At Last Some Action on Housing – Getting Past Planning Paralysis

Daylight through the gloom
Even as the public begins to react against the over-simplistic approach to urban growth underlying the over-complicated draft Auckland Unitary Plan, there is a little light on the horizon.  The Tamaki Redevelopment Company, a joint venture between Auckland City and central government, has put together a plan to add up to 6000 new homes to an existing 5,050 in a special housing area under the Housing Accord signed last month.

Hopefully this urban regeneration project will be more than just a gentrification exercise. I suspect that government participation will ensure that the need for continuity among current residents including tenants of state housing, will be met.  Ideally, the plan will enable the low income households that currently occupy much of the area to stay and first time buyers to purchase there, in a neighbourhood of quality amenities and services, and sound, affordable, new homes.

Central government taking the lead

It is ironical that this good news story should be accompanied by news of continuing resistance to collaboration by the Council.  It has been so myopic in pursuing the grail of consolidating growth and in its reluctance to explore alternatives for an expanding city that it has created a complex web of policies that many of its diverse residents will struggle to come to grips with, or welcome. 

Given this track record, it was inevitable that the council should emerge as the junior partner in this arrangement. 

It’s no good wringing political hands over a threat to autonomy. The Council’s own failure to advance Aucklanders’ housing hopes with any urgency left central government to take the decisive stand. 

A threat to local autonomy?

A loss of autonomy may simply be the price we are paying for the council confusing its priorities – putting process ahead of form, and principle ahead of practice.  It had known about the housing supply and affordability issue that threatens to undermine Auckland’s growth for some time –it’s the core problem it inherited from the eight councils that came together on its formation. 

Despite all the good intentions, the new council continued simply to pay lip service to the issue.  It preferred to pick up and promote the old Auckland Regional Council shibboleth, trying to change the way Aucklanders live by shifting the emphasis of development to consolidation and centralisation. 

Sharing responsibility

A loss of local autonomy may, however, be more apparent than real.  The Government has had a long-standing role in the provision of social housing in New Zealand.  It also has the resources and clout to make things happen.  So it makes sense for it to take the lead. 

By contrast, with the jettisoning of social housing by councils their role has been confined to one of regulation to mediating what’s done rather than doing it.  That’s the model Auckland was following in its planning.  Unfortunately, it’s mediation looked like exacerbating rather than resolving the housing issue.

Through the Tamaki initiative, the council can once more become a contributor and not simply a gatekeeper in the housing sector, playing a direct role in shifting the city up a gear.

Collaboration: the way ahead?

The Government had hoped that combining councils struggling to collaborate would lead to more decisive and better directed policy in Auckland.  In practice, the one council model so far seems no more enlightened than the eight councils it replaced. 

At least when we had alternative local councils within the wider metropolitan area we could see where the strengths and weaknesses of their various policies lay and rely on differences and debate among them to lift transparency and engagement.  Consequently, we got policy diversity to match our social diversity, rather than a single (and singular) plan and policies over-ambitiously intended to reconcile the variety of needs of different communities in a comprehensive set of rules. 

Under the new model, the search for super policies is beginning to look a little too lofty, and fraught.  And if the council is not prepared to work much more closely with local boards to resolve local issues in practice rather than in principle, then collaboration has to be taken to a whole new level, with central government.

It is positive, then, that the Tamaki project looks set to be delivered by collaboration at two levels: between central and local government in planning, processing, land consolidation, and development initiatives to get the project off the ground; and between the public and private sectors (including social and commercial providers of housing) to put it all in place.

A better council, putting citizens’ needs up front

At least now we have some action, and an opportunity to learn from it.  We can put the Housing Accord to the test, and put the commitment and capacity of a range of agencies together towards achieving a common goal – a better Auckland for more Aucklanders. Through it we can put people back into politicians’ visions and planners’ pictures.

But Auckland Council will have learnt nothing if it continues to dictate terms to communities, to ride roughshod over the concerns of current citizens and the needs of future ones in pursuit of a single vision that doesn’t fit our city.

By participation in the Tamaki initiative, the council should be strengthened to pursue more such initiatives in other localities, to achieve better balance between principle and practice, and step up actions and delivery relative to promises.

Just Another Stake in the Sand: Planning, Demographics, and Uncertainty

Another million or another myth?

The Mayor, Len Brown, reiterated the Council view that Auckland is facing an increase of around one million people over the next 30 years, and that planning for this level of growth is the prudent thing to do.  I cannot be so sure. 

The Mayor is pretty bullish about growth, though.  He even claimed that “our actual rate of population growth has been well above the highest projection” since 1999. 

That doesn’t quite match the evidence. The actual population in 2011 was well below the high projections contained in various Statistics New Zealand projections and revisions since 2002. These include the one it prepared for the Auckland Regional Council in 2009 which suggested that under high growth assumptions Auckland could have another million people by 2051, forty years out.  

Successive Auckland Population Projections to 2011
(Source: Statistics New Zealand)

So how safe is a bet on another million in thirty years?  And incidentally, what do ratepayers and residents stand to lose from over-the-top plans and investment in infrastructure beyond what is needed if that growth doesn’t occur? Surely addressing the risks and the cost of getting it wrong is what would be really prudent.

So what do the numbers really tell us?

We can acknowledge that Auckland’s growth has exceeded Statistics New Zealand's medium projections. Perhaps more interesting, as these were updated through the decade, the medium projections became progressively more accurate (helped, of course, by the 2006 Census). This confirms that the longer the projection period, the greater the uncertainty, and the greater the risk of getting it wrong.

I draw two conclusions. First the magic million is highly arbitrary.  

Second, we need to address the inevitable uncertainty around long-term projections and develop plans that can cope with the risk that what we plan is not what we get, or takes a lot longer than we think it will.   

This uncertainty is not news. The 2009 ARC projections show a significant spread. The medium one is for growth 36% lower than the high projection.  The low projection is 52% below the high.  Incidentally, in 2011 (two years after the projections were prepared) we were already tracking on the low line.

     Source: Auckland Futures Growth Model, Auckland Council 2012

And if we were to stay with the Statistics New Zealand recommendation that planning should be based on the medium projection, we would be planning for another 800,000 people over 40 years rather than one million over 30.

Digging beneath the lines on the chart

I don’t know what the long-term future holds for Auckland and Aucklanders. No one does. However, it’s worth considering the possibilities by exploring the assumptions behind the projections. This will give us some idea of the growth drivers we need to plan for (or perhaps against).  These include assumed mortality fertility, and migration rates.

The focus here is on migration, but acknowledging that if gains from overseas continue to contribute substantially to Auckland’s growth they will also impact on mortality and fertility because of the different ages of people moving in and out of the city.

Migration: the great unknown

Although net gains from overseas are lower than Auckland’s natural increase (which is the annual excess of births over deaths), they are key drivers of population growth. Over the last twenty years net migration accounted for 30% of growth, a share ranging from 15% between 1996 and 2001 to 42% between 2001 and 2006 (and back to 30% since).

Annual Gains in Migration and Population, Auckland 1997-2012

The high population projection on which the council is placing so much store depends on substantially higher migration gains than we have sustained in the past. It’s a little difficult to envisage the conditions under which this might happen, yet it is the basis for projecting population growth of one million by 2051 (or is that 2041?), and hence an important prop for the Unitary Plan.

Actual and Assumed Net Migration Gains for Auckland

Getting past the numbers

Statistics New Zealand terms its projections “scenarios” and (wisely) not forecasts.   So what are some of the things that might influence the migration scenarios towards the higher or lower assumptions?

In fact, there are good reasons to favour lower rather than higher migration gains. For a start, a booming Asia over the coming decades should create competitive demand for skilled people, and could supplement Australia by increasing attractive opportunities for young New Zealanders. 

And an ageing and more prosperous Asian population will lower the supply of working immigrants – and increase competition for them from Australia, Canada, the US, and, increasingly, Asian countries.

Beyond that, poor housing affordability and the ambition (encapsulated in the Auckland Plan and its handmaiden, the draft Unitary Plan) of transforming Auckland from a unique South Pacific city into something resembling Vancouver, or Hong Kong, or London, or Melbourne, or Paris (exemplars cited by the Mayor and his advisers, not by me) are likely to lower Auckland’s attraction.  Somewhat perversely, the planned transformation to a higher city may also encourage older households to move out if the recent groundswell of concern is anything to go by.

Auckland –engine or anchor?

These possibilities highlight another feature of the projections.  They imply that Auckland will dominate national growth in a way that stretches recent history. While there is no denying Auckland’s primacy, there are threats to this and no reason to assume that city will – or should -- take up an ever-increasing share of New Zealand’s population growth.  .

For a start, issues around the availability and price of dwellings need to be resolved if a much larger population is to be housed.  Congestion, crowding, and associated pollution issues need to be dealt with, particularly if the Unitary Plan’s particular  penchant for lifting densities carries the day. And with little more than lip service paid to the needs of business, the Plan might make it just that much harder to do invest – or get a job -- in Auckland.  The difficulty imposed by a tight housing market might also make it difficult (and expensive) to attract and retain the right labour, so there is no guarantee that Auckland will dominate economic growth in the long-term..

The limits to primacy

So how far can we assume that Auckland will take ever increasing shares of New Zealand’s population growth?

Over the past 15 years Auckland accounted for 55% of New Zealand’s population gain. The high population projection behind the Unitary Plan, though, would see that climb to 64%.


Auckland Share of New Zealand Population Growth, 1996-2011 and Projected 2011-2031

The only way for Auckland to lift its long-term share of growth is to resolve housing problems speedily, and open up the opportunities for investing through a Unitary Plan that provides for expansive employment as well as housing.

In any case, growth may need to be more widely distributed within the country as a whole, if only to support our principle source of wealth, the primary and associated sectors.

A solution in search of a problem

The million person myth looks rather like it is being employed to support the Unitary Plan, rather than the other way round.  The planners have for searched for reasons to consolidate Auckland for well over twenty years now.  Well, so far this one’s no more convincing than the reasons that went before.  (And I suspect that a rushed job on the economic rationale for the plan will be no more convincing).

Numbers are important – but they are never definitive.  Projections are useful for what they tell us about the drivers of change as we understand them at the time we compile them. But they should be the starting point for discussion, debate, and policy development – not the end point. 

Planning is not about tracking a line (or even lines) on graph.  It is about identifying community needs and preferences, and responding to them in a way which enables citizens to get on with their lives without undue impact on the environment, or each other.  Right now, that does not seem to be the way the Council is tracking.

What were they thinking? A plan built on sand

The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
This sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
Bob Dylan (from It’s all over now, Baby Blue 1965)

Citizens rising

The suburban rumbling is turning into a roar: the citizens are finally having their say over a plan that was never going to work for them.

Council politicians– well some of them – have been leading the charge for a compact city, but dealing with the communities directly affected has tended to fall to local board members, and to the planners.  And it is the resistance that they are encountering rather than the shortcomings of the plan that might lead to a rethink, and perhaps to a plan rooted in the city’s geography and its communities rather than one built on the sand of grand visions.

Is planning the problem?

Increasingly planners and planning law (the Resource Management Act) are copping the flak for unaffordable housing and an unpopular plan.  Is that fair?

It’s certainly easy to target particular groups and processes, like planners and planning, when things go wrong, and polarise the dicussion.  But the issues generally run deeper than that as values, beliefs and expectations become institutionalised, and once-progressive institutions become conservative.  Hence, it’s hard to accept the suggestion by Bryce Julian, President of the New Zealand Planning Institute, that all that was lacking was time, that the big picture painted for Auckland was fine but politicians have not allowed their planners the time to get the detail right.

Planning as doctrine rather than reason?

That’s a bit of a condemnation of planning in its own right.  If we don’t get the big picture right first, how can we expect the detail to fall into place?  If the spatial plan is shaky, the fine grain is not going to shore it up.

It seems the Auckland spatial plan reflects planning based on broad assumptions rather than evidence (unless we count hearsay and groupthink as evidence), underwritten by proselytising on the international speaking circuit by planners and academics seeking to globalise their particular North American or European experiences, experiences that are increasingly irrelevant in terms of global urbanisation and removed from the Auckland situation.  

How good was the advice?

Perhaps it’s not the Auckland planners’ fault that politicians run too hard and too fast with their advice.  But by not emphasising the shaky nature of the evidence for their preferred approach to Auckland’s growth, by not pointing out that after two decades of pushing by the Auckland Regional Council the compact city failed to gain traction, and by failing to warn politicians that their big picture solution was bound to be unpopular locally the planners may have fallen short. 

Too little, too late

And the claim that the plan is based on “best analysis from the global marketplace” is a little hard to swallow.  As late as 21 May, just ten days before submissions on the Draft Unitary Plan close, the Council requested expressions of interest for a study on the costs of growth – to be finished in six weeks. 

The objectives for that study are not reassuring.  It appears to be about finding some evidence to underwrite “a view”.

For some time there has been a view, supported by Council’s Transport, Water and Wastewater CCOs, that it is more costly to service development at or beyond the urban edge of Auckland than it is to service development within it. There is some evidence supporting the view on development location in international studies but no specific work has been done for Auckland. In addition there is growing acceptance that different dwelling types place different demands on infrastructure^[1].

Methodologically it’s a worry as well.  While it’s good that the importance of marginal costing is recognised (it wasn’t in the analysis behind the 1999 Auckland Regional Growth Strategy), the approach appears a little naïve:

The Auckland Cost of Growth Study will examine the respective costs of new development at inner and outer urban locations. The study will assess the marginal cost of development of one new dwelling in a particular location compared to another.  This will be supported by an agreed standard dwelling unit measure.

Urban development (and housing) costs vary substantially according to the scale of development from place to place, its timing relative to construction of new infrastructure or the rehabilitation of old, densities, construction design and materials, site qualities, whether in green-fields or brown, proximity to work, distribution of community, recreational, and social amenities, and so on.  How meaningful can a single “standard dwelling unit” be under these circumstances? 

It cannot be done.

Information on the relative costs and performance of different forms of development should be undertaken at the outset of a planning exercise, not when the ink is all but dry.  It requires input from civil engineers, infrastructure operators, and development professionals as well as competent economists.  And that’s before we even begin to think about externalities.

Coming now, this study looks like a catch up job.  And what happens to the unitary plan if the results do not support the model being promoted by the council and its planners?

Can we generalise on the costs of growth?

I’m reluctant to draw on precedents.  However, I have reviewed a number of studies of the economics of urbanisation across New Zealand and Australia that may have usefully informed the study brief. 

Here are some general conclusions from the review:

·        Costs, where they fall and when do vary from place to place.  Hence, any claims to general rules of thumb or generic cost differences are fallacious.

·        Savings may accrue from higher densities and shorter travel distances, but their magnitude and the capacity to achieve them tend to be overstated given the role of other factors.

·        Cost relationships are not generally linear.  This means there may be economic advantages moving from densities of 10 dwellings per hectare to 20.  But the benefit of moving beyond that is open to question given that diseconomies set in as densities continue to increase.  More complicated urban design, more expensive structures, greater congestion, and a jump in transit spending compound costs beyond certain density thresholds, although where those thresholds fall varies from place to place.

·       The costs of density may be higher in brownfield sites where they require land consolidation and rehabilitation and expensive retrofitting of infrastructure, including roads and underground services.

·        Unsurprisingly, the best urban design outcomes may be achieved in greenfield sites, although modest gains can also be made within existing suburbs.

More to the point, the review confirms a lack of conclusive evidence of the relative benefits of building up or out.  It depends on how you do it, and where.  It’s unlikely that a six week study of the comparative costs of a standard dwelling unit will prop up the unitary plan.

Getting beyond principles to practice

Starting with an unrealistic and largely doctrinaire grand plan was never the way ahead for Auckland. 

Options need to be explored and costed, from the ground up.  And if that’s just too hard, then a much more flexible approach is called for to planning, not one that tries to lock down an untested, unpopular, and generally inappropriate view of what’s best for Auckland. That’s something Auckland politicians and planners have been reluctant to accept, even though the success of any urban strategy depends ultimately on how acceptable it is to the market – which includes today’s as well as tomorrow’s residents.

 

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The Question was never "whether?" Just "when?" The Unravelling of the Auckland Plan

Getting the housing equation wrong
The failure of the Auckland Plan to reflect the simple aspirations of Aucklanders for home ownership and predominantly low-rise suburban lifestyles and promote instead the lofty compact city vision held by its planners and policy-makers made its unravelling inevitable.  And now it’s started.

Rationing land to squeeze the city upward was always going to create problems.

Given the fundamental shift in aspirations, expectations, and behaviour that implementing the Auckland plan demands, the first problem is the need for an over-blown and over-complicated rule book - the draft unitary plan - to get citizens to comply with a transformation they didn’t ask for and don’t want.

The result is, predictably, growing alarm at the proposed transformation of communities and streets to achieve high densities in an area already constricted by its coastlines, its estuaries, and its ranges.

Regulatory Risk
Another problem: the draft unitary plan introduces unknown regulatory and fiscal risks.  Despite an avalanche of material advocating higher settlement density and centralisation, there is no accessible Section 32 analysis (which the Resource Management Act requires in support of policies) confirming that crowded is good and more crowded is better.  The lack of evidence in support of a compact city is particularly telling during the limited period allowed for public consultation on the plan. 

We don't know the cost of implementing the plan, its rules and regulations, so we don’t have figures that might be weighed against purported benefits, or on which to judge how effective it might be in achieving even its authors’ hopes, and how much it will cost the community to try.  

Rhetoric won’t carry the day.  We have no idea of whether the plan will be a drag on the Auckland economy, or a boon to it.   Creating a planning framework that looks set to promote unrealistic land use options to try to compel the majority of Aucklanders to change the way they live will create conflict, though, and inflate the cost of development – and living. 

This is over-regulation: a weighty, complicated legal document which probably exceeds the council’s capacity to implement it, which will impose significant costs on the community, and is bound to have unintended consequences.  And the means, the unitary plan, look set to undermine the ends, a more liveable city.

Loss of autonomy
Another problem with the plan as conceived was the prospect that ill-founded regulation would lead to central government stepping in.  That was predictable, and now it’s happened.  There is no point in decrying the loss of community input if the government has to champion the interests of people aspiring to own homes in Auckland because council plans and procrastination have made it that much harder for them.

When the council decided to go down a prescriptive path to assert a centralised city format – one that had already struggled to gain traction over the previous two decades – informed by principles and nostalgia rather than feelings and circumstance, it lost touch with the Auckland’s diverse peoples.  It confused a singular (and high risk) vision with unity of purpose, and pre-empted a simpler plan that might better cater to the vagaries of a growing city. 

The real irony is that central government has been brought into play as a result of a heavy-handed, over-centralised approach by the local council. 

Can an accord be imposed?

Having made clear its concern over the economic and social consequences of the plan, the government has required the council to work with it in an accord to free up land for housing.  By insisting that its way was best the council has ceded control of the cornerstone of its plan.   

Addressing the supply of land for housing is well overdue, but it would have been more satisfactory if the council had been a little less dogmatic and done so in the first place.  This would have protected its credibility and autonomy.  Instead, a streamlined consenting procedure has now been established virtually by decree, a procedure that may well downplay the environmental checks and balances that an autonomous, local planning process might employ.

A Change in Direction?

This shift is fundamental to the plan.  The Accord provides for a degree of decentralisation that the draft unitary plan is written to resist.  Multiple opportunities for expansion on or beyond the fringe may be pursued under the Accord, in a number of forms, including extending existing settlements, new settlements, villages, and suburbs. 

While no ad hoc solution is straightforward, the Accord does what the unitary plan doesn’t: it enables rather than limits development.  Hopefully, creativity, design skills, and market and commercial acumen can now be brought to bear in a variety of settings and solutions – operating within sensible and justifiable environmental limits. 

What else is needed?

While accelerating the release of land for housing is critical to solving the housing crisis, by itself it’s not enough.  Moreover, it fundamentally changes the tenor of the Auckland Plan and Draft Unitary Plan, built as they are around centralisation.  The promotion of the CBD ahead of suburban living, the heavy commitment of resources to a dubious increase in the capacity of rail serving the central city, the presumption that future employment will grow most Auckland central – all these assumptions need to be revisited and revised.

That’s the nature of an integrated plan – you cannot fundamentally alter one component without changing others.

Back to the drawing board

Promoting a doctrinaire and single-minded view of what Auckland should look like in the future, and a commitment to urban form out of touch with the City’s history, its residents, and its prospects was always a high risk project.  That risk has just been magnified.

If the unitary plan is to survive, there will need to be some radical responses to the current round of consultation – and from now on a careful ear to the ground on what the government as well as the community at large has to say about some of its other provisions.

 

Denial as Defence: Time to Acknowledge Flaws in Auckland’s Unitary Plan

Evidence mounts, resistance increases

Yet another research project has reminded us what the majority of Aucklanders already know.  Most of them want to live in suburbs, and prefer detached to multi-unit dwellings.  Yet the Auckland Council – or at least the majority of councillors and their planners – apparently remains in denial.  Through the Auckland Plan and now the Unitary Plan the Council continues to elevate higher density dwelling in and around town centres, the CBD, and arterial roads as the principal response to Auckland's growth potential and to a longstanding and growing housing crisis confronting the city.

But the evidence is mounting that it is not an appropriate plan for accommodating growth and maintaining Auckland’s liveability on either economic or environmental grounds.  And the signs that Aucklanders will resist the plan are mounting, even as the Council aims to rush it through with limited consultation and even more limited evidence.

Who are we planning for?

This left me wondering just who will occupy the medium- to high-density residential precincts planned to shape our future. To get an insight into this I went back to the 2006 Census to find out who lived in the inner city in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.[1] 

I looked at a number of indicators for the inner suburbs, and compared them with the same statistics for the respective regions (which include their peri-urban catchments, additional urban areas in Wellington, and towns in Canterbury). 

The results are displayed in the various graphs at the end of this blog. Take a look. 

The evidence is compelling.  Inner city dwellers tend to be in rental accommodation, they are generally younger – with a marked absence of families – they are less likely to be currently married or in a civil union, they haven’t been at their current address very long, and are likely to have moved in from other parts of New Zealand and overseas. 

Central Auckland residents –passing through

This pattern prevails in each of the three inner city areas considered to a greater or lesser extent.  But it looks most pronounced in Auckland, so I delved a little deeper there.  The table tells the story: inner Auckland by no means represents Auckland or Aucklanders.

Inner Auckland – an area in which small, often multi-unit dwellings tend to prevail – is where people appear to touch down briefly, not where they settle.  They come from elsewhere, and do not stay for long.  They are predominantly young adults, a significant share being students.  Older people are not necessarily attracted to the smaller units of inner city living – something we looked at in an earlier post.  Most residents in inner Auckland are not in permanent relationships.  And the people who are tend to be are couples without children. 

So where is the evidence that suggests that the plan will be widely accepted?

If this is the sort of profile we might relate to inner city and multi-unit living (apartments, terraces, and the like) the Auckland plan could be on shaky ground. It may well be shaped around the residential preferences of a distinct (and diminishing) minority: younger, transitional and transient people and households. 

Of course, the data is dated, and there has been a pretty intensive PR effort by the council and its supporters to push a plan telling us that we ard ready to make the shift to higher density.  But surely such a push should be based on evidence that suggests many more people are prepared to accept a radical change in the lifestyles that typified Auckland in the recent past?  And while the evidence cited here against the plan is a little dated, I have seen none that suggests tastes and behaviours have changed that much.

So we are left with a radical shift in the way we think about and live in Auckland, apparently founded on little more than supposition and dogma.

More evidence is around the corner

Perhaps we should seek a stay in play at least until the 2013 census results become available later this year and early next.  Maybe they will show the sort of shift that might increase the credibility for the plan. Either way, it makes sense to actually wait and see, if for no other reason than what the most recent data tells us about the housing market and residents' preferences is bound to be brought to bear as communities dig in to resist it. 

And no need to hold up the main task

And with a more relaxed (and realistic) timetable for the Unitary Plan, the Council could push ahead in a more focused way with a series of changes under currently operative plans – or even in partnership with central government through special legislation – to address the city’s housing crisis.  And it could do that without getting caught up in the growing debate over a plan that at the moment is not standing up well to community (and perhaps even government) scrutiny.

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[1]         Including the following Census area Units:

Auckland: Central West, Freemans Bay, Central East, Newton, Grafton West, Grafton East

Wellington: Lambton, Willis Street-Cambridge Tce, Thorndon-Tinakori Rd, Aro St-Nairn St, Mt Cook-Wallace St, Mt Victoria West

Christchurch: Cathedral Square, Hagley Park, Avon Loop, Mona Vale, Riccarton West, Riccarton, Riccarton Sth, Merivale, St Albans West, St Albans East, Edgeware

 

 The Inner City is Different ....

 

 Note: Married includes civil unions