The Urban Design Toolkit (‘the toolkit’) is a practical and highly visual guide to support planning and design of future communities in the region. It has been developed to help support decision makers and communities to take an active role in the conversations and processes to shape the neighbourhoods and centres of the future.
Central to the toolkit is the recognition that urban design will be critical to reducing transport emissions in the region by decreasing our reliance on private vehicles, while also enhancing liveability.
Who it is for?
The toolkit is designed to be accessible for non-experts to help support communities, local government, iwi and hapu, developers and other stakeholders to influence better outcomes for their community.
What is special about the toolkit?
- It is highly visual and accessible, with the non-expert in mind.
- It presents four urban scenarios, from single site through to a local town centre, with a broad range of interventions applicable both to a new development and a renewal context.
- The toolkit is designed specifically for the Wellington Region, with regional places and conditions in mind.
- The toolkit draws on exemplars of good urban design from a range of regional, national and international cases.
What are the benefits of transformational urban form that the toolkit envisions?
- Good urban design can deliver on a range of important benefits, including social wellbeing, economic vibrancy, community connection and climate resilience.
- Better designed communities can also reduce the burden of infrastructure costs to our communities through using our existing network more efficiently. A key mechanism for doing this is to make them more walkable – so that people are able to access most of the things and services they need without needing to own a car.
