Māori are increasingly moving to cities and have a knowledge base to address problem within urban development such as the housing crisis and climate change.
Anthony Hōete (Ngāti Awa) is a Professor of Architecture at the University of Auckland and a contributor in Urban Aotearoa: The Future of our Cities.
The book addresses the reality of Aotearoa’s urban majority and moving past the rural image of New Zealand towards the future of cities using insights on climate action, Pacific design and Māori urban development.
Hōete said the way Māori view cities differs from the Western view of being dense with buildings, traffic and bright lights.
Kaitiakitanga and working with the land
“The Māori city was more like an earthwork rather than an agglomeration of buildings,” Hōete said.
Māori lived in accordance with nature, and bringing back these values is beneficial for cities, Hōete said, mentioning the Tūpuna Maunga Authority, a collective of Ngā Mana Whenua o Tāmaki Makaurau and Auckland Council.
The authority aims to ensure mana whenua world views and priorities are part of the long-term care of the fourteen ancestral mountains in Tāmaki Makaurau.
In the past Hōete has used mīmiro, an ancient Māori construction technique as a solution for seismic resilience in the event of an earthquake.
He discussed the loss of wetlands to dairy farms which has been a loss of natural run-offs. In the past when the river levels rose and there were heavy rains, the wetlands were an innate system and their destruction resulted in flooding, emphasising the value of their restoration.
There are examples of iwi working to restore land and waterways that were mishandled by the Crown. Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa and Rangitāne went through treaty settlement to return Wairarapa moana which have been degraded under the Crown’s care.
In the 19th century, farmers started to convert wetlands to pastures so when the sea levels rose there would be so-called floods.
However, iwi understood this was the natural action of the Pacific Ocean. In an attempt to manage the floods, they redirected the Ruamahanga River, which originally helped clean and flush the lakes.
Hōete said these are the same conversations Ngāti Awa are having around Marae resilience to flooding considering Rangitāiki awa which burst in 2017.
The housing crisis and a bottom-up approach
Hōete said one of the main focuses in Aotearoa urban development is housing affordability.
He discussed the issue of a neoliberal housing market which caused an imbalance of housing wealth distribution between older and younger generations.
Māori urban development considers the needs of Māori, for instance providing housing for rangatahi in cities who are studying tertiary education, or models of 30-bedroom houses with a centralised whare kai, using Māori’s community-oriented living styles.
Hōete is working with Ngāti Awa Rūnanga and Ngāti Awa Group Holdings for new models of papa kāinga. There are ideas of iwi-led developments of build-to-rents, where the money goes back to the people.
He emphasised while his world is Māori-centric, the outcomes apply across the entire country.
“As Māori currently occupy the bottom rung of the property ladder, if we fix the problem for Māori housing, then we fix the problem for all New Zealanders,” he said.
Intergenerational Maori design and development
Often, Hōete said urban development has a two-year build and five-year exit plan where they think in the short term to make quick money by flicking off developments.
Māori urban development spans generations and considers the needs of whānau, hapū, and iwi. There is a longer period of design and development. There is a co-design approach with mana whenua and marae, and long-term thinking of the welfare of uri whakaheke, the future generations of rangatahi and mokopuna.
He also talked about thinking of how iwi can facilitate hapū, for wealth creation and prosperity in the future.
Immense potential for Māori
Hōete said we’re living through an amazing moment where it’s said by 2050 the Māori economy will be greater than the non-Māori economy. And with Māori increasingly moving into cities, the economy will be able to shape cities to reflect these Māori populations.
Hōete said that harnessing the forests and using Māori values and understanding of Tāne within the forestry system, could translate into construction, and how Māori can be both the labourer and the executive.
In Architect Now, Hōete wrote about how papa kāinga benefiting from Iwi banks and iwi-owned forests could provide a manufacturing basis for cross-laminated timber factories, disrupt supply chains, and make building costs and housing more affordable.
Māori own nearly half of commercially planted forest land in Aotearoa and Māori exporters and businesses make up 40% of New Zealand’s forestry production.