The title I’m sure is not a suprise to regular readers but after my New Year travels I think we can make it official. Here are some images from around NZ showing how far behind Auckland is, we really should be ashamed.
Wellington is a fantastically walkable city and I could have uploaded a hundred photos showing what they do well, here is an idea that was all round the CBD and it is pedestrian covers near intersections for pedestrians to wait under after pushing the crossing signal. They also provide an advertising space which I’m guessing more than covers their cost. Guess what, when a covered walkway was needed between types of PT or stations and destinations, a group was put in a line, simple eh?
Here is the square in front of Te Papa, the whole Wellington waterfront is like this, it goes for kilometres!
Not pictured is Cuba Mall which is great too and hilariously came about due to some public works in the 1960s, the street was closed for these works and businesses found when cars were banished from the street business returns went up dramatically, I notice a trend, as the works neared an end the businesses pleaded with the city council to make it permanent. No such luck in Auckland, where our short sighted city businesses are protesting over even just shared streets.
My trip was my first time in Christchurch and I was pleasantly suprised about just how walkable the city was. Firstly Cathedral Square was a magical centre for the city but it was some of the some streets just off the central square that were the best. This is Worcester St:
And I believe from memory this is Cashel St which is a full pedestrian Mall:
I love to see any streets half as good as those for walkability, urban form and bicycling anywhere in Auckland’s CBD. Maybe the shared streets will get us part way there but doesn’t go far enough in my opinion, Queen Street should be pedestrian and bus only from Town Hall to Britomart and the number of proposed shared streets should be quadrupled.
Finally here is a photo from Porirua, this is one of the main streets of the city just off from the city’s centre:
It has been fully pedestrianised and covered in a canopy, it was quite fantastic to find.
Now I know Councillors and Council staff from the ACC, WCC, MCC and ARC read this blog, many do an excellent job but there is a perception in Auckland that our local body politicans are failed central government politicans or wannabe list MPs, I think maybe catching up to Porirua might help change that perception. Doing something about Queen Street, which is basically a four-lane highway in the heart of our city, might be a good start.
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Interesting to see how good at urban design the Auckland Roads CCO will be. Might be worth asking how many urban designers they are planning to have in their management structure.
Yup, that’s Cashel Mall/City Mall. There’s a high school above the Hallensteins on the right hand side, with the other half of the school above the Bus Exchange, which has an arcade-access (the sign is slight obscured just in front of that real estate sign in the mid-right).
New Regent Street, Sol Square, and Poplar Street would have been worth a show as well.
Although Wellington is much better in terms of walkability is has really been standing still in this regard for many years. There is still much to do in Wellington, the worst is probably Waterloo/Customhouse/Jervois Quay which is a 6/7 lane highway that seperates the City from the wonderful waterfront area.
Auckland Council’s do seem to have much more vision at least, but they have a terrible backlog of things to do, and their businesses also seem very car-centric in their thinking which is a shame.
@Marsoe I saw Latimer (I think) square which was just a park… Didn’t see any of the places you mention and I will have to go there when I’m next in town…
@Luke, that street is a bit oppressive, the bridge from the city square over it is a good start, say three more strategically placed over and underpasses would mean it could remain… Basically in Wellington I really like the balance between; walking, PT and cars, it is why I’m really dissapointed with the TMG announcement…
Highly suprised to see Porirua in your list of great walking cities. The canopies are a great place and there can be a wonderful atmosphere in there. Going through there on thursday, it was a hive of activity with teens, older people and buskers. But the problems with the canopies is that the social class of people the go there are seen as low income, with middle class people instead driving there cars to the malls and big box stalls. The canopy area is also being failed by big companies, with M’Ds moving out (the oldest one in NZ) closer to the enterance to Porirua by road. They could make these areas more attractive by ancouraging markets which don’t only run on saturday morning, but throughout the week and mixed use to encourage night life.
Much of these pedestrian streets started in the 1960s out of a movement in the U.S. I’m suprised Auckland didn’t have any. Many of these streets failed in the U.S, but Wellington did well due to its CBD density
Auckland has one: Vulcan Lane. Nicest corner of the city and has the highest foot-traffic (at the intersection with Queen St) of any spot in the Auckland CBD.
Completely agree, they should close off queen street but allow taxis along with buses, last time I was in Auckland I found getting a cab just hard enough. This is the setup in Melbourne along Swanston street and it works like a charm. Aucklanders are really missing out.
@Brent C, Porirua is definitely not high on my walking list of cities but higher than Auckland due to this “downtown” mall alone…
Right next to it however is two massive malls and a gaint carpark for the council buildings, malls etc… Not pretty, but scale wise Porirua has a much bigger asset and has made a much bigger start than Auckland, it will interesting to see if there is further commitment…
Kiwi in Melbourne
”Completely agree, they should close off queen street but allow taxis along with buses, last time I was in Auckland I found getting a cab just hard enough. This is the setup in Melbourne along Swanston street and it works like a charm. Aucklanders are really missing out.”
…..and Oxford St London has nothing but buses and taxis going up and down it. in fact, they want to start getting rid of a lot of bus routes going down because theres far too many! it’ll make it a bit easier for pedestrians too.
My understanding is the canopies in Porirua will be removed in the near future. They were a good idea, but the execution was a bit lacking in that the design basically becomes a wind tunnel when it’s blowing strongly (which is a lot of the time), making it not a pleasant place to be in. The area was the main shopping area for many years, until North City sucked it all dry.
Palmerston North is another small city heading the same way, the upgrade of the mall there has meant the Square itself is slowly dying as the larger retailers move into it, leaving the streets empty.
The pedestrian covers in Wellington are usually alright, just not when the rain is horizontal 😉 Whitmore Street also tends to funnel the wind down as well, so not a great place to be in when wet and windy…
Jeremy – wait for the shared spaces to come into being. You will be impressed (I hope).
http://www.aucklandcity.govt.nz/council/projects/cbdproject/sharedspace.asp
Aaron, we are very impressed with the shared space concept. I just wish more business owners would ‘get it’ so that the plans didn’t have to be watered down. I think that shared spaces will be a huge boost for local businesses in the parts of the CBD near them, but for some reaon that message is hard to get through.
I guess we will have to rely on the new Super City to do something about narrowing Queen Street.
I don’t think the mall upgrade in Palmerston North is too bad actually, the main issue is Farmers moving into the complex, which will leave a big hole in the opposite side of the square. However the mall upgrade is far preferable to lots of car dependent big-box stores springing up, that are just far enough away from the square that you can’t walk to them. I think Hamilton is by far the worst example of this big-box madness, the Base at Te Rapa will be very damaging for the city, and there is no integration between different stores, which makes it difficult to run any sort of decent PT.
Haven’t seen Te Rapa but it would have to be pretty bad to be as pedestrian-unfriendly as the Albany Mega-mall. Try walking from shop to shop there on rainy day.
I’m still trying to work out why NS City let them build it like they did- especially after it was promoted as a state of the art ‘Town Centre’ if you can believe it. I thought the idea of a centre was that everything had to be with proximity to everything else- but apparently not.
I have serious concerns about any group of people that would elect Mayor Williams…
I understand that the only reason he was elected was because the last election turned very much into a single-issue battle over whether the NSCC should support the redevelopment of Whenuapai air-base into a commercial airport. George Wood supported it, Andrew Williams opposed it. End of story.
For a new-town such as Albany to work well, the council needs to be able to control the orientation and positioning of buildings on the site. This is the only way to ensure walkability between shops. The council has clearly not done this, and the current terrible setup has resulted. Maybe having common council-owned carparks would be a better idea, instead of each individual shop having parks, that result in miserable places.
The other big muck-up at Albany is in regards to the the University, it is so close to the town centre, but cutoff by a 4-6 lane highway. The uni should have been part of the town masterplan, would have given much more life to the centre.
Albany has so many muck-ups it’s hard to count them all. I would say that the huge amount of space eaten up by Westfield’s carparks is another unforgivable mistake in what should be a mini-CBD. Proper business districts are NOT full of surface level parking (hear that Manukau City?)