The council yesterday approved a draft submission to a parliamentary inquiry about climate adaptation.
"Community-led retreat" has been a central concept of the inquiry and was defined as "moving homes, businesses, sites of cultural significance or taonga out of harm’s way, in a carefully planned process that involves the community at every step".
The council challenged this language, pointing out it implied retreat or relocation would be driven or led by the community "and this may not always be the case".
At yesterday’s council meeting, South Dunedin Future programme manager Jonathan Rowe confirmed a preference for the term "managed relocation".
One argument he put forward was freeing up some land from development could enable nature-based solutions to be effected and this could make a retreat more gradual.
South Dunedin has been used as a case study for the inquiry.
It was described as being home to about 13,500 people, 1500 businesses and a range of critical city infrastructure.
