Awarded to:
- Kirsty Downey, Regan Schoultz and Justine Kennedy from Waipā District Council
- Ben Petch and Vanessa Honore from AECOM
for ...
The Pirongia Village Concept Plan Refresh
Pirongia will be home to 50% more people by 2050. The Pirongia Village Concept Plan Refresh enables Waipā District Council (Waipā) to work closely with mana whenua and the Pirongia community to manage this degree of change and to promote greater quality of life, enhanced natural assets, and sustained heritage.
The project represents best practice because it applied bottom-up engagement to determine what the Pirongia community values, which informed agreement on an appropriate place-based response to growth. It then detailed a tangible implementation framework to inform Waipā’s investment in the community. Highlights include:
- Bottom-up engagement to define place-based values: Pirongia is home to an engaged community. So Waipā created Be Bold Pirongia — an engagement campaign encouraging stakeholders and the public to come forward with their boldest ideas and visions for the future of Pirongia. A range of online and in-person techniques were applied. Ninety primary age students at Pirongia School shared their bold ideas. A Project Steering Group (made up of mana whenua, community members and key government representatives) guided decision-making to represent the community’s voice at each decision-point. An honest values-based discussion about Pirongia took place.
- Aligning investment to what Pirongia values: Pirongia Village Concept Plan Refresh is a place-based change management tool that aligns investment to strengthen Pirongia. A new vision, Whakataukī, and objectives denote a long-term pathway for change in the community. Seven near-term projects are recommended. These focus on the Waipā river, public activities, and walking and cycling because that is what the community told us was most important to them.
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