‘Returning resources alone is not enough’: imagining urban planning after Treaty settlements in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Aotearoa New Zealand, Treaty settlements return land to Māori tribal authorities, but planning authority is retained by local and central government. I offer a narrative which describes how plans for commercial property development on land returned to Māori have led to tension between a tribal authority and a local government. This article reports findings that planning processes are influenced by discourses rooted in settler colonial logics. Opportunities to transform these discourses include recognising the exercise of ‘economic sovereignty’ by the tribal authority. Considering interviews with planners involved in developing planning regulation for urban land returned to Māori through the lens of a settler decolonisation practice, I conclude that the return of land through Treaty settlements ‘unsettles’ planning. Planners are struggling to reconcile the imperative to decolonise with their everyday work in a settler colonial planning system. Te Tiriti o Waitangi must form the basis of a new planning imagination for Aotearoa New Zealand.