63: Look Up Wellington!
What if Wellington recognised it isn’t the only show in town?
For too long, Wellingtonians have been smug in the knowledge that they have some kind of monopoly on good city life in NZ.
Well those days are over. It isn’t the 1990s anymore. Everyday Auckland is making progress towards becoming a more attractive and enjoyable city to live. Aucklanders can see and feel that. People that come with fresh eyes can see that too. The occasional open-eyed and open-minded Wellingtonian travelling north might have quietly clocked that too.
So it would be good for the national conversation around cities and urban issues to get past these out-moded stereotypes. Likewise it would be good if Auckland recognised where it shares urban issues in common with Wellington, Christchurch, and other urban areas in New Zealand. Auckland trying to go it alone and provincial attitudes elsewhere aren’t helping anyone.
Stuart Houghton 2014
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Don’t worry! NZTA are making sure Wellington central is going to be increasingly unpleasant for humans but great for cars (and traffic engineers). They’re proposing motorways everywhere and the supply of multi-storey car parking is broaching Auckland levels. That’s what happens when you surrender control of your environment to the traffic engineers, as we’ve done in Auckland for the past 60 or so years. In their programmatic, standardised, suburban, mindset all people want to do, ever, in a city is work and drive.
I have no idea who puts these comments together in cases like this they need there head read
.I am a jaffa and live in jaffa land. I have to deal with Auckland traffic issues every day .Wellington have it over Auckland any day ..
1st there is little to no idiot hour down there when in Auckland has at least 3.5 hours in the morning and the same at night We also have what happened on the weekend hours of traffic jam due to one issue on the dam bridge ..2nd the addition of one motorway in Wellington is only going to make the place a better place to live and travel in .the only issue Wellington has is the wind
Please use their and there correctly, you have used there instead of their. Maybe you need to get someone else to proof read your comments before you hit publish
Complete nonsense. Have you ever lived in Dunedin? Palmerston North? Nelson? Blenheim? Aucklands crap
Kane why do you live here then?
Well there absolutely is one thing [but not only one thing] that Wellington has over Auckland and that is that there, in the resource consent process the traffic management plan is subservient to the land use plan, in Auckland it’s the other way around.
Pot calling kettle black? I find it a bit rich, Mr Houghton, that you accuse Wellingtonians of being smug about their city. Having lived for many years in both, I feel qualified to point out that Wellington has certain natural physical geological features (such as hills coming down to gently curving harbour) that both enhance and restrict the city. That makes it both good (to live in) and bad (for growth). We have the good fortune to have had an extensive rail system installed many decades ago, and we accept that our working lives are intertwined with the vagaries of government departments. But we avoid the shouting “I am the greatest” that some Aucklanders seem prone to.
Best thing ever that Auckland Council politicans have Wellingtons with the looking glass on Auckland. Our economy is tanking (dairy prices down, forestry prices down, whats next) and Mr Houghton wants to continue uncontrolled spending. Sorry Len Brown, the choice is further delay to the pet projects or start selling some assets but I have had enough of being taken as a sucker ratepayer.
So Puhoi to Wellsford should be stopped then because it is a “Pet Project” and that money can be put into the CRL instead, oh I forgot that would be going against the ideology and we can’t have that can we
I think I just logged on to comedyblog.co.nz!!
Wellington has a good city life?? Lol one of the best I’ve heard for awhile.
I visit Wellington every year and it isn’t even the conversation for being a good city. The climate is inhospitable and there is little to do. Te Papa is a kids playground rather than a serious museum. The cake tin is a poorly designed sports stadium that caters to none of the sports that are played in it. Traffic can be bad and the city lacks accessibility due to sticking a massive roundabout where a flyover should be. The city also suffers from visual pollution with those awful looking wind turbines.
The greater city is built in bizarre pockets that severe communities from each other.
The almost sole redeeming feature is the waterfront/harbour which on a good day is worth a look.
Note I’m not saying Auckland is much better – just making the point that Wellington is perhaps the most overrated city in the world.
“…sticking a massive roundabout where a flyover should be”
Meanwhile, back in the 1960s….
As a Wellingtonian and frequent visitor to Auckland, I can say I enjoy the great urban feel of downtown Wellington, but I enjoy my visits to Auckland more and more. When I go I stroll the shared spaces downtown, wander the waterfront and Winyard and if I had a bike with me I’d be riding to town from family digs in Te Atatu Peninsula. Wellington is great, Auckland is improving fast. Do we have to be very open minded to accept the strengths of both cities and want them both to do well?
I think it is much easier and logical and just a plain fact really that Wellingtonians usually look up AND THEN OUT pass Auckland.
Auckland on the other hand I would argue often uses scale as a justification for ignoring the rest of ‘urban NZ’ and looks straight to Australia and beyond… something I’d say this blog is often guilty of as well.
How can Wellington not notice the elephant in the room? Head Offices moving, consolidated local government etc
Wellington has and is happy about its urban form because it has clearly gotten closest to best practice in a NZ context (in large part by luck and accident).
I think you’ll find the reality will continue where by Wellington follows developments in Auckland and the big boy with its growing confidence looks away… a strange post I must say…
Being from Auckland but living in Wellington I would say your right, wellington doesn’t look at auckland very often. Part of the reason for this is why would we copy a derivative? It makes more sense to look at city’s that auckland is taking its ideas from, or citys which face similar issues/constraints or have similar scales to us. The other bit which is slightly frustrating is an internal problem where we can’t seem to understand that we are the second largest “metro” in New Zealand and so don’t think urban enough.
I would say that Auckland has come on in leaps and bounds but I feel that it is yet to really graft some of the new methods and ideas into a mass culture and adapt them into its own naturalised solutions. In many respect one of the real lessons in wellington is the way it does suburbs – if you look along the hutt valley there is basically a timeline of transit Oriented development from Victorian grid petone to garden city Woburn, post war Waterloo, pischke modernism naenae and central planned taita (I am not saying it is all good, but it demonstrates a culture as opposed to auckland where if you look along the eastern line you get the same progression with garden suburb orekei, post war medowbank, modernist glen Innes etc but without the same level of of ongoing local investment in interchanges or tight integration between land use, street plat, density and transport from the beginning (eg Tamaki is a lovely half circle focus – why is there no rail station or shopping node at the centre- always irked me since learning to read maps
“Second largest metro” actually at best you mean second equal with Greater Christchurch. A metro area that sadly lacks the 150 km of passenger rail and over 100 km of planned Kapiti motorway connecting tiny Levin with Wellington’s third rate airport. Despite this Greater Christchurch is growing faster than the stagnating Wellington region.
NZ should end this stupid provincial attitude and support all metro areas.
If Wellington has the most attractive city life in New Zealand then why can’t new immigrants see it? Of the net migrant gain of 47,000 for the year to October 2014, Auckland received 21,800 and Canterbury 5,700. In comparison just 1,200 chose the Wellington region. The region is in danger of slipping backwards.
Over the long term, if the city is to compete with Auckland and Christchurch it will need to grow like Auckland and Christchurch are growing. To do this it needs a proper international airport, better transport links, council amalgamation, and above all a region-wide plan to encourage development and growth.
It is simply not true that Wellington’s lack of growth is due to geographical constraints. There is plenty of land available between the Hutt and Porirua which could and should be opened up for new suburban development, it’s just that currently parochial politics mean that it is not in local council’s best economic interest to facilitate this, even if it serves the region’s wider need for a greater population.
I lived for years in Wellington before moving to Auckland and would never go back (although I like visiting Wellington). Central Auckland is rapidly improving, there’s more opportunities here based on merit rather than connection and the relative merits of the two cities are not a conversation topic up here – whereas in Wellington the rellies are constantly pointing out how much better Wellington is.
“For too long, Wellingtonians have been smug in the knowledge that they have some kind of monopoly on good city life in NZ”
Not true of this Wellingtonian! I have spent decades virtually grieving over the mess that Auckland was making of itself, and have become increasingly aware that “There, but for the grace of God, go we. . .!”. Wellington’s relative success over the years has been largely due to a few key decisions which were made at particular junctures in the past. Were it not for these, I believe we would have succumbed to the same malaise that has afflicted Auckland for so long.
It gives me great satisfaction to see Auckland at last pulling itself out of the mire, and my hope is that Wellington may also come to its senses by observing Auckland’s success. Otherwise it seems we are on a downhill slide into the same boneheaded stupidity that dragged Auckland down. There is no room for complacency over any of New Zealand. Idiocy has pervaded the whole country. Petty parochialism helps no-one in the long run.
So I say: “GO AUCKLAND!!!” Your success is our success.