200 Delamore Drive, Matiatia Bay, Waiheke Island
Waiheke Island Community Halls
This is one of the biggest (400 ha) and ecologically and economically most successful landscape and habitat regeneration project in New Zealand ever.
Over a period of thirty years the landscape here has been significantly transformed following a deliberate programme. Landowners/developers were encouraged through district plan incentive and bonus provisions to implement projects that have produced positive net landscape benefits.
"Fundamental to the landscape change was the landscape architect’s input into a new District Plan, the first under the umbrella of the Resource Management Act 1991......... where additional development rights were offered in exchange for landscape protection and enhancement."
The Western Waiheke project is a composite of five master plans for individual private land owner clients who initially wanted lifestyle property subdivisions. The design team identified and mapped areas of land that have critical sensitivity, as well as cultural features and used them as the basis for an interconnected “landscape commons,” of indigenous vegetated habitat.
The outcome has resulted from the involvement of a wide range of people: politicians, planners, iwi, local groups and land owners.
The starting point was a landscape of slopes and gullies with degraded wetlands. Traditional pastoral activities were struggling to sustain financial viability.
Dennis Scott explains in this video.
"Here also was a host of heritage batch holidaymakers, motivated incumbent ‘bohemian’ locals and nearby (affluent) city residents keen to live on this very accessible island, just 30 minutes by a new ‘fast ferry’ from the downtown bustling city of Auckland.
In 1987 a supportive and visionary county council introduced a landscape planning and development process that was a considerable departure from the traditional/generic land–use-zoning approach.
Instead, the planning framework for land-use management and design was to be based on a geographic/ecological framework - i.e. underpinned by both integrated catchment management analysis plus a landscape character analysis process. This approach was the springboard for identifying a range of spatial units which were linked to relevant visions and strategies - from which a series of objectives, policies, specific rules, and performance and design criteria were framed. "
https://nzila.co.nz/showcase/waiheke-island-western-entrance-headland-landscape
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