Thinking Small: How New Zealand tried to squash Auckland

A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane Walker

This post takes a closer look at the New Zealand state’s longstanding historical unwillingness to make plans for Auckland’s growth.

A COUPLE of weeks ago we blogged about “the paradox of retrenchment in the face of growth.” We wrote about how it was practically an orthodoxy some forty years ago that the populations of Auckland, and of a New Zealand of little more than three million, were not going to get much larger. And how, for that reason, the government could give up on planning for the next million the way it had previously done.

And how, strangely enough, even now that we have twice as many Aucklanders and 5.1 million New Zealanders within our shores, and a huge catch-up required, investment to deal with past and future growth is actually being cut back by the Auckland Council.

In this post we’re going to dive a little deeper into the specifics of why New Zealand seems to have such a problem with planning for the growth of Auckland, its largest city, in particular.

(Note: some quotes appear as direct images of old book pages, and thus don't come out in the podcast.)

Featured image credit: The Auckland Multi-Linear Scheme as presented to the Auckland Rapid Rail Symposium, 1969, by the then chief planner of the Auckland Regional Authority, Frederick W. O. Jones. Cropped square for this episode as per the requirements of Anchor.fm.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/thinking-small-how-new-zealand-failed-auckland