The recent NPS-Urban Development includes a proposal that would limit the ability for local authorities in major urban centres to regulate the number of on-site car parks required for a development.  This presentation tells the instructive and sometimes hilarious story of how the carparking war was fought through hearings and the Environment Court during the development of the Auckland Unitary Plan. 
 

Shopkeepers and householders tend to oppose a free market in parking for fear that more people will park kerbside on "their" piece of the public street but the heavy hitting comes from a cabal of big-box destination retailers who are onto a lucrative game developing car-based retail centres on arterial roads in industrial and "general business" zones.
 

What tactics do they employ to preserve their competitive advantage in this development game?  How do they manage to suppress potential competition from the mixed-use intensification of town centre mainstreets?   Why did they re-orient their forces halfway through their appeal and swing from an issue of "freeloaders" to "spillover effects?" Why will the supermarket duopoly spend millions to oppose a free market in carparking? 
 

For the public good of course, your Honour - not at all to do with trade competition.

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