Why our planning system is making the housing crisis worse & what we can do about it

Reshaping Aotearoa’s Planning Laws: Regenerative Housing, Community Agency, and Structural Affordability New Zealand’s housing crisis, like many countries around the world, stems from a system producing unaffordable homes, ecological harm, and isolated communities.  Zola highlights this “rare opportunity” as the government rewrites the planning and natural resources bills replacing the RMA. Zola warns of risks in these bills like growth-led development and reduced citizen participation that could create degenerative outcomes for rural and urban area development for generations to come. Her call to action to listeners, wherever they are in the world, is to advocate to their local and central governments for policies and laws that explicitly enable regenerative land use, community-led housing models, and structural affordability, including: legitimizing tiny homes via a national definition and permitted status; rural cluster housing and ecovillage-style tools (including One Planet Development and circular economy villages); inclusionary zoning incentives; recognizing and supporting cooperative housing and community land trusts; and writing housing as a human right into legislation Zola also advocates shifting land use from industrial animal agriculture toward plant-based systems and farmer transition pathways.   Timestamps 00:00 Housing System Crisis 00:25 Planning Reform Moment 01:50 Submission Overview 02:24 Why Replace RMA 03:18 Tiny Homes Legitimacy 04:53 Rural Cluster Housing 06:27 Circular Economy Villages 07:01 Affordability Tools 08:54 Regenerative Land Use Shift 10:46 Six Risks Two Futures 13:45 Call to Engage 14:42 Course and Network Updates 17:22 Housing Guides and Housing Networks to access 19:20 NZ Housing Survey and Patreon Support for the Show   Download her submission presentation on the reports and guides page of the Common Ground website.  Sign up for the Common Ground newsletter and women are invited to join the Women Revolutionising Housing network from the website. You can join her Patreon community to support her work and this podcast: https://www.patreon.com/commonground_zola To inquire about Zola's consulting services or to be a guest on the show, you can book a meeting here: https://calendly.com/common_ground_zola_rose/quickcall or here if you are out of the Australasian region: https://calendly.com/common_ground_zola_rose/quick-call-int-l   https://www.commonground.net.nz/ https://www.facebook.com/CommonGroundAotearoaNZ/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/commonground-nz https://www.youtube.com/@CommonGroundchannel https://karenflett.com/