Auckland Council technical report

Housing capacity modelling report: Housing intensification and resilience (Plan Change 120)

Topics: Housing, Growth, Intensification, Plan Change 78, Plan Change 120, MDRS

Extract from the Executive summary

A plan-enabled capacity assessment has been completed as part of the technical work programme to support the Council’s decision to withdraw Plan Change 78: Intensification (PC78) in part, including withdrawal of the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS).

The withdrawal of PC78 in part was enabled by changes to the RMA through the Resource Management (Consenting and Other System Changes) Amendment Act 2025. The Amendment Act amended the RMA to provide Auckland Council with the ability to withdraw its Intensification Planning Instrument (PC78) and replace it with a new plan change via the Streamlined Planning Process (SPP).

The replacement Plan Change is now called Plan Change 120: Housing Intensification and Resilience (PC120) and is designed to meet the legislative requirements for withdrawing PC78 and continuing to give effect to the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPS-UD).

The new plan change is required to:

• Demonstrate at least the same amount of housing capacity that would have been enabled if PC78 (as notified) were made operative, and
• Enable building heights of at least 10 or 15 storeys within the walkable catchment of specified City Rail Link stations, and
• Give effect to Policy 3 of the National Policy Statement on Urban Development 2020 (NPS-UD).

This report covers the technical details of how the ‘at least the same amount of housing capacity’ assessment has been undertaken, as well as presenting some of the results of the modelling.  

Data outputs from the modelling are available for download below.

Data files

Separate Baseline and PC120 Site data sets for residential and business zone groups – these files contain sites processed under either the baseline or PC120 (HIR) as used to generate maps, tables and graphs in the report above. The Data Dictionary is included in each zip file and available for separate download below if required.

Baseline_Business.gdb

Baseline_Residential.gdb

HIR_Business.gdb

HIR_Residential.gdb

Data dictionary.xlsx

Data file packages include:

• Latest version: 3.0 (as per Housing Capacity Modelling Report, November 2025)
• Spatial data set: (zipped ESRI geodatabase v10.3 – GIS software required)
• Data Dictionary: for understanding data attributes: (Excel spreadsheet)
• Files have been zipped to reduce download size.
• Data may be subject to revision without prior notice.
• Both business data sets exclude the City Centre Zone
• Metropolitan Centre Zone results for HIR business data set reflect PC78 as notified provisions.

Please contact us at research@aklc.govt.nz to discuss alternative file types.

Auckland Council, October 2025

See also

Auckland Council website

Plan change 120 PC 120: Housing intensification and Resilience

Submissions close 5pm, 19 December 2025.

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Other related technical publications published on Knowledge Auckland.

The 2023 HBA, Housing and business development capacity assessment for the Auckland region 2023 includes background information on short- medium- and long-term capacity, infrastructure readiness and the regional growth projections and the business allocation model which form the basis of the current (PC78 informed) Auckland Growth Scenario v1.1. 

A fuller description of the base technology and approach to the Capacity for Growth Model for the Unitary Plan is outlined here: Capacity for growth study 2013 (Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan): methodology Part 1 and for the legacy Plans Capacity for growth study 2012: methodology and assumptions.