Auckland councillors decide today whether to strip apartment zoning from the bus route between Howick, Meadowlands and Botany.
“We are really focusing that density where there is infrastructure, where there is the water infrastructure, where there are buses, trains,” committee chair Richard Hills told the New Zealand Herald.
The zoning is part of Plan Change 120, the housing plan the Council put out for public feedback in October 2025.
It would allow apartment blocks along busy bus routes across the city.
Two of those routes are in east Auckland, Howick to Botany via Meadowlands, and Botany to Manukau via Ormiston Road.
The Howick Local Board identified the first of those as running through Sandspit, Litten and Millhouse Roads and asked for that zoning to be removed.
In the same resolution Howick Local Board described the zoning as allowing buildings of up to six storeys which it was concerned about.
Council officials have now recommended taking the zoning off both routes.
Their reason is a general one rather than anything specific to Howick.
Apartment zoning along bus routes is being kept within 10km of the city centre and dropped everywhere further out.
A route between New Lynn and Henderson is being dropped for the same reason.
For homeowners on those streets, nothing changes.
Their properties keep the zoning they have now, unless they are separately affected by flooding, coastal erosion or special character rules.
Pakuranga is affected in a different way.
Buildings within walking distance of the bus station could have reached 10 storeys under the original plan.
Officials now propose capping them at six.
Howick Village is not affected by any of this.
Government rules require the Council to allow more housing around town centres, and officials propose leaving that part of the plan alone.
Howick Local Board’s resolution records that central Howick Village is zoned as a town centre, while arguing that the zoning was wrong when it was applied.
It says the village was reclassified from a local centre to a town centre on criteria that were incorrectly applied, and has asked officials to look at reviewing it.
The distinction matters, because zoning around local centres is being taken out of the plan entirely.
Howick Local Board asked for one other change that the report does not answer.
It wanted some of the apartment zoning around Howick Village, on the northern slopes from Mellons Bay Road to Sale Street and on Ridge Road near Stockade Hill, moved to Meadowlands instead.
Howick’s ward councillors, Maurice Williamson and Bo Burns, sit on the committee that decides today.
They can vote for the officials’ recommendation, argue for Howick Local Board’s position, or put up something else.
The last councillor to put up an alternative lost.
At the June meeting Manurewa-Papakura councillor Daniel Newman moved to cut the plan back further, seconded by councillor Matt Winiata, and was defeated 12 votes to 10.
After today’s deliberations council officials say it will take several weeks to prepare the paperwork, and the public will then have 20 working days to make submissions.
An independent panel then holds hearings, with the Council due to make final decisions by 30 June next year.
Hills said changing demands from the Government and repeated returns to the drawing board had left people feeling as though they were in a “washing machine”.
“People just expect us to get on with it now,” he said.
