“It’s ludicrous,” says Margot McRae, the heritage campaigner and playwright.

“They are shooting themselves in the foot with the idea that getting rid of the [height limit] will improve Devonport. It will, in fact, ruin its main attraction.”

What attracts visitors to Devonport is, in fact, two things — the low-rise heritage buildings along its main drag and the overarching presence of Mt Victoria (Takarunga), she explains.

If some landowners have their way, those close-up glimpses of the maunga could largely disappear — lost in places, reduced in others — behind a high-rise curtain.

It’s not just Devonport where battle lines are drawn: views of all of Auckland’s famous volcanoes are in the firing line as big landowners and property developers seek changes to the Auckland unitary plan.

The draft plan promotes intensive development to greater heights in most town centres, commercial and residential zones, particularly on the isthmus.

But the “allowable” heights in many places are gazumped by other planning tools such as character overlays and, lesser known, volcanic viewshafts — where heights are limited to protect views of the maunga and other volcanic features.

These “viewshafts” and related Height Sensitive Areas (HSAs) have worked since the mid-1970s to protect views of the volcanic cones. With new ones added over the years, they currently protect views from 87 vantage points. The view of Mt Wellington from Pakuranga Highway; the view from the northern approaches to the harbour bridge — over height-restricted city office towers — to Mt Eden; the view to North Head and Rangitoto from the Museum; Mt Eden again from Tamaki Drive: these are “regionally significant” views that contribute to Auckland’s identity as a harbour city built on a volcanic field.

Many district and local views are similarly protected — allowing Aucklanders to “connect” with the cones. The views may be fleeting; they may not be outstanding (the maunga have suffered enormously since European occupation), but they reinforce what planners call a “sense of place”.

As the all-powerful Regional Policy Statement (RPS) says, the cones are “islands of naturalness, of open space and green that interact with an urban landscape … They set this region apart from other cities in the world.”

But what happens if many cones lose their prominence (from near or far) as the wall of high-density apartments and commercial blocks rises? The unitary plan allows 4-8 storey development in suburban town centres, four storeys in business zones, three-level apartments in many residential areas and up to 18 storeys in “metropolitan centres” such as Newmarket.

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Full story and source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11478950