“We are what we repeatedly do”: “Why you should travel young”
A Norwegian friend (whom I affectionately refer – and defer – to as the “Socialist Dictator”) recently alerted me to this article entitled “Why you should travel young“.
If you are looking for a delightfully introspective, relatively insightful, and genuinely motivating article on the virtues of travel then I’d encourage you to read this article.…
29 Comments Nelson and Hobson Streets: Problem, opportunity, and (incremental) solutions?
It’s quite easy to forget that a couple of years ago Auckland’s regional and local government structures were turned upside down.
Since then Auckland Council seem to have settled into their work with relative aplomb. Nowhere is this more apparent than in their strategic documents, such as The Auckland Plan (TAP) and the City Centre Masterplan (CCMP).…
Demolishing Demographia? An alternative explanation
My last two posts (here and here) considered Demographia’s recently released survey of housing affordability for 2013, which concluded that housing in NZ is increasingly unaffordable.
My first post suggested Demographia’s primary findings were not supported by independent evidence, such as alternative “rent-income” and “home affordability” indicators.…
Demolishing Demographia? It’s cookie time.
Yesterday’s post considered the recently released Demographia survey on housing affordability. Thanks to everyone who commented; the discussion was useful for honing my thoughts on follow-up posts. Such as this.
But first let’s re-cap: Demographia’s key findings were 1) New Zealand has increasingly unaffordable housing and 2) this is the direct result of urban containment policies.…
Demolishing Demographia?
*** Spoiler alert: The title of this post is somewhat hyperbolic ***
Demographia’s “9th Annual International Housing Affordability Survey” has just been released and is receiving a lot of attention in various media outlets, such as the NZHerald. Indeed, NZ ‘s connection to the report is relatively strong – it was co-authored by a kiwi and the foreword is written by our very own Minister of Finance.…
Fun and games
My interest in transport and cities emerged from a very young age.
As a child, I always loved playing with cars, trucks, trains, planes, ships, and building cities out of sand or wooden blocks. At the beach I’d rarely go into the water, but instead preferred to spend my time building “sand metropolises” replete with elaborate (and wholly ineffective) defences against oncoming waves.…
Is New Zealand the “greatest nation on Earth”?
I’ve been feeling suspiciously positive of late. Notwithstanding grumbling about “transport priorities this” and “government policies that”, I am generally optimistic about New Zealand in general, and Auckland in particular.
More specifically, several of my recent posts on this blog have attempted to highlight (with varying degrees of success) the close links between the success of urban and rural parts of NZ.…
Economic patterns in urban development
Yesterday’s post on population loss from rural areas generated some really interesting comments.
My main goal was to highlight some of the potential challenges facing rural areas, which I think is important. But as some people rightly pointed out: My home town of Waiuku is not exactly struggling to survive.…
The outgoing tide – Population loss from rural areas
I spent the first two decades of my life in rural New Zealand.
Imagine if you will a small country town (population ~10,000) straddling the southern end of the mighty Manukau Harbour. The Waikato river is sufficiently close that in the past the local Maori apparently used to drag their waka between the river and the harbour.…
A (more detailed and equitable) ode to time-of-use transport pricing
EYE CANDY WARNING: This post contains no pictures.
In a recent post I penned an “ode to demand-based transport pricing”. The main suggestion was that incorporating “time” into our transport pricing would be beneficial because it would help us to allocate our limited transport capacity to people who valued it more highly.…
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