City Centre Masterplan Update
Just over a week ago the new Auckland Development Committee held its first meeting. This committee inherits the work of the former Auckland Plan Committee, which largely was taken up by the work on the Unitary Plan. However the cessation of the main body of that work means this committee can now look a wider range of projects. …
63 Comments Where do the children play?
Back in 1970, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens put out a song, and it went a little something like this:
I know we’ve come a long way,
We’re changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?…
From one-way to two
City engineers have turned our downtowns into places that are easy to get to but not worth arriving at. – Jeff Speck, Walkable City
A few weeks back I prepared a cross section of the cbd that revealed an interesting land value gap that seemed to correspond to the disurban environment caused by the mini-motorways of Hobson and Nelson Street.…
The CBD is the future of employment
An interesting Australian article highlights something that has perhaps slipped under the radar of many – that a huge implication of economies in countries like New Zealand shifting away from manufacturing and more towards knowledge industries is a likely changing of the geography of employment.…
Return of the walking city
..The City is never complete, never at rest. Thousands of witting and unwitting acts every day alter its lines in ways that are perceptible only over a certain stretch of time. -Spiro Kostof
I was inspired by Patrick’s recent transit dividend post where he documented the laneways around the Pacific and Matt’s people buy stuff and wanted to look a little closer at the things happening on the street which to me are fascinating and representative of a highly dynamic urban ecosystem.…
The Steady Transformation of Travel to the CBD
Despite the critics, Auckland’s city centre is probably in better shape than it has been for decades. Foot traffic is high, new streetscape improvements continue, Queen Street is clearly still extremely “hot property” and the place just feels vibrant. Looking into this steady, almost sneaky, transformation of downtown over the last ten years or so, I went searching for what seemed to possibly be the cause.…
Auckland’s Place Premium
In a recent post I graphically represented the land values throughout the Auckland city centre as a function of their “frontage value” which generated some surprising results. The exercise revealed a place premium associated with real estate located in the lower Queen Street valley.…
Federal St upgrade announced
The council has finally released plans to create a shared space on part Federal St in conjunction with SkyCity. The upgrade has been proposed for some time and originally was going to be paid for by SkyCity and built in time for the RWC in return for getting the right to build another larger skybridge across the road.…
O’Connell St upgrade, another cop out?
Auckland has started taking a few small steps to transform the CBD the the introduction of shared spaces around the city and unsurprisingly they have been a huge success. However since the Fort St one opened just over a year ago things have gone quiet on rolling upgrades out to more streets, presumably so that things like the City Centre Master Plan (CCMP) could be completed confirming that street scape upgrades were still the plan going forward.…
The City Centre Master Plan – Part 1
The final version of the Council’s City Centre Master Plan was released, with relatively little attention, a couple of weeks back. There’s a fairly flash little website associated with it here, or if you’re patient you can download the whole 33.2 MB document here.…
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