Beyond Targets: Helping communities get the economics of their plans right

Beyond Targets: Helping communities get the economics of their plans right

May 25, 2026 · 46 min

About this episode

The episode discusses the failures of current housing supply approaches and proposes a new system for evaluating council plans using price-based indicators.

In this episode, Eric talks with Dr Benno Blaschke and Chris Parker about why our current approach to housing supply, which is focused on housing targets and delivered through “predict and provide”, has consistently failed. The explore what a better system could look like by discussing Benno's proposed alternative, where an independent panel would use price-based indicators to evaluate council plans against the conditions of competitive urban land markets. These assessments would inform plans as they are designed to help communities and planners get the economics of their plans right. Ongoing annual monitoring further enables them to keep thriving. After all, the reason why cities exist is the economic opportunity they offer people through their deep labour markets. This means that cities need to keep growing and offer people more value than it costs them to live in that city to remain productive and attractive places to live.

People in this episode

Host: Eric

Guests: Dr Benno Blaschke, Chris Parker

Topics covered

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The New Zealand Initiative

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