A better world isn’t just possible, it’s desirable. And that’s how we should frame a lot of our conversations around making a greater Auckland.
As an example take urban climate action. A climate friendly Auckland:
- Is free from congestion
- Enables people to travel how they choose
- Is filled with green spaces
- Has clean air
- Allows people to live near amenities, work, and their community.
I feel oftentimes, it’s easy to get mentally bogged down with worry about climate change, poor city planning, or the myriad of other things that are not working in Auckland, New Zealand, or the wider world.
It’s entirely understandable. This anxiety and despair can shape our thoughts and conversations, compelling us to shout about the dangers of not reducing emissions, or the significant impact poor urban design and connection has on peoples lives. These are all important to acknowledge and talk about given the often devastating impact these issues cause – but it cannot be the only thing.
We need to balance what is wrong with an optimistic vision of what could be.
For our day to day conversations, focusing on what we need to sacrifice, or stop doing, or the dangers of inaction, doesn’t bring people on board. It leads many people to withdraw or shut down when it comes to discussions on change.
However, if we lead with what we know is true, that these solutions and changes create a better life for people? That’s how you excite someone.
The Workshop has done a lot of work around this, and their cheat sheet for how to talk about Climate Change provides a great rundown. Their advice in essence is to lead with the outcomes, with a focus on actionable, systemic and visionary change. It’s also important to understand that not everyone is amenable, and just because a message doesn’t work with those fixed in opposition, doesn’t mean it’s not effective for those in the middle.
Once someone is interested, it’s also vital to show them they are not alone in wanting a better city – so find your friends!
If I think about the vision Greater Auckland is working towards – a city that’s a better place to live in, to move around, and to connect with others – there’s plenty to look forward to.
Maybe for you it’s the freedom kids gain through safe and connected cycling and walking infrastructure.
Or how amazing parks and beautiful artwork make our cities attractive and desirable.
Or how a congestion free network makes Auckland (you guessed it) congestion free.
So when I, and I hope many of you, talk to your circles, lets place at the forefront of our conversations and thinking the fact that better planning, climate action, densification, make our lives better. Once we all see the broader vision of a better world? Then it’s suddenly a lot easier to work through the messy details.
It becomes not a question of why would we change – but how can I help?
And, at least for me, I’ve found it also makes me more optimistic by keeping at the forefront how amazing the world could be. This way the energy of worry or frustration is instead channeled into positivity and effective communication.
So the next time you have a conversation about the change you want to see in Auckland?
Lead with the good stuff.
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Good read, thanks.
I too frame discussions about urbanism on the positives, particularly when it comes to increasing housing supply and choice. So many of our country’s issues are downstream of the housing crisis, and the solution is to upzone, reform planning and consenting, and create liveable communities near to frequent transit options.
I also think it’s important for our movement to not be partisan (even if we often find allies on the left more than on the right) as once you look past the culture war nonsense about speed limits and cycle lanes, there are “right-wing” benefits of these changes too. Upzoning and planning reform means the free market can go to work and provide more homes to meet demand. Lower rents and mortgage payments means more disposable income for everyone. A functioning housing market means more investment in productive businesses rather than in rental properties. Stopping unsustainable urban sprawl is good for council balance sheets. Denser walkable neighbourhoods enable lots of small local businesses rather than having everyone drive to a mega-store owned by a duopolistic corporate.
“Lower rents and mortgage payments means more disposable income for everyone”. Not really! Lower rents results in less disposable income for the property owner.
100%. I can see the same issues from both left and right and come to the same solutions
A future not enslaved to bank debt might be a positive outcome.
Talking about two good future outcomes for every single current criticism can be healthy, too.
Whenever I plant a tree that won’t be fully grown until we’ll after I’m gone, I can focus on a future good.
A friend of mine likes to say its very difficult to get everybody on your side but it’s very easy to piss everybody off. So if you want change you probably want to avoid the later.
Something about honey and vinegar here…
something about the reasonable person accepting the world as it is,
the unreasonable person not accepting it.
All progress is made by unreasonable people.
Im not sure i subscribe to the thinking, but it is thought provoking.
“Enables people to travel how they choose” – The problem with this is that too many people want to do things that don’t scale, i.e. drive everywhere in single occupancy cars. We need to be honest that “choosing” to do this, will become increasingly discouraged, difficult and costly.
And that’s why we need not to talk about offering alternatives to congestion rather than suggesting we can somehow stop it from happening.
I’ve been loving your writing style Connor!
So you can choose from your five bullet points. Telling people you can achieve all five is simply lying to them. They will notice that.
Yes, keep it positive. People generally avoid wanting to know about how they or someone else is going to die in x number of years if they don’t do this, that or the other. They also may just want to escape reality if it’s looking grim.
Annual reports are very important and should be a required reading for budding politicians and people who want to speak about the City Council, a local community board, Kiwi Rail, or the NZ government.
An annual report is about the achievements of the past year, including the financials, staff wellbeing, investments and divestments, environment and waste and then the goals for the next year
The first step is to stop building houses, and start building apartments. As even some private developers have proven over the past decade, apartments can be very accessible for more people, and create excellent community benefits.
Here we have an obsession with houses, a hangover from the colonial era, when the architecture was imported without taking into account our particular climate, and certainly not robust for future climate change intensified weather events.
In the city centre, public spaces are becoming more and more pedestrian friendly, and pleasant, as polluting vehicles are being squeezed by new kerbs that prioritise the footpath over the roadway.
At present the city population is approximately eight thousand, when it should be at least a quarter of our wider population. This is due to it being easier to build office blocks, than apartments.
Around three hundred thousand people enter the city centre every day to work, and then leave in the evening, which ruins any chance of becoming a twenty four hour, seven day a week city.
As a resident in the city centre, for most of my twenty five years of adult life, it was a cool place to live when I escaped the suburbs, and now I cannot understand why anyone would choose the suburban lifestyle, except that cost is obviously a preoccupation for almost all of us. When you can walk to everything you need, even the wheel becomes unnecessary, and not having to pay for petrol, not having to charge an electric vehicle, or even need a bike (which I do miss from time to time); makes for a ridiculously healthy lifestyle.
If everybody could, and everybody understood the wonder of apartment living, I am sure that every person would happily give up their leaky wooden house, and join the progress that is arriving on our shores, decades later that other places, but eventually everything washes up here.
My recommendation is to try to live in a real city somewhere, and understand how amazing it is when you only need a train to move around, and don’t need a garage or any of those other time / patience / boredom consuming activities associated with the private motor vehicle. It seems strange to want to drive yourself around when so many people are employed to drive chariots that can carry so many of us.
Declaration of conflict: I am a weirdo
bah humbug
About 38,000 people live in central Auckland.
https://rep.infometrics.co.nz/auckland-city/population/growth
The number who enter the city centre to work or study is a lot less than 300,000 though.
https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2024/02/gdp-and-employment-data-shows-city-centre-outpacing-nz-for-second-year/
A big reason many people favour houses over apartments is that the former come with an unwritten guarantee of a tax-free capital gain; the latter, not so much.
It’s OK being a weird apartment-dweller. I am one too!
A big reason people favour houses over apartments is the fact that we’re still not that great at building apartments and the price per sqm is not competitive what you don’t get with versus a house with land under it.
Planning reform should be offering us a wider variety of housing options in between apartments and stand-alone but we aren’t getting them and it’s a pretty hard one to solve in our current legislative and political environment.
Talking about change means being democratic, listening to opinions and having a policy of being transparent about censoring of comments.
Can you explain to me why my comments have been not published on several ocassions?
Theres a spam filter that puts stuff into quarantine and sometimes it takes a while for one of the human volunteers to clear it.
We also have guidelines here:
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/user-guidelines/
It’s not particularly bleak PT wise. Our density is increasing, we’re getting more frequent bus routes and more of them. The NEX is going from height to height (NX1, NX2 and I’m expecting a NX3 at some point). We’ve just started the WX1 – which is great. Sure I can complain about what I’d change/do differently, but each of these are massively positive improvements.
Maybe stop being so naive for a start. Articles like this are great…..if you are right of centre and want to have a laugh that is. A big % of the population reads articles like this and cracks up laughing thinking “we should go harder on reversing climate measures because it’ll upset wokes”. Another thing is being HONEST WITH PEOPLE the “congestion free network” will never make Auckland congestion free even in cities with extremely well run public transport and cycling infrastructure you still get congestion it’s part of living in a city. I do think people hate lying articles like this one as if all that is actually possible to achieve. People also hate statements like this “There are not two sides on this issue” from your speed article last week. There is quite clearly two sides the people following safety evidence and people who don’t care and just want to drive fast. There is always at least two sides to every issue saying otherwise is dictator ish vibes.