Angela Fang already noticed this nation’s housing issues a bit in a different way. And now, she’s gained a singular perspective on Auckland’s city sprawl – from leaping out of a aircraft 13,000 ft (4000 metres) above town.
It’s additionally given her the 19-year-old a brand new perspective on life, after her wire caught and her parachute refused to open, above Parakai final month.
“I began spinning, and clearly misplaced management,” she says. “I wasn’t that panicky, as a result of I knew I had a reserve. However as a result of I used to be spinning round, it was actually exhausting for me to find that, it was dizzy as hell. So I launched that at about 2000 ft, however there have been a variety of line twists, which locked my head in, so I wanted to kick and switch round to launch these cords.”
“Lastly I used to be possibly 5 metres away from the ability strains, after I managed to only flip. And I landed, and clearly gave everybody an excellent large scare – together with my dad. I instructed him, ‘hey, Dad, I virtually died’. You possibly can simply see the color had drained from his face.
“Everybody else was in shock. So, I believed, okay, I would should be the one who’s calm.”
Angela has at the moment been named the winner of the Rod Oram Memorial Essay Prize for 2026, for her essay, Constructing homes that we are able to name houses. It’s printed at the moment at Newsroom.co.nz. The prize remembers Newsroom journalist Rod Oram, and his pleasure in sharing his enthusiasm and concepts with youthful generations.
Rod had devoted a lot of his private {and professional} life to searching for options to how we and our communities can reside in higher accord with our local weather and surroundings. He and spouse Lynn introduced their very own method to housing: they had been early adopters (or experimenters!) with photo voltaic panels, battery-driven vehicles and extra. And naturally, Rod famously cycled virtually all over the place – together with from Kazakhstan to Istanbul, lower than a yr earlier than his dying in 2024.
His daughter Celeste Oram judged the inaugural Rod Oram Memorial Essay Prize, alongside three of her father’s mates and colleagues: journalists Vincent Heeringa, Anna Fifield and Jonathan Milne. It was an award by which youthful New Zealanders, aged underneath 25, addressed the query: What should we do – and do now – to make sure that future generations reside effectively in Aotearoa New Zealand?
On this, the award’s second yr, Angela received from a splendidly robust discipline. The judges additionally counseled three different solutions-driven essays: Jessaien Govender’s argument for embedding kaitiakitanga in pure catastrophe adaptation decision-making, Adnan Ali Haqiqzai’s name to make incapacity inclusion non-negotiable, and Jack Anderson’s imaginative and prescient for extra merely connecting New Zealand.
However Angela’s profitable essay on a brand new financial therapy of housing stood out, for its lovely presentation of a well-evidenced argument.
“I’m 19. I watch my mates depart for Australia, the place wages are increased and housing is cheaper,” she writes. “I watch others keep, decided to make this metropolis work, even because it makes them work tougher than they need to must.
“The wetland I helped fence close to Ohakune years in the past is now wholesome. It was simply exterior of my buddy’s farm. Bitterns have returned. The native college makes use of it as an outside classroom. It produces no export income, contributes nothing to GDP, and can by no means seem in a productiveness report. However it represents a type of wealth that my grandchildren will inherit, if we make totally different selections.
“Housing is not any totally different. A secure, heat, inexpensive residence produces no export income. It contributes to GDP solely in probably the most oblique approach. However it’s the basis on which each different type of wealth relies upon. With out it, you can not research, you can not work reliably, you can not increase youngsters, you can not take part in your group. You can’t reside effectively.”
Angela is now finding out regulation and environmental science with geographic info programs, on the College of Auckland. However her brush with dying has given her a brand new appreciation for all times.
It’s made her extra conscious of the significance and urgency of connecting folks, so she desires to do extra writing.
As effectively, she is marketing campaign chief for Te Puawaitanga Ladies’s Organisation, and is now spearheading a petition to considerably reform the regulation to raised defend the survivors of home violence. She’s pissed off at speaking to girls she is aware of about their experiences of abuse, and the shortcoming of police and the justice and welfare programs to guard them.
She’s not afraid to advocate dramatic authorized options, like a public register of offenders, within the hope of maybe compromising on a passable center floor. “There’s a saying that we now have in Chinese language: If you wish to open the window, it is advisable to tear off the roof.”
In an interview with Newsroom, Angela tells how the optimism imbued in Rod Oram’s guide, Three Cities, resonated for her. In it, Rod spends time Beijing, London and Chicago – and concludes that if 10 billion persons are going to reside effectively on this planet in 2050, we now have to essentially change the way in which we do issues.
Angela grew up practically half her life in Beijing. She remembers days when she and her classmates can be ordered to remain residence from college, as a result of air air pollution ranges had been dangerously excessive.
“I left Beijing in 2016, the identical yr he printed that guide,” she says. “Quite a lot of issues had been starting to occur, just like the vertical inexperienced metropolis to fight air air pollution.”
Relatively than increasing outward, town is constructing upwards utilizing sustainable supplies, integrating flowers instantly onto high-rise facades, and creating contained, energy-efficient “vertical farms” to curb city sprawl.
The vegetation absorbs 1000’s of tonnes of carbon dioxide, Angela says. And – largely due to its extra directive financial system – China has been capable of shut down 1000’s of high-polluting factories.
Angela can see how China and New Zealand – with two very totally different fashions of presidency – are capable of carry totally different strengths to combating environmental hurt.
With out the necessity to seek the advice of the general public, China can implement and does implement far-sighted and longterm financial and environmental options. New Zealand’s elected authorities and councils should have interaction much more carefully with the general public, to carry folks alongside – however that does generally imply coverage may be risky, altering each three years.
“There’s no excellent approach of operating every little thing easily and ensuring each drawback will get solved. Each type of authorities has its ups and downs. I suppose what we would like as a rustic is to attempt to push via our limitations, to be extra direct in coping with sure points.”
On the coronary heart of her award-winning essay is the problem of housing intensification – and her frustration on the to-ing- and fro-ing of successive New Zealand governments and politicians. She cites the 2021 bipartisan settlement on medium-density residential requirements, permitting three storey houses to be constructed with out useful resource consent in our fastest-growing cities.
However that settlement, between Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Authorities and Judith Collins’ Nationwide Opposition, was rescinded by Christopher Luxon when he grew to become Nationwide Celebration chief.
Then Housing Minister Christopher Bishop agreed with Auckland Council that it will be free to resolve the place to accentuate housing and the place to not, as long as it maintained the earlier capability to in the end construct at the very least 2 million houses throughout the area. That too was rescinded, this yr.
Angela says politicians are placing heritage forward of wholesome residence – when it needs to be completely possible to have each.
“That’s the intricate stability that we have to speak about, proper? Proper now, we’re not constructing sufficient density. There are areas that aren’t heritage, that might be higher utilised.”
In her essay, she tells of a buddy who’s paying $400 per week for a one-bedroom residence. “It’s outrageous,” she says.
“It will get to some extent the place politicians are too scared to make any modifications, so every little thing and everybody simply stays the identical. That’s not what we would like as a progressive nation. We would like to have the ability to adapt to the challenges dealing with us. And from my perspective, I imagine that when there are extra housing models, it’s going to get extra inexpensive.”
Does she have hope that her technology can change issues? “100%. If I’ve hope in myself, then I even have hope for my technology.”
