25/01/2016
A Tale of Two Cities
Greg Clark, global cities expert, visited Auckland last week. Here’s what he had to say about growth, liveability… and housing.
What changes have you noticed since you were last in Auckland 18 months ago?
There seem to be more people in Auckland. That is important for a city whose main challenges are being small and being geographically remote. The airport is busier, there are more people living in the city centre and the waterfront looks as though it has unstoppable momentum in terms of the scale of activity.
There’s a substantial amount of construction happening, suggesting a city where new transport is coming, land is being more efficiently used and external investors are noticing opportunity.
The changes in Auckland currently are products of success and examples of long-term efforts to give Auckland greater capacity and connectivity.
The city at large is still very beautiful. There’s something quite inspiring about the idea of fostering a real city in a place like this.
Why is Auckland growing so quickly?
What’s happening in Auckland is not unique – it’s happening to all of the good cities that have a compelling combination of liveability with safety, stability, urban amenity and opportunity.
Successful cities attract population, jobs, visitors, investors, and amenities. The choice for cities isn’t between growing or not growing, it’s been having managed growth or unmanaged growth.
Last year’s Demographia’s International Housing Affordability Survey rated Auckland the ninth least affordable major metropolitan market. This year we’ve been rated the fourth least affordable.
Affordability is itself not a good measure of how a city is doing. Some people see increases in house prices as a problem, others see it as success. It depends on what your stake is.
As a city gets more momentum and success, the challenge becomes to develop responses that tackle the consequences of that. The way to tackle rising house prices is to increase the pace and sequencing of investment in housing and infrastructure to increase capacity in the housing markets.
There’s a lot of debate in Auckland about whether to grow ‘up’ through intensification or ‘out’ into greenfields areas.
I see this as a tale of two cities. For many years Auckland provided the people who live here with a unique opportunity. You’ve been able to live in a largely suburban city with incredible environmental amenities. People have been able to enjoy a suburban lifestyle, come into the city to work and dash out again.
But this model is not on its own sustainable.
In the past 10 years, too many larger firms, jobs and talented people have migrated to London, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Singapore, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, because Auckland lacked the scale and the vitality to house successful business clusters. In order for Auckland to be sustainable, you need to be able to capture more of that corporate and innovation economy and more of the talent that goes with it.
The new proposition is that Auckland essentially becomes two complementary cities that work in partnership with each other.
There’s the charming suburban city with private homes and gardens and access to water, beaches, and hills. People still have the opportunity to live in these suburbs and commute in and out like they used to. It will become much more attractive to do this by public transport and bike, rather than by private car, and that will add to the city’s convenience.
But also emerging is a second Auckland. One where people live in the city centre with a growing range of metropolitan amenities and jobs. These people walk to work, patronise local shops and cafes, and share space with cultural amenities, innovative small businesses and funky venues.
The city centre and waterfront is becoming a place where people rub shoulders with each other and accidental encounters become opportunities. Where there’s a rich mix of different kinds of people doing a wide range of things, and underpinning a huge range of amenities with taxes and increased disposable income.
If you can increase the number of people living in the centre of the city, it allows the city to grow without much congestion and creates wonderful amenities and urban buzz that everyone can benefit from.
The suburban city and the cosmopolitan city centre offer things that are distinctive and complementary.
So suburbanites can keep their quarter-acre sections?
Yes, absolutely. The long-term sustainability of the quality of life in the suburbs actually depends upon the emergence of a strong city centre community that underpins the scale and the job opportunities in Auckland.
Planned and managed growth in the city centre will protect the suburbs from the unplanned growth that some of them don’t want to have.
Having that vibrant city centre also enriches the choices of the people who live in the suburbs. These ‘two Aucklands’, with their different liveability and quality of life equations, can and should coexist, and they do coexist in every other really successful city in the world.
What can residents do to help make Auckland the world’s most liveable city?
Citizens should recognise these two different Aucklands and encourage both to evolve. That means being great customers for the city, as well as living here. Live Auckland, love Auckland. Be proactive customers and give the world a sense of the vibrancy that is growing here.
As we enter the next mayoral election there’s also a role now for renewed civic leadership.
The leaders of universities, cultural institutions and large companies could be a combined leadership team for the city, working with the council and the mayor to help shape Auckland. Successful cities have a larger civic leadership that promotes the city and helps to manage its evolution.
Prof Greg Clark CBE is a global advisor on cities and investment who has worked in 100 cities around the world. Greg, who lives in London, has been closely involved in Auckland’s development since 2004.
He led the International Review of Auckland in 2006 and was International Advisor to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. He was the international reviewer of Auckland Council’s Auckland Plan, he’s completed international comparable work on the City Rail Link and he’s peer reviewed our Economic Development Strategy.
