Brian Anderson The Western Front www.sunlive.co.nz

Jolyon Firth, an ex deputy mayor of Auckland in the 1980s, wrote a report on settlement in large cities in the Asia Pacific region.

I heard him describe the problems we are having now with intensification and coping with housing for an aging population. Then, one third of the old folks' homes in New Zealand were in the Epsom/Onehunga area. They were mostly privately owned old villas and the standard of care for the residents was an issue. The industry has grown but many problems still remain.

The TV series ‘Last of the Summer Wine' and ‘Waiting for God' gave two different perspectives of the golden years. Should the old dears be institionalised or should they remain part of the community?

Jolyon Firth saw the need in the future for intensification in central Auckland and warned of the need for planning for total communities, not just for problem demographic sectors. He spoke of large buildings, each designed to house a cross-section of society. He believed that elderly should live mostly on the lower floors, giving them easy access to society.

Jolyon Firth was a realist and admitted that no Auckland developer would contemplate such a design, as currently we reserve the ground floors for retail and commercial purposes. His main worry was the lack of foresight in planning for people at all. If offered, would you be willing to live in such a building with a full cross section of our society? Who would you want to leave out? What should we do with the people that don't fit? What would we do with the unproductive who couldn't afford the convenience of living in the centre of the city, the unemployed, the solo parents or the old folks?

Freeman's Bay, between Ponsonby and Karangahape Roads, was set up as an experiment in intensification to cater for a range of incomes. There have been a number of apartment developments in our cities since but each seems to have been built for a specific segment in the population. You can't blame developers for being so specific. It is up to council to start planning for these micro economies, not just the macro economics of the country or district. We have to plan not just with structure plans for whole districts but for the economies of small towns and the people in them.

What has already been happening to the communities in the smaller centres with the escapees from the intensification in Auckland? In Western Bay the suggested communities of interest like Tanner's Point wouldn't fill one of these intensive building sites. The Western Bay has a holiday resort population where most of the ratepayers don't even live and another service town where over 40 per cent of the ratepayers are over 65. These are very unwieldy community demographics and certainly do not suggest a healthy community balance.

The current argument for determining our communities of interest is the first move for any community-centred planning. Without this planning, intensification may mean just a few terraced housing developments that will be seen as nothing more than battery accommodation. The people in them will be branded and find it difficult to develop any sense of community.

Many are unhappy with the current practice of farming our parents out to retirement villages in foreign towns. Council's Built Environment town planning goals of Live, Work, Play are correct only when all of the people are included in the planning. Neither Mr Firth's idea nor the development of more retirement villages seems to be an answer. It is all the more important for each community to be given the opportunity to find its own solutions for supporting all of its residents.