Auckland has the goal of becoming the World’s Most Liveable City – a goal that is highly achievable given many of our current advantages (natural setting, low crime rates, mild climate etc.) But what makes a truly liveable city? This is something various agencies like Mercer, the Economist and Monocle try to figure out in their annual surveys. Monocle magazine has explained, in the video below, key features that it considers when determining its liveability rankings (their 2014 survey placed Auckland 12th):
Some key matters that stand out for me are:
- The importance of reliable public transport (the very first thing mentioned)
- The mix of both “soft” and “hard” measurements
- The importance of a vibrant heart to a city, and for that heart to be a place where people live
- The ease of undertaking entrepreneurial activity
- Access to quality public spaces
It’s also very interesting to see Tokyo – the world’s largest city – excel and reach number two on the list. It seems that cities which embrace their urban-ness, rather than hide from it, are increasingly being seen as particularly liveable locations.
Maybe once CRL is built, the new bus network implemented, the city centre revitalisation advanced further, mass cycle lanes built across Auckland and the numerous other things in the plans made a reality, Auckland will be number one.
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I don’t want this to turn parochial but seriously if you distance yourself (live in the world outside of NZ), it is hard to see how CURRENTLY Wellington wouldn’t / doesn’t out perform Auckland on all 5 of those indicators..?
Maybe Auckland would win on point 3, as the Lambton quarter of Wellington effectively shuts down after dark.
True though, Auckland COULD be really fantastic…
Oh I think Wellington has long had that position in NZ [Honourable mention for Dunedin]. Not so much including the often rather strange ex-urban sprawl that has be added more recently, but Welly has been our most urban place for decades, and, frankly, is an outlier with it’s rich and varied movement options. Not to mention the huge number of nationally funded cultural institutions which means it has a richness way beyond its scale. Recent decades it has hugely improved it waterfront but also reinjected life into the inner city with often interesting residential additions to commercial buildings, but it has always had a intensity born of geographical constraint that also provides a stunning setting.
Quite clearly Matt is looking forward in his last sentence about Auckland. And in this I agree, not versus Wellington, but rather in its own terms, Auckland as a city is now on the verge of a huge reinvention. It is an exciting moment to be involved in.
I tell people that Wellington is one of the best small cities in the world, and could easily become the best. One of Wellington’s problems however is that it takes its ‘bestness’ for granted, and is often rather smug about it. I get shocked looks there when I say how much I like Auckland, and how good the city is becoming.
There are some local body politicians who understand what is good about the city and how it can actually be a lot better, but there are plenty who don’t, and these people are a constraint on improvement.
The streets priority is nuts in Welly; pedestrians and cyclists get nothing. And it’s so fixable, They have angle parking on some city streets! So much width to play with and there’s hardly any traffic, FFS.
Also, in terms of intensification isthmus Auckland is now approaching Wellington south of the Ngauranga gorge (inner Wellington). That hasn’t been appreciated yet.
There’s a battle being fought over street parking, with an informal alliance of affected NIMBYs and very cynical politicians (Labour and right) who want to defeat a visibly pro-cycle (Green affiliated) Mayor.
> They have angle parking on some city streets!
If Auckland Transport’s motto is “car movement over everything”, Wellington City Council’s is “on-street parking over everything”. Including mostly avoiding peak-hour clearways and bus lanes, and sometimes making main bus routes too narrow for buses to pass in opposite directions. Apart from the Golden Mile, most of the CBD is a series of carefully designed loops that let cars hunt for angle parks.
As nice as Wellington is, for me one factor that keeps it from true greatness is that such a large proportion of what is good about it is only there because it is the administrative capital of New Zealand. This gives it a lack of real authenticity and a bit of an “artificial” feel.
I think what happens / doesn’t happen with Wellington train station and further extension into the city will be crucial for Wellington.
Probably after the CRL and all its associated benefits will be when Wellington seriously tackles this issue.
Such amazing connectivity potential for a future (amalgamated?) greater Wellington on the Thorndon doorstep…
Wellington is great but on a downhill trajectory as of late with the motorway building private motorvehicle encouragement. A bit of genuine pedestrian priority and cycleways could reverse that if the opposition to the loss of onstreet carparks could be overcome. The delaying of the flyover (i dont think we have heard the last on this by a long strech) is also something that gives me hope.
You never know. Wellington fought back against the Basin flyover and won. That could be a turning point.
A huge part of Wellington’s problem is the NZTA. The NZTA essentially control large swathes of central Wellington by having control over those roads, and prevent the changes that the city and its residents want. They are particularly intransigent, and since its inception the agency has rejected the demands of the city and local residents.
As a Wellington resident, sure the roading binge is an annoyance, but the continued expansion of downtown living especially in Te Aro in recent years is really growing Wellington’s urban vibrancy (from an already good base). Laneway bars and restaurants have been a focus for Wellington’s Courtenay / Cuba / Te Aro districts in recent years and there are a number of great places to eat, drink and meet us all within walking distance of one-another and well serviced by public transport from the rest of the city.
Also worth a contrast is the availability of a wide selection of microbrews on tap at dozens of bars in downtown Wellington. It can be laughable coming to Auckland and going out in the inner city with friends, how there’s so far been such a lack of penetration of craft beer drinking options in Auckland.
In addition to Wellington’s waterfront and urban placemaking mentioned, I’m looking forward to the rollout of the new bus network here where it’s planned that my local service will go from a 7am-7pm half hourly at peak, hourly during the day and nothing on weekends; to half hourly during weekdays, hourly on weekends and running til 11pm. Little things that are important if you don’t want to cut short that afterwork catch-up.
“Auckland has the goal of becoming the World’s Most Liveable City – a goal that is highly achievable”
Nonsense for 2 reasons:
It’s a dynamic, relative target. All it requires is one other city in the top 20 to adopt the same goal and it is not highly achieveable, particularly if the other city has more money. It becomes a pissing contest between 2 cities.
The indices are structured around the needs and desires of expats not inhabitants. They subsequently include aspects that are irrelevant to the locals and are somewhat elitist. Ask someone on the minimum wage how important some of those metrics are. I have been an expat with a compensation package based on the Mercer index. Essentially it’s a metric that indicates how much of a shit-hole you are being sent to and how much your employer has to pay you to make it worth your while.
Auckland needs quantifiable liveability metrics based on the needs and desires of the locals. If San Francisco were to invest in something that boosted their standings in a liveability index (maybe doubling the number of international flights from their airport) why should Aucklanders care? Would there be wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Auckland Town Hall? Would there be a migration of the population to SF? I think not…but’s let’s assume that Auckland’s liveability index being number 1 really is the key metric for Auckland Council (they keep telling me that it is). How are we tracking? Not well, I’m afraid. No progress. The empirical evidence (the lack of any review of where Auckland stands, the lack of any specific plans to address the deficiencies, the avoidance of stating which particular index is the reference) suggest to me that “becoming the World’s most liveable city” is not a goal at all.
Here’s an inconvenient truth for ya – educated young adults are a sought after commodity because they generate the bulk of the world’s growth and innovation. They are highly mobile and have a lot of freedom to choose any place in the world to live and work, so cities need to keep adapting to attract them. Locals on the other hand may grump that they’re being neglected, but when it comes down to it they’re not threatening to leave – except perhaps to retire somewhere sunnier.
“Here’s an inconvenient truth for ya – educated young adults are a sought after commodity because they generate the bulk of the world’s growth and innovation”
Based on my experience of working in an innovative growth company, that sounds like heavy-duty BS, but no doubt you can provide data to demonstrate that what you have asserted is fact rather than opinion. I’m happy to debate that separately but for now let’s pretend that it is factual and attempt to tease out your logic:
Auckland needs to be at the top of an as-yet unstated liveability index in order to retain local educated young adults and attract educated young adults (EYAs) from other countries so that they will generate the bulk of Auckland’s growth and innovation and this will be good for all of the population of Auckland? Is this the premise?
Do we think that said EYAs will consult a league table based on the needs and wants of some archetypical expat with 2.3 children in order to determine where they will live?
Do EYA’s use these metrics now? Are our EYAs heading en masse to Copenhagen, for example?
Is there a flow of EYAs from Fukuoka (10 on Monocle’s list) to Copehagen (10 on Monocle’s list)? If not, why does it matter if Fukuoka is not number one?
Do we think that the residents of Auckland agree that structuring the city for the purposes of growth and innovation is what they want? What do innovation and growth actually mean in terms that the residents understand?
If so, do we think that the residents of Auckland agree that retaining and attracting EYAs is the means by which innovation and growth will be achieved?
Do our EYAs realise that the EIU league table doesn’t include a cost-of-living metric? Why is the availability of international schools in the city important to these EYAs?
Am I to believe that you think that Auckland should not be aiming for targets relevant to the population but for the benefit of EYAs because this is the group producing the economic benefits (clearly nonsensical) so the rest of the population can just lump it? Seems just a smidgeon on the arrogant side, don’t you think?
“Those who bear equally the burdens of Government should equally participate of its benefits.” –Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Resolutions, 1775. Papers 1:172
I think you’re getting a bit hung up on the indexes MFD. It’s a goal, an aspirational one intended to sum up the general thrust which is something like “we want to make auckland a really great place, that is safe, healthy, comfortable and economically thriving, but also fun and great to live in at the same time”.
I don’t think anyone really cares if we get to number one on any particular list, not if they did get us there I don’t think they’d stop and say ‘job done’.
Auckland does have specific measurable targets relevant to the liveability of Aucklanders. There’s like a hundred of them in the Auckland plan from the percentage of residents living within walking distance of frequent public transport to the rate of people hospitalised from respiratory illness. Go knock yourself out on the detail, but there is no need to knock the ‘worlds most liveable city’ headline.
“I don’t think anyone really cares if we get to number one on any particular list”
I don’t either, so let’s be honest about it. Matt L states “Auckland has the goal of becoming the World’s Most Liveable City”. I say that’s nonsense and you have agreed with me. Auckland Council sends me advertising that states “working together to make the world’s most liveable city” and my reaction is “no you are not” and even if you were “why should I care?”. It’s a marketing slogan which nobody takes seriously, isn’t particularly appropriate and nobody will be held accountable for meeting. Fairly standard stuff from politicians but why keep repeating the mantra? As an aspirational statement I contend that it is an abject failure. The fact that you and I have different interpretations of it is my evidence.
Yeah, we really ought to have ‘Auckland; it’s quite shit’ as a target. After all it’s realistic, cos we’re there already…. In fact that presumably is Brownlee and the MoT’s aspiration, or more like; ‘Auckland; spending a fortune to keep it quite shit’…..
“After all it’s realistic, cos we’re there already”
According to which index, Patrick? You state that “Auckland is quite shit”. None of the indices I have found indicate that so I guess you have your own metrics (as do I). Does that not indicate that the aspects evaluated in the published city liveability surveys are not appropriate for your needs and wishes? If so, is it not reasonable to assume that there are many more Auckland inhabitants for whom they are not relevant? Are you not concerned that AC is implementing policy based on making Auckland “the most liveable city in the world” when that may not result in the outcomes you desire?
Maybe I am barking up the wrong tree in focussing on published surveys. Maybe AC has some other list by which it compare results with other cities. If so, why is it not explicit? Maybe, as Nick R suggests, AC is stating “we want to make Auckland a really great place, that is safe, healthy, comfortable and economically thriving, but also fun and great to live in at the same time” but they can’t condense it into a snappy soundbite so they wrote something that was short but incorrect. Maybe that’s it: brevity trumps verity. Has all the hallmarks of some marketing tosser.
I’m with Nick. I actually think Auckland could be the best city in the world. As a focus for action, it works, because it means that the Council are thinking about how their actions affect liveability and things which cannot be so easily measured.
@MFD based on the way you pounced on PR’s sarcasm you seem a pretty literal type and rebutting you to the academic journal standard you likely require is just not worth the effort, sorry. If you want to spend all night finding the data that will call out my BS then go for it. Open goal!
My unproven-but-self-evidently-true-beyond-all-refutation assertion is that if marketing didn’t work, no-one would bother doing it. Auckland doesn’t need to BE “the world’s most liveable city”, it just needs to be associated with this phrase in the minds of a lot of people worldwide who will then include Auckland in the mix when considering their next big life change.
“My unproven-but-self-evidently-true-beyond-all-refutation assertion is that if marketing didn’t work, no-one would bother doing it”
Agreed
“Auckland doesn’t need to BE “the world’s most liveable city”,
Typical marketing hype. Say something without really meaning it. I am barraged with it daily. Does AC have to add to it?
“it just needs to be associated with this phrase in the minds of a lot of people worldwide who will then include Auckland in the mix when considering their next big life change.”
Why does it need to? For whose benefit is this? How is AC spreading the message to the minds of people worldwide?
Am I to believe that the purpose of this marketing exercise is to attract “educated young adults” because they “generate the bulk of the world’s growth and innovation”? Looks like a premise based on a delusion but I am prepared to be convinced otherwise by means of some sort of cogent argument.
OK guys, arrêter flogging du cheval mort. Yes there are things in the indexes that are irrelevant, and yes our exact place in some relative index is fairly unimportant. But people can relate to relative indexes, and aspirational statements, and our progress on either will be fairly similar whether we’re measuring in relative or absolute terms (again acknowledging that some other city may decide to do something big and expensive which we can’t match). I don’t think we’re disagreeing on anything too significant here so let’s not quibble about semantics.
Au contraire, John, le cheval n’est pas mort (ou mangé!) et le subject n’est pas un fait accompli:
Let’s assume that “the world’s most liveable city” is an aspirational statement and not a goal. You state “people can relate to (snip) aspirational statements”. Doesn’t that depend on the nature of the statement and the viewpoint of the people concerned?
How, for example, do you suppose a resident of Auckland Council’s administrative area (ie. they get rates bills from Auckland Council) who doesn’t live in the city, doesn’t work in the city, seldom travels to the city and (at the time of the amalgamation) didn’t want to be part of “Auckland” on the basis that their interests (and those of their family and neighbours) would effectively be ignored relate to that aspirational statement?
Zut alors, le cheval est twitching! I did toy with the idea of putting “some” in front of “people”, but decided to leave it out. I’m not trying to say that all people will respond to a specific statement, or that all people will respond to any statement, but at least some people will presumably identify with this specific statement, and after all snappy soundbites are what tend to make it onto the news.
Sacre bleu et sapristi nabolas! Le cheval a plus vies d’un chat!
I have been mulling over your earlier statement, John, and decided that semantics are actually important. Firstly I went back and had a look at the origin of the “world’s most liveable city” statement/goal/aspiration and found that Len Brown stated that it is a “vision” Sounds like lawyerspeak but perhaps more importantly is the choice of the word “city”. From an Auckland Council administrative perspective Auckland is a region encompassing urban, suburban and rural regions. From the standpoint of a rural resident of this region the statement conveys the impression that Mr Brown has no vision for the area that they live and work in. It is thus an exclusive rather than inclusive aspirational statement. One could argue that such rural residents are in the minority and hence don’t matter. I would respond with strong agreement and counter with the question “then why was it so important that their areas be included in the bright shiny new Auckland?” The Royal Commission’s report concluded that it should but the rationale was absent.
Interesting criteria, not even including the most basic of human needs, clean air.
I couldn’t live anywhere in Auckland because of particulate pollution. Without a complete ban on wood burning it will continue to be completely unliveable to a percentage of the population. And for the one’s who can tolerate the smoke, they are not immune from the health effects, which include everything from asthma to stroke.
Access to public spaces is limited without bans on smoking.
Getting a glass of wine at 1am is really further down the list than being able to breathe.
I agree with the specific complaint. We need to address wood fires, two-stroke motorcycles, older petrol vehicles, and diesels (which are recognised by the WHO as cancer causing).
But if we take it more broadly… it’s incredibly important for a city to have a strong focus on local environmental quality and how it affects lived experience. These include; air pollution (particulates, toxics, reduction of greenhouse gases), water pollution (inorganic chemicals, nitrogen, erosion), noise, trees and plants, light pollution and protection of visual corridors (view shafts, sunlight). I’m sure I’ve missed important things. Some of these we do well in protecting and addressing, and others we’re far behind where we could be.
+1
By far the most egregious of that list are Diesel engines. And the most useful. If they weren’t so useful and widespread they would have been banned years ago. The fact that we are still buying any diesel buses to run constantly through city and suburban streets is, frankly, an outrage.
When I worked at the Auckland City Council we tried very briefly to turn over one section of Queen Street as buses only. It didnt even make it past the Council officers to get on an agenda because none of the managers would support more diesel engines in Queen Street, they all wanted less of them.
It’s a shame but it seems most managers views of diesel buses are still stuck around what used to take them to school in the 70s.
Funny how the answer to buses on queen st is to have lots of traffic there too. Perhaps that doesn’t make the buses stand out as much.
Hamburg’s Civic plan includes a provision that after 2020 at the latest no buses are to be added to the fleet unless they are emission free. This is a long term project and to realise it the fast local train service (S-Bahn) is to be expanded.
Not surprising that Tokyo is number 2 on the list. Having lived there for many, many years, I can attest to the city’s vibrancy, ease of living and comfortable urban culture – all of it due to the PT network. Auckland can learn much from how both large and small cities/towns in Japan have attractive, liveable places through ‘people-focussed’ PT.
The problem with these “livability” rankings is that the top-ranking cities don’t tend to be the ones that people are actually attracted to live in… and they’re often, well, a bit on the dull side. Granted, there are some fantastic cities there, such as Tokyo and Melbourne… but I don’t think the likes of Calgary, Dusseldorf or Zurich are vying to be the world’s greatest city. Why is it that the cities that people flock to – like London, Berlin or San Francisco – do so poorly on these rankings?