Urban waterways, water sensitive urban design, and the law: A help or a hindrance? A focus on urban stormwater

Traditional urban stormwater management systems have paid little attention to environmental needs. Water sensitive urban design is a low impact development approach to planning and engineering that provides significantly better environmental outcomes, but its uptake has been slow in New Zealand. In 2020, the New Zealand Government released a new National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management. This placed Te Mana o Te Wai - the good health of waterways - at the heart of freshwater planning. This article describes the pre-2020 urban stormwater planning and management approach and critically discusses the new approach, concluding that significant opportunities to improve urban stormwater management have been missed. The argument is supported by a detailed consideration of urban stormwater plans in Auckland and Christchurch.