Beyond the Funnel: Resolving the Paradoxes of New Zealand’s National Policy Direction Last week the Illustrative National Policy Direction was released for reading, review and submissions. You can see the … Continue reading Illustrative National Policy Direction = Confusion, Contradictions, and Paradoxes (But it can be fixed)
The Manukau Urban Room: Building a Bilingual, Mixed-Reality Sanctuary for South Auckland’s Future Traditional city planning has a glaring weakness: it takes place behind closed doors. High-level statutory rules, bureaucratic … Continue reading Time for The Manukau Urban Room: Building a Bilingual, Mixed-Reality Sanctuary for South Auckland’s Future
Let’s do this! The Airport to Botany (A2B) Rapid Transit project is currently designated by Auckland Transport and Waka Kotahi NZTA as an 18km high-capacity Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor. … Continue reading Beyond the Busway: Why Light Rail is the Key to Unlocking Transform Manukau’s True Potential
Time for those quick wins on our road corridors! From October 2026, most that is about Auckland’s road corridors that is not public transport (buses) will be under the jurisdiction … Continue reading FELLOW JAFA’S (Aucklanders) LEND ME YOUR err EYES: Auckland Council Launches Roads Issue Fix webpage
Prototype Test using Cities Skylines 2 creation gives interesting results thus far What happens when I let Notebook LLM design me a Planning Code manual using inputs from my Cities … Continue reading The Waikato Municipal Spatial Code Book: A Test with AI and Planning
How did the Select Committee Report into the Planning Bill compare with my submission to said Planning Bill? After my initial thoughts on the Select Committee report to the Planning … Continue reading My Comparative Analysis: Select Committee Report vs. The Aotearoa Planning Bill 2025 (Ben Ross Submission Framework)
A Victory but is it mired in such a poorly amended Bill? The Select Committee Report into the Planning Bill came back on Monday. Needless to say after reading the … Continue reading Green Infrastructure in Planning Bill? Time to Revert back to Spatial Planning Act 2023
How the AI wrote my CV and LinkedIn profile as an advertisement on my planning capabilities Previously I had asked Google LLM Notebook to write a blog post on my … Continue reading Ben Ross: Professional Planner, City Builder Profile & Suitability Analysis
Imposter Syndrome or Wrong Country? Either it is blowing smoke up the proverbial, I suffer from a dose of Imposter Syndrome and am selling myself short, or I am in … Continue reading Planning, Building, Experiencing: The Architect of the New Urban Operating System: A Profile of Ben Ross
Talking Southern Auckland 