Station Cities — Thomas Nash

The Opportunity

New Zealand has invested approximately $5.5 billion in the City Rail Link and has significant rapid transit networks in Auckland and Wellington, yet most new homes are not being built in rapid transit catchments.

New Zealand has the strategies, the plans, and the regional intent. Now it needs the institutional machinery to act on them.

The UK offers applicable lessons from cities, including Stockport, Bristol, Cambridge, and Birmingham, that have recently built that machinery and are already seeing results.

Auckland’s City Rail Link (CRL) will complete the most significant piece of urban public transport infrastructure in New Zealand’s history. Its four new underground stations connect into a wider rapid transit network that also includes bus and ferry routes. Of those four CRL stations, only one (Te Waihorotiu) has a transit-oriented development programme already planned. The CRL creates a window of opportunity, but the development that should be clustering around the new CRL stations is not happening at the pace or scale that the public investment deserves.

In April 2026, the New Zealand Government and Auckland Council announced New Zealand’s first city deal, a landmark agreement covering the Maungawhau–Kingsland–Morningside corridor in Auckland’s inner west. The Auckland City Deal establishes minimum height limits of 15 storeys within walking distance of CRL stations, introduces a Crown uplift tool to capture land value increases generated by public investment, and commits to joint working on infrastructure delivery in the corridor. It is the first time a New Zealand government has formally enacted the language and mechanisms of a city or regional deal, a model pioneered in the UK to align central government investment with local growth strategies, to drive transit-oriented development. It signals a shift in thinking from passive zoning reform toward active place-shaping, including specifically around rapid transit. And it creates a template that can be replicated at other stations, in other cities, across the country.

The Future Development Strategies for Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch each name transit-oriented development as a priority. They identify public transport corridors as preferred locations for housing intensification and acknowledge that compact, connected urban form is both fiscally smarter and environmentally necessary. Central government should respond to these plans by designating rapid transit growth corridors in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, providing for efficient local delivery vehicles of transit-oriented development and providing the funding architecture and public investment in public transport to make it all happen.

The Problem

The primary barrier to transit-oriented development in New Zealand is that no single entity has responsibility for building our cities around our railway stations. It is nobody’s job to do it.

A range of entities own land, manage assets and hold responsibility for various functions related to the task, but there is no entity that has the overall mandate, land and power to build around our railway stations in the way that would truly realise the potential explored in this report.

When it comes to transit-oriented development, that institutional landscape is highly fragmented, with complex, overlapping and competing mandates and misaligned fiscal incentives.

In general, local government in New Zealand bears more of the cost of infrastructure while central government captures more of the return. When a council zones land around a station for intensification and developers build, say, 500 apartments, the council generally pays for the pipes, stormwater, and at least half of the roading and public transport infrastructure, partially offset by developer contributions. The income tax from these 1,000 new residents goes to central government, along with the GST from their spending. The productivity gains from reduced travel times and the agglomeration benefits flow across the wider region. Meanwhile council rates increases from intensified development are often modest, rates in general are highly contested and are also now awaiting some form of central government capping regime. Councils have understandably found intensification financially challenging in this context. The Auckland City Deal, in which the Crown shares the fiscal upside of growth with the council, is a serious attempt to correct this misalignment.

The Case for Transit-Oriented Development

The fiscal case

Decisions about infrastructure and urban form have a significant bearing on New Zealand’s fiscal position. Medium-density homes in public transport catchments cost substantially less to service than houses at the urban fringe, across water, wastewater, roads and public transport provision. In March 2026 Fitch Ratings downgraded New Zealand’s credit outlook from stable to negative. In April 2026 Moody’s followed. Both agencies pointed to fiscal pressures, including persistent inflation, rising debt servicing costs, and a general government debt-to-GDP ratio on a trajectory above peer countries.

Climate, energy and resilience

Every 1% increase in urban density is associated with a 0.79% reduction in CO₂ emissions. New Zealand’s transport sector is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country, accounting for approximately 21% of annual gross emissions. Compact, transit-oriented urban design has a mitigation potential of around 25% compared with business-as-usual by 2050 – not through vehicle electrification alone, but by reshaping how cities are built. The climate argument is also an energy security argument. New Zealand imports virtually all of its liquid fuels.

Productivity

Dense, well-connected urban areas generate higher economic output per worker. This phenomenon is known as agglomeration, which is when businesses, workers and knowledge ‘cluster’ together in close proximity, enabling greater collaboration, deeper specialisation and faster sharing of ideas.

Demographics

Only a third of young New Zealanders aged 15–24 now hold a driver licence, compared with nearly half in 1989. They are disproportionately urban, often public transport-dependent, and drawn to the walkability and connectivity of transit-adjacent neighbourhoods. Older adults are expected to make up 21–26% of the population by 2048. It is reasonable to assume that both these demographic cohorts will converge on the same housing typology: transit-adjacent, walkable, well-serviced apartments and townhouses. That convergence is structural, meaning the demand for TOD housing is durable, which strengthens the long-run return on TOD investment.

Public Transport as Investment, Not Cost

Government spending on buses, trains, ferries and the infrastructure that supports them is generally funded through annual appropriations and treated in public and political debate as a cost to be managed downwards. This report argues that public transport should be seen and evaluated as an investment that generates social and economic returns rather than primarily as a cost to the public purse.

The return on investment from public transport can be measured in higher land values, more productive and socially connected cities, lower household transport costs, reduced emissions, and better health outcomes. Professionally managing public assets, properly monetising the wider benefits of public transport and adopting a decide and provide or vision-led planning approach are, together, likely to support more balanced public spending on transport and urban development.

Detter highlights Copenhagen’s By og Havn, City and Port, as a good example of this. In 2007, the city consolidated its waterfront and surrounding public land holdings under a single professionally managed company, at arm’s length from political control. The resulting development funded and managed the construction of more than 33,000 new housing units, 100,000 workspaces, a new university for 20,000 students, and the extension of the city’s metro system. The public transport investment was funded through the professional management of public land assets that the city already owned, not just from the government’s transport budget.

The United Kingdom and Transit-Oriented Growth

The United Kingdom is not a model New Zealand can or should copy wholesale. Its scale, population density and urban history are quite different from ours. What it offers, rather, are some concentrated examples of what happens when a national government decides to treat public transport investment and urban development as interdependent rather than sequential. What happens when government stops waiting for development to justify public transport investment and starts using public transport to shape development.

Since 2019, a combination of mayoral devolution, targeted investment vehicles, and new planning rules has produced tangible results in UK cities that face challenges that are familiar to New Zealand’s transport and urban development sectors. Stockport, Bristol, Cambridge and Birmingham each tell a different story about how public transport investment and urban development can work together, offering specific models that New Zealand can adapt.

The UK has significant infrastructure delivery failures of its own. New Zealand should learn from what the UK has built, not assume the UK has solved the problem.

The UK’s public transport delivery toolkit

Platform4 & Places for London

Platform4, announced in July 2025 and formally launched by Network Rail in November 2025, is a property company mandated to unlock 40,000 new homes on brownfield railway land across 47 towns and cities in England. Places for London is also aligned with the Detter model. It is a fully commercial property company, 100% owned by Transport for London but operating independently of it. It manages TfL’s 5,500 acres of land and pays an annual dividend back to TfL, currently targeting a 7.5% return on equity.

Homes England & the National Housing Bank

In complex, brownfield, transit-adjacent locations, Homes England provides the public counterparty that makes the deal possible. It acquires land, pools it with council and combined authority holdings, takes an active equity position in the delivery vehicle, and brings the long-term commitment that private capital alone cannot sustain. Its National Housing Bank, launched in April 2026 with up to £16 billion of capital, is designed to scale this model.

Mayoral Development Corporations

Mayoral Development Corporations are a statutory vehicle allowing mayors to establish a delivery body with planning powers, land assembly authority and an independent governance structure within a defined area. Six MDCs were established between 2012 and 2025. Several more have been established in 2026. Every metro mayor in England is embracing the MDC model. Their key powers include planning authority, land assembly and compulsory purchase, infrastructure and development powers, and financial powers including establishing joint ventures.

United Kingdom · Case Study 01

Birmingham

A render of the planned HS2 Curzon Street Station. Credit: WMCA

Birmingham

Birmingham has transformed itself through political leadership, governance reform and a long-term spatial plan. Sir Albert Bore, Labour leader of Birmingham City Council from 2012, championed both the Big City Plan and the Birmingham Connected integrated transport strategy, which committed the city to a hierarchy placing walking, cycling and public transport above private vehicles. This was a genuinely countercultural commitment for a city whose economy had been built on car manufacturing. Much of Birmingham’s earlier transformation was demand-led rather than planned: development followed transport investment because market conditions allowed it, rather than as part of a wider strategic plan. HS2 and the new Birmingham East MDC represent a more intentional model — public institutions actively directing development to rapid transit rather than simply waiting for the market to follow.

HS2 is to Birmingham what the CRL is to Auckland: a once-in-a-generation transit investment that opens an entire side of the city to development and creates a precinct capture opportunity that will not recur. The Birmingham East Mayoral Development Corporation, the largest MDC in the UK, is the new delivery vehicle set up to capture it. Investors are already following: many cite HS2 as their primary reason for committing to Birmingham.

Major transport investments, such as HS2, create once-in-a-generation development opportunities. Dedicated delivery institutions with land assembly powers, development capital and private sector partnerships are a proven way to make the most of those opportunities. In the context of HS2, Birmingham East MDC has been established for that purpose.

Rapid transit investment is about transport as well as urban development and regeneration. Birmingham East MDC’s mandate includes areas where unemployment runs at double the national average and 40% of children live in poverty — alongside prime development sites. Transit-oriented development reconnects communities to economic opportunity.

Transformation is possible even in a city with deep challenges, but it requires a long-term spatial plan, a deliberate transport strategy that prioritises people walking, biking and taking public transport, governance that matches the scale of the regional economy, and delivery institutions with the powers and capital to act.

United Kingdom · Case Study 02

Stockport

Stockport Interchange is an integrated development including a 14-storey residential building, a new bus station, a rooftop park on top of it, and a new shared pathway for access to the railway station. Credit: Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation

Stockport

Stockport is a market town of 300,000 people, 12 minutes from Manchester by train, that has used the station as the anchor for a comprehensive regeneration of its town centre. Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation, launched in 2019, brings together Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Homes England under a single governance structure with land assembly powers, development finance and planning certainty.

Since 2019, the Stockport MDC has attracted £600 million of private investment, delivered 1,200 homes and 170,000 square feet of Grade A commercial space, and become a national model for town centre regeneration. The Stockport Interchange, completed in March 2024 at a cost of £140 million, integrates 18 bus stands handling 164 departures per hour with the existing railway station via a walking and cycling bridge. Alongside this rooftop park is a 196-unit, 14-storey build-to-rent development, which is one of the most transit-integrated housing schemes in England.

Stockport is a good example of a well functioning Mayoral Development Corporation. It is a body with independent governance, real capital, land assembly powers, and a fixed programme mandate and it has been a success story.

Stockport Interchange brings together improved public transport facilities, including better transfer quality between rail and bus, as well as housing, funded through public and private sources.

Stockport’s Mayoral Development Corporation has worked very effectively in partnership with institutional investors and local and central government, attracting hundreds of millions of pounds of investment to support its work.

United Kingdom · Case Study 03

Bristol

The redevelopment of the Bristol Temple Quarter around Bristol’s Temple Meads railway station. Credit: Bristol Temple Quarter

Bristol

Bristol offers two contrasting models of transit-adjacent development that together illuminate what works and why. Both depend on the same anchor: Bristol Temple Meads, one of England’s great Victorian railway stations and, since 2022, the centrepiece of one of the largest regeneration programmes in Europe.

The Temple Quarter Southern Gateway is the publicly led model. Bristol City Council, Homes England and the West of England Combined Authority formed Bristol Temple Quarter LLP as a joint delivery vehicle. A major government grant is funding enabling infrastructure that will unlock 10,000 new homes and 22,000 jobs across a brownfield site of around 130 hectares beside Temple Meads station. The public sector committed to the enabling infrastructure first, with private development following.

Bristol offers two models: publicly-led land assembly with enabling infrastructure (Temple Quarter / BTQ LLP), and privately-led development making the case for new public transport infrastructure (Brabazon / YTL).

The National Brownfield Housing Fund that unlocked Temple Quarter is a good example of public capital being used to bridge the viability gap, enabling private development that would not otherwise proceed.

The £130 million transformation of Bristol Temple Meads provides a strong signal that the transit-oriented development opportunity is real and permanent.

Bristol’s Temple Quarter co-locates 22,000 jobs and 4,600 university students alongside 10,000 homes, within direct rail access of the region.

United Kingdom · Case Study 04

Cambridge

The CB1 development at Cambridge Central Station. The development is credited with increasing the station precinct’s contribution to Cambridge’s GDP from 8% to 27%. Credit: Brookgate

Cambridge

CB1, the redevelopment of the former Sidings site adjacent to Cambridge Station, is one of the UK’s most successful examples of station-adjacent mixed-use development. Richard Rogers’ masterplan, adopted in 2010, delivered approximately 1.5 million square feet of office and laboratory space, now occupied by firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Deloitte. According to Centre for Cities, the area around Cambridge station accounted for approximately 8% of the city’s economic output in 2010. Following the CB1 redevelopment, that share has risen to approximately 27%, significantly reshaping the economic geography of Cambridge.

For Waterbeach New Town, South Cambridgeshire District Council’s planning permission for 4,500 new homes requires the relocated railway station to be operational before homes are occupied. Cambridge South illustrates both the cost of delayed investment and the benefits of correcting course before surrounding growth is fully locked in.

Cambridge shows how transit-oriented development can reshape a city’s economic geography. The increase in station-area output from 8% to 27% of city GDP illustrates the scale of economic concentration that integrated transport and land use can produce.

Institutional capital actively seeks transit-adjacent development opportunities when planning certainty and infrastructure sequencing are credible.

Cambridge South illustrates the benefits of aligning urban development with public transport investment. A major employment precinct being developed without rail access generates significant transport problems.

Waterbeach, on the other hand, is an example of housing and transport infrastructure being sequenced together, with the railway station relocation preceding major residential development.

A map showing the new City Rail Link (CRL) loop, including two new stations at Karanga-a-Hape Road and Te Waihorotiu (Aotea Square). Credit: Auckland Transport

Ockham Hypatia development adjacent to Grafton Railway Station

Ockham has developed a number of residential buildings in Auckland, almost all of them within walking distance of a railway station. The 61-unit Hypatia development, pictured here, is directly adjacent to Grafton Railway Station. Credit: Patrick Reynolds

Tāmaki Makaurau

Auckland

For Auckland, a 3V-based prioritisation of all 41 rapid transit stations was commissioned by Auckland Transport, weighting market value, node value and place value. The top five stations by overall score were Waitematā, Manukau, Te Waihorotiu, Middlemore and Panmure. The study recommended AT focus on 14 priority stations: Waitematā, Te Waihorotiu, Karanga-a-Hape, Manukau, Middlemore, Newmarket, Parnell, New Lynn, Henderson, Grafton, Maungawhau, Panmure, Glen Innes and Ōrākei.

The monitoring data – around a quarter of Auckland homes within 1,500 metres of rapid transit – gives a baseline against which progress can be measured. The CRL’s journey time improvements change the development economics of existing Western and Eastern Line stations. A 24-minute saving on the Henderson journey makes the Western Line genuinely competitive with driving for a broad commuter market and competitive transit is the precondition for the development signal that justifies TOD investment.

Wellington Regional Rail Network. 48 stations across five lines, serving a regional population of around 500,000.

Porirua Station is one of the busiest railway stations in the Greater Wellington region. The area around the station is underdeveloped, with significant surface car parking. Credit: Google Earth

Te Whanganui-a-Tara

Wellington

Wellington’s Future Development Strategy, its Regional Public Transport Plan, Wellington City’s District Plan and the Regional Council’s TOD proposal to the Minister of Housing all point to intensification along strategic public transport corridors. The region now needs a delivery institution with the mandate to act on these plans.

The same logic applies at the station level. Wellington’s TOD programme should prioritise catchments where water and wastewater capacity already exists, concentrating enabling infrastructure investment where the return per dollar is highest and sequencing more constrained catchments once the higher-priority sites are underway.

Three stations represent the most immediate opportunities: Waterloo, Porirua and Johnsonville, as identified in the formal GWRC TOD proposal. Waterloo is the highest priority. The RPTP identifies its redevelopment as a once-in-a-generation opportunity: the goal is to transform Waterloo from a peak-hour commuter through-fare into a destination for work and essential services, a new urban node that stimulates the local economy and facilitates local housing development and intensification.

Porirua’s interchange was deferred in the 2025 RPTP due to funding constraints, but the case for a major TOD programme in Porirua remains strong. The Northern Growth Area, 1,036 hectares of greenfield land identified in the FDS, requires public transport investment if it is to avoid repeating the infrastructure-intensive sprawl patterns that have exacerbated Wellington’s infrastructure backlog. Long term fiscal responsibility should inform the choice between building infrastructure-efficient transit-oriented development and car-dependent greenfield expansion.

Johnsonville’s Proposed District Plan zoning already provides planning consent for significant intensification around the station. The Wellington City Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council and central government have all expressed a desire to redevelop this station catchment. An entity with the right mandate and consolidated powers now needs to deliver.

A map of the proposed MRT route in Christchurch that has been under consideration by local authorities and central government for a number of years. Credit: Greater Christchurch Partnership

Ōtautahi

Christchurch

Christchurch has an immediate opportunity to advance its MRT corridor. The government should commence the Detailed Business Case as originally recommended, with a target of construction commencing in 2028 and services operating by 2033. Alongside this, the government should facilitate the development of an urban development delivery vehicle linked to key proposed MRT stations. This could build on the existing foundations of the Greater Christchurch Partnership, with local councils, mana whenua and public entities such as NZTA, KiwiRail and Kāinga Ora, to manage the corridor land strategy and the development programme that underpins the MRT programme.

The right actions now are making the corridor commitment, protecting the land, designing the delivery institution and building commercial capability, so that when the MRT project is fully funded, Christchurch can move swiftly to implementation. Cambridge saw a major employment district develop on its southern edge without a railway station and is only now opening the Cambridge South station that will serve it. Christchurch should design its corridor development programme now, so it is ready to execute the moment the rapid transit commitment is confirmed.

Recommendations

Four Core Recommendations

Identify, prioritise and hold rapid transit growth corridors

The GPS should identify New Zealand’s strategic public transport growth corridors as a priority, setting out clearly the specific development corridors, detailed commitments to passenger rail service and infrastructure investments, and the residential and commercial development outcomes each corridor is expected to support. Where possible, corridor land should be identified and protected before values rise. The Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch Future Development Strategies already name public transport corridors as priority intensification locations and the GPS should activate this strategic direction with long term policy and funding certainty.

Design and designate Station Investment Zones

A SIZ designation could add a default ‘yes’ to consents for complying housing development within the zone, reducing consent risk for developers. The designation could also trigger automatic activation of fiscal tools such as targeted rates on land value within the catchment, Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act levy authority, and come with a longer term government commitment to fund enabling infrastructure. At the point of SIZ designation, government should commit to an enabling infrastructure assessment for each zone and a funded programme to address the constraints identified.

Establish urban development corporations or equivalent delivery entities

Government should facilitate the establishment of pilot UDCs at three to four priority precincts. Similar to the approach that has been used in the UK, the Urban Development Corporations proposed here would hold statutory powers to assemble land, dedicated capital to invest, a clear mandate to deliver within a defined geography, and political insulation from short-term decision-making. A UDC should include a joint board with central government, local council, and mana whenua representation as core features, and mandatory affordable housing requirements built into the joint venture agreement.

Enable value capture at scale

The government is already moving to enable value capture from developments adjacent to public infrastructure investment. The Auckland City Deal proposes a Crown uplift tool for Western Line stations. Government should continue this work, building on the Auckland City Deal model to develop a nationwide value capture regime that can be applied at scale. Once developed, it should become a standard model for public investment in transit-adjacent development, avoiding bespoke arrangements for each station or corridor.

Three Supporting Recommendations

Recommendation 5

Direct NIFFCo to apply its financing model to brownfield TOD

Government should direct NIFFCo to apply its Greenfield Model to brownfield transit-oriented development, creating a parallel financing track for IFF Act Special Purpose Vehicles operating within designated Station Investment Zones. Urban development corporations working in a Station Investment Zone should have automatic access to NIFFCo’s advisory services, investor relationships and PPP transaction management.

Recommendation 6

Commission a consolidated stocktake of public land in rapid transit catchments

Government should commission a comprehensive stocktake of Crown and council land holdings in all priority rapid transit catchments, looking at development value rather than book value. KiwiRail, Auckland Transport, NZTA, Kāinga Ora and council property portfolios all hold land in station catchments. This land needs to be valued accurately as a development asset to establish the scale of the opportunity and the sequencing of urban development corporation programmes.

Recommendation 7

Reform investment appraisal methodology

Government should commission a review of NZTA’s Monetised Benefits and Costs Manual and the Treasury’s Better Business Case framework, with specific attention to the treatment of land value uplift, housing supply enablement, agglomeration benefits and fiscal returns in public transport investment cases. The UK’s ongoing Green Book review (2025–26) provides a relevant international precedent for this work.

About the Author

Thomas Nash

Thomas Nash is Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Planning, Environment and People and Social Entrepreneur in Residence for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University.

He served two terms as an elected member of Greater Wellington Regional Council, as Climate Chair from 2019 to 2022 and Transport Chair from 2022 to 2025. He is a co-author of Transitions in Action: An Urban and Regional Transitions Guide for Te Upoko o Te Ika a Māui (Massey University, 2025).

In 2025 the New Zealand Geographic Society named him Honorary Geographer for his work on transport and climate. He is based in France and works as a strategy and governance consultant.

Transit-Oriented Development Urban Policy Governance New Zealand Massey University

Full Report

Station Cities: UK Lessons for Building Cities Around Public Transport

A policy report drawing on fieldwork across four UK cities, international financing models, and three New Zealand metropolitan case studies. Includes annexes, a staged delivery model, and full implementation responsibilities by actor.

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Published in association with Massey University