Our Vision

Auckland is a great city – with immense potential to become so much more.

A sustainable and equitable city. Easy and affordable to get around. Plenty of nice places to live and spend time in. A healthy and inviting environment where we enjoy connection and community, both with the city itself and the people we share it with. A creative and caring place where we can all live fulfilling lives, build prosperous communities, and leave a better legacy for the future.

It’s possible. But to get there will take confident leadership, smart planning and excellent design.

It will also take informed, inclusive and evidence-led conversations – which is why we’re dedicated to raising the level of analysis and discussion about how we get there.

Auckland is special. It’s different from the rest of New Zealand. We’re not just the gateway city and the largest urban area in the country; we’re also younger, more diverse, more educated, and more productive. Our metropolis is growing, and will continue to do so.

Our city is a creative challenge. The narrow isthmus that makes this such an attractive place to live – with abundant access to maunga, moana, ngahere – poses challenges for how we live and how we get around. Historic patterns of development haven’t always served us well. We’re also still catching up on decades of underinvestment in public transport, walking and cycling, and safer and healthier streets.

We’ve come a long way in recent times. Auckland is already a much more vibrant and exciting city than it was just a few decades ago. But the issues grow more urgent by the day.

It’s time to ramp up progress so we can better equip ourselves for future challenges.

That’s why we stand for a Greater Auckland: a better place to live in, to move around, and to connect with others – which forms the three pillars of our vision:

1. Live

Aucklanders need better housing choices that suit our highly diverse population, and that maximise our existing infrastructure and amenities, rather than sprawling ever outwards.

This means making it easier for more homes to be built in places people want to live, especially where this is close to good transport options and with good access to jobs, education and other great things Auckland has to offer. Better living conditions also include stronger protections for those who rent, and a healthier urban environment for us all – more trees, cleaner air, less traffic noise, more green spaces and flourishing waterways.

2. Move

Aucklanders of all ages yearn to get out of traffic. They want and deserve a full and free choice of travel options that are affordable, accessible, congestion-free, and low-carbon.

The key to switching from private vehicles to public transport, walking, cycling (and other small wheels) is ensuring those alternatives are safe, reliable and attractive. The bonus, given traffic is responsible for a third of our polluting emissions: the more people making more low-carbon journeys, the healthier our environment will be – and the faster we’ll tackle climate change.

3. Connect

Aucklanders want more equitable access to all the good things a city brings. Everyone should be able to truly take advantage of the creative energy that springs from the diverse and fantastic people a great city attracts.

This means embracing our streets, neighbourhoods and town centres as a shared resource – a realm for people, as well as for the kinds of transport that get all of us where we need to go. By transforming public spaces into attractive places where people of any age or stage can linger, chat, play and enjoy life, we’ll make our whole city safe, accessible and welcoming for all.

We all have the power to change things. Join us in making Auckland a greater place for everyone!

Keen to help? There are lots of ways to boost the cause and be a part of it: write an article, join the conversation, make a donation, or get in touch with other ideas.