Motu welcomes new Senior Fellow Stuart Donovan

Jan 15, 2024

Motu is proud to welcome our new Senior Fellow, Stuart Donovan.

Stuart has two decades of experience working in Australia and New Zealand. With expertise in spatial, urban, and transport economics; multi-modal transport planning; and land use policy, Stuart’s career highlights include:

• Delivering urban economic short courses in Amsterdam, Auckland, Wellington, Brisbane, and London
• Modelling the land use effects of several highway and public transport projects in Australia
• Leading major reviews of public transport fares in Brisbane (2017) and Wellington (2023)
• Contributing to the National Policy Statement on Urban Development Capacity (“NPS-UDC”)
• Undertaking innovative benefit cost analyses of land use policies for Auckland Council
• Providing expert testimony on parking policy at hearings on the Auckland Unitary Plan
• Developing a framework for (ex-post) analysis of public transport service changes that was adopted into Australian national guidelines (ATAP).

Stuart has also co-authored publications on wind farm optimisation, the distributional effects of transport projects, the economic costs of electric vehicles, the contribution of public transport to economic productivity, a systematic review of agglomeration economies, and estimates of agglomeration economies in New Zealand. Stuart is currently progressing research into the effects of commuting costs on urban location choice and the effects of crime on urban economic outcomes, drawing on his PhD dissertation.