British engineer Tony Thorpe during the 1980s and 90s regularly toured New Zealand as a consultant on large-scale project management.  Now he believes that he has identified a project that will go a long way to solving the Auckland house problem caused by demand exceeding supply.  The project was conceived by HRH Prince Charles and it is the Poundbury township (above).To prove his point Oxford-educated Mr Thorpe (pictured here) has installed himself and his family there.Mr Thorpe’s point is that many people of mature years would like to quit a metropolis such as Auckland. But they are afraid to do so. Their reasons are twofold. If they move to a rural or less populated region they fear isolation. If they move to a less populated urban environment they similarly fear isolation or the possibility of becoming ghettoised.Urban planning buff Mr Thorpe knew he had to quit his large house and gardens which were now more appropriate to those with a young and growing family. It was now that he saw Prince Charles’ model township as an alternative providing both an active all-age liveable and compressed community built to adhere to traditional folk standards.Mr Thorpe has now lived in Poundbury for a year and believes that a similar sympathetic township in New Zealand would draw-off mature-aged Auckland residents whose houses would thus become available for those in their younger or middle years.You cannot choke off the entire Auckland isthmus with more and still more “social” or any other housing, insists Mr Thorpe.“But what you can do is offer an alternative to those Aucklanders of a certain age who would happily live somewhere else.”Poundbury is home to 2,500 people living in different types of housing, including “affordable” housing. It provides employment for some 2,000 people working in 170 businesses.A well-known international engineering consultant for many years, Mr Thorpe concluded. “In the 30 years that I have travelled to New Zealand there has been one single constant – the Auckland housing problem. One does not have to be a town planning genius to see that it will not yield to conventional solutions.”

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk