Emily Irwin: A planner's perspective
Why Market Forces Fail in Resort Towns: A Strategic Housing Planner's Case for Inclusionary Zoning
The Overton Shift - How public dialogue can unlock bold political action on housing affordability in New Zealand. In this episode we speak with Emily Irwin, Strategic Housing Planner at the Queenstown Lakes District Council. With a background rooted in community planning and housing policy, Emily brings a strong focus on affordability and inclusion to one of New Zealand’s most dynamic resort regions. Having joined the Council to drive the Joint Housing Action Plan and coordinate across iwi, central government and local partners, she’s shaping how housing density, land-use levers and workforce accommodation strategies are being activated in the district.
In our conversation, Emily explores the tension between housing as shelter and housing as investment in New Zealand, arguing that our cultural fixation on property wealth has come at the cost of community function and economic productivity. She makes the case for inclusionary housing mechanisms as a tool to create perpetually affordable homes distributed across diverse neighbourhoods, avoiding the ghettoisation that can result from purely financial approaches. Emily emphasises that housing challenges ripple far beyond those directly affected: teacher and nurse shortages, business turnover costs, and fractured social connections all stem from unaffordable housing. She calls for broader public conversations to shift the Overton window, enabling politicians to act boldly, and challenges the assumption that market supply alone will solve affordability in high-value resort communities like Queenstown, where free-market dynamics can push average house prices into the millions.
