington/Middleton/Riccarton/Hornby/Airport arc, plus the block bounded roughly by Victoria St/Cambridge Tce/Avon River/BealeyAve ) are all humming away.

And, fairly precisely, because they don't have the CCDU and CERA trying to micro-manage these areas.

No commercial enterprise that's survived (and thanks to the Old CBD debacle, some have not) is terribly eager to get back to the Old CBD, and pay 40-150% more in rent.

So that leaves the Precincts as a Government-dominated area: Health, Education, Justice, IRD etc. There will, of course, be ancillary businesses around: lawyers and maybe accountants, and anyone else whose revenue streams flow primarily from the taxpayers generous teat.

And there will, inevitably, be the hospitality and tourism sectors, and with the establishments which seek to scratch the itches that that combination of Government drones, tourists, convention-goers etc, will have.

But the real commercial pulse of the city beats elsewhere...and has done for three years.

It's just taken the clueless empire-builders this long to notice.....

Monday, January 13, 2014

Families determine academic progress, and lifetime earning capacity

In a single, well-referenced article, George Will nails the causes of inequality.

Families.  And, to a lesser but still significant extent, peers.

So all of that blather about 'the Gubmint's gotta Do something about ', completely misses the point.  External agents (Governments, Councils) can do little or nothing to create a positive influence, because the roots of inequality, and hence poverty, lie deep within the oldest structures of them all:  the family, its immediate context (tribe, location, peers) and its culture (what we do around here).

Sunday, January 05, 2014

The Christchurch CBD Precincts

The road to hell is paved by Good Intentions (not an original thought) but let's count some of these 'intentions'.

- Commerce needs to be planned. By Planners. With Degrees. So let's hire a few dozen and see what they produce. And, as John McCrone notes, what they've duly produced is a whole bunch of pretty drawings, some spatial thoughts, and little else. Whereas, as anyone with commercial experience knows, a classic strategy for building a business is simply to start any old where, NOW. Then, constantly tune products, prices, places and propositions,. That way. people (customers) actually shape your business into something that is good for them, and in the process make you profitable. But this approach (which relies on short feedback loops, business nous and a willingness to abandon unprofitable ventures) is simply not understood by Planners, who have rarely run a business in their short, cloistered lives.

- Spatial Plans (the frames, precincts etc) have a nice logic to them, and feed the illusion that Progress is being Made. This is largely what Share-an-Idea turned into - precincts, compulsory purchases to enable a pure occupation of the spaces, and yet more pretty drawings. But, (and John, this is an avenue to explore) the precincts seem destined to be inhabited by Government (the only large tenant with deep enough pockets) - so Justice, Health, IRD, WINZ, and their accessories - cafes, meeting spaces, are destined to be the main occupants of said Frames. The collateral damage (NG gallery, the car yards, any business still hanging on in there) is already apparent. And because the per-square rents for these large chunks of land and their largish buildings are so large compared to those in suburban and new-CBD (Sydenham/Addington/Middleton/Riccarton/Hornby/Airport arc, plus the Oxford Terrace to Bealey Ave strip (Montreal/Victoria street, non CCDU...) locations, most potential tenants outside Government have opted for the lower rents and immediate availability there. This may change, but only at the rate of contractual review. And the high old-CBD rents, identified as the commercial killer three years ago by the original Sir Bob (Jones), will surely not have gone down in the meantime.

- the notion in John's article about the creatives going first is a partial and I would argue incorrect rendition of an idea better developed in Stewart Brand's (SB put together the Whole Earth Catalogue last century) 'How Buildings Learn'. Brand's argument was that creatives need cheap, uncared-for spaces to colonise, and bend to their own whims. This kicks off a cycle of what John's article rightly notes as 'Buzz', money starts to take an interest, the nature of the area slowly but subtly changes, the creatives move on to more old cheap premises and the cycle turns. But an overall regeneration has occurred.

These spaces, of course, (High Street was a local example) are precisely the 'old dungers' that fell down. And no-one is planning more old dungers - they will by definition be new dungers, and not cheap ones at that. So bye-bye creatives, especially since spaces where, as Brand notes 'the landlord doesn't care what you do in there' are not going to be countenanced by new landlords, CCDU, CERA or whoever. Imagine the EPIC building getting modified by its tenants (as was the famous innovation hub that started it all: MIT's Building 20). Hmm, not gonna happen, is it.

- the large Precincts run exactly counter to an interesting streetscape. Jane Jacobs, a half century ago, identified one key to varied-but-rhyming streetscapes: small plots, many owners, hence many ideas and the ability to put them into practice. The precincts are the polar opposite of this.

Finally, a quote from the great lady herself:

“There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.”
The road to hell is paved by Good Intentions (not an original thought) but let's count some of these 'intentions'.

- Commerce needs to be planned. By Planners. With Degrees. So let's hire a few dozen and see what they produce. And, as John McC notes, what they've duly produced is a whole bunch of pretty drawings, some spatial thoughts, and little else. Whereas, as anyone with commercial experience knows, a classic strategy for building a business is simply to start any old where, NOW. Then, constantly tune products, prices, places and propositions,. That way. people (customers) actually shape your business into something that is good for them, and in the process make you profitable. But this approach (which relies on short feedback loops, business nous and a willingness to abandon unprofitable ventures) is simply not understood by Planners, who have rarely run a business in their short, cloistered lives.

- Spatial Plans (the frames, precincts etc) have a nice logic to them, and feed the illusion that Progress is being Made. This is largely what Share-an-Idea turned into - precincts, compulsory purchases to enable a pure occupation of the spaces, and yet more pretty drawings. But, (and John, this is an avenue to explore) the precincts seem destined to be inhabited by Government (the only large tenant with deep enough pockets) - so Justice, Health, IRD, WINZ, and their accessories - cafes, meeting spaces, are destined to be the main occupants of said Frames. The collateral damage (NG gallery, the car yards, any business still hanging on in there) is already apparent. And because the per-square rents for these large chunks of land and their largish buildings are so large compared to those in suburban and new-CBD (Sydenham/Addington/Middleton/Riccarton/Hornby/Airport arc, plus the Oxford Terrace to Bealey Ave strip (Montreal/Victoria street, non CCDU...) locations, most potential tenants outside Government have opted for the lower rents and immediate availability there. This may change, but only at the rate of contractual review. And the high old-CBD rents, identified as the commercial killer three years ago by the original Sir Bob (Jones), will surely not have gone down in the meantime.

- the notion in John's article about the creatives going first is a partial and I would argue incorrect rendition of an idea better developed in Stewart Brand's (SB put together the Whole Earth Catalogue last century) 'How Buildings Learn'. Brand's argument was that creatives need cheap, uncared-for spaces to colonise, and bend to their own whims. This kicks off a cycle of what John's article rightly notes as 'Buzz', money starts to take an interest, the nature of the area slowly but subtly changes, the creatives move on to more old cheap premises and the cycle turns. But an overall regeneration has occurred.

These spaces, of course, (High Street was a local example) are precisely the 'old dungers' that fell down. And no-one is planning more old dungers - they will by definition be new dungers, and not cheap ones at that. So bye-bye creatives, especially since spaces where, as Brand notes 'the landlord doesn't care what you do in there' are not going to be countenanced by new landlords, CCDU, CERA or whoever. Imagine the EPIC building getting modified by its tenants (as was the famous innovation hub that started it all: MIT's Building 20). Hmm, not gonna happen, is it.

- the large Precincts run exactly counter to an interesting streetscape. Jane Jacobs, a half century ago, identified one key to varied-but-rhyming streetscapes: small plots, many owners, hence many ideas and the ability to put them into practice. The precincts are the polar opposite of this.

Finally, a quote from the great lady herself:

“There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it, and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans.”