A good Spinoff article

Auckland Council Commissioners turned down consent for an 11 storey building on K-road – a decision labelled by Chris Bishop as “insane”.

Hayden Donnell covers it well:

The Da Vincis of denial weren’t done. They said the new building would compromise the heritage of the local area. When confronted with the reality of the site currently being an empty lot whose immediate neighbours are a carpark and a Mobil station, the council’s urban design expert Chris Butler argued the “real world” context of the development extends down Karangahape Road and through the southern end of Ponsonby Road. Why only that far? Surely the real world setting of this building is all of New Zealand itself, which broke off from the supercontinent Pangaea, which in turn was formed out of the dust flung across the galaxy by the Big Bang, and if you think about it that way, nothing should ever be built anywhere ever. 

Great stuff, and further:

Faced with the prospect of people building apartments near a train station and other amenities in Sylvia Park, its planning team searched the recesses of their collective brains and came up to the ingenious conclusion that tall buildings would ruin motorway drivers’ spiritual connection to the vision of a small hill. Nice try developers, but it’ll take more than an overwhelming weight of evidence to force this team to consent to housing.

The RMA replacement needs to be very permissive, so even the most dedicated nae sayer has to say yes.