The “Great Upzoning” of New Zealand’s cities, in two charts

Taking stock of 15 years of remarkable progress

New Zealand has done something remarkable: it has significantly upzoned every major city, executing a “Great Upzoning“ to reverse the “Great Downzoning“ of the 1970s.

Only now do we have the data to stand back and properly admire this progress. (Yes, I have made charts).

The long road of reform

It has been a long, tortuous path – and with more reform on the horizon, the drama isn’t over. Yet it is easy to forget that merely 15 years ago, the idea that the housing crisis could be caused by constrained zoning was dismissed even in elite circles. Since then, a fragile cross-partisan consensus emerged, driving two distinct rounds of upzoning.

1. The first round consisted of three localized upzonings in the 2010s: post-earthquake Christchurch, Auckland’s famous Unitary Plan, and the lesser known Lower Hutt rezonings. All three had varying degrees of encouragement or coercion from central government.

2. The second was a nationwide push starting in 2020, with historic bipartisan support. The policies were contained in a duo of acronyms: the NPSUD and the MDRS.

In broad strokes, the NPSUD (National Policy Statement on Urban Development) mandated six-storey zoning around transit, city centres, and commercial hubs, while abolishing minimum carparking requirements with the stroke of a pen. Meanwhile, the MDRS (Medium Density Residential Standards) enabled three-storey townhouses across almost all suburban areas.

The bipartisan fracturing (and what survived)

Implementation has been rocky. Following a backlash, the National Party defected from the bipartisan accord, promising to swap the highly prescriptive MDRS for a more ‘flexible’ housing target (but retaining the NPSUD).

Once in government, the promised full reversal turned into a partial one. The MDRS remains for most cities, except for the two most recalcitrant councils—Christchurch and Auckland—which were granted bespoke housing targets.

Christchurch’s plan was subject to a relatively decent ‘feasible’ capacity target and was finalised in November 2025.

Auckland’s process has been much messier. The city’s zoned capacity target was initially set at 2 million, dropped to 1.6 million under pressure, and was finally dragged down to 1.4 million after further backlash. That final target has now been legislated for, but the detailed zoning proposal and hearings process is yet to be restarted. It has been a dizzying cycle of reversal, reinstatement, and subsequent back-downs.

The Great Upzoning, in two charts

The essential story of this Great Upzoning is captured in the two charts below. The first shows a striking, two-step increase in zoned capacity across our three main cities. The second shows the ratio between zoned capacity and existing dwellings. It reveals that these cities have essentially restored the pre-modern status quo, theoretically enabling room for many multiples of their current populations.

Caveat: zoned vs feasible capacity

The big caveat is that zoned capacity measures what a plan theoretically allows, not what will actually be built. Zoned capacity can best be thought as the quantity of new housing that will be produced when prices are infinitely high (I recommend Michael Wiebe’s explanation of this concept). Feasible or realistic capacity – what makes economic sense to build at or near current market prices – matters a lot more.

For example, the Wellington region has undertaken a truly mammoth upzoning (to be celebrated!) but zoned capacity does overstate the increase. Zoned capacity is a massive 1.3 million vs feasible capacity of 400,000.

The region has six-storey apartment zoning in a ribbon along train lines, which extends into deeply suburban or even ex-urban areas, such as Upper Hutt and Kāpiti Coast. Given land prices, it is pretty unlikely that there is a large uptake of that typology in those locations any time soon.

I would have preferred to use feasible capacity for these charts, but a complete, standardized dataset doesn’t exist—every council calculates it differently.

Don’t forget the second tier cities

As an aside, the upzoning of second tier cities it is often forgotten in this story. Places with economic growth but very real housing shortages have seen big boosts in capacity. Hamilton and Tauranga have seen a doubling and trebling of zoned capacity, respectively. That is real policy win to be celebrated.

Dispelling the myth of the top-down failure

Finally, my motivations for this arduous data analysis exercise. I wanted to write this piece not just to reflect on this progress, but also to dispel a myth.

In late 2023, Eleanor West and I wrote a long-form article for Works in Progress charting New Zealand’s upzonings. We concluded by noting that the National Party had walked back the historic, bipartisan MDRS after a political backlash.

Since then, some commentators including overseas have pointed to that moment as proof that ‘top-down’ zoning by national or state governments is doomed to fail. While I am a big advocate for ‘bottom up’ zoning solution, the story didn’t end there. In a messy, “two steps forward, one step back” fashion, New Zealand has proven that the top-down approach can bear immense fruit.

This piece is written in a personal capacity; my views should not be attributed to my employer. Data available on request.