The District Plan and the Spatial Plan
The Spatial Plan is a growth strategy outlining the ‘where’ and ‘how’ we will grow.
A District Plan is the ‘rulebook’ for land development that turns the strategy into action and aims to implement the goals and directions outlined in the Spatial Plan.
The District Plan provides the specifics of how growth will occur, providing rules around setbacks, site coverage and height.
The Spatial Plan is a 30-year blueprint for Wellington providing direction for where growth will occur in the city, as required by the National Policy Statement for Urban Development (NPS-UD). The District Plan is the main regulatory tool for implementing the Spatial Plan, setting out the policy and rule framework for land use and subdivision. The District Plan is a statutory document, required by the
National Policy Statement for Urban Development (NPS-UD). The District Plan is the main regulatory tool for implementing the Spatial Plan, setting out the policy and rule framework for land use and subdivision. The District Plan is a statutory document, required by the Resource Management Act, which has a 10-year lifespan once it becomes operative.
Proposed District Plan
Let's Get Welly Moving and the Spatial Plan
The Planning for Growth programme (the Spatial Plan and the District Plan Review) is running in parallel with the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme (LGWM).
A key objective of LGWM is ‘moving more people with fewer vehicles’. This necessitates a change to where and how development occurs and significant investment in a new transport system that includes some form of mass rapid transit.
The city’s planning settings need to enable this change in urban form and the scale of urban development in order to fully realise the benefits of the investment in this significant programme. We are working with LGWM to ensure that there is alignment between the two work programmes as far as possible. The Spatial Plan and the new District Plan seek to anticipate the future LGWM mass transit route and stations as far as possible, while also recognising that exact location of the route and stations has not been decided.
Decisions on the final route and mode of any mass transit system are still to be made.
Consultation took place on four key options alongside the consultation on the draft District Plan. Further changes to the District Plan are likely to be necessary once the final route and mode have been confirmed.