Part four of the Project Auckland series looks at 'Prosperity and Profile'
Look at any photo of early Auckland and where the sea met the city was a hive of industry. Ships were unloading the goods we needed to build a new economy in the colonies, and re-loading kauri spars and anything else we could trade as fast as they could go. The Fort St warehouses and the Queen St shops sprang up around the harbourfront to handle the trade, and the bones of our city were formed.
Fast-forward to the post-war period around toward St Marys Bay when the boat building families of Auckland used their skill and innovation to build Fair Miles to protect the Pacific and large vessels and fishing boats to support the post war trade. They launched these craft with the who's who of Auckland celebrating the skill, the technology and the design that went into them.
These were the fathers of today's marine industry, still inventing, designing, building, and contributing to the Auckland economy in the same place today.
Speed forward again to the new millennium. The Viaduct is alive with New Zealanders celebrating the technology and skill of the America's Cup teams. New global businesses were spawned - in animation, in new materials, and specialised technologies. Downtown Auckland came alive, with people living and working where once were log farms. The Viaduct Harbour became a place to live, work and play. Organisations full of smart young things relocated - the scientists at Niwa, the techies at Vodafone and Hewlett-Packard and knowledge workers at KPMG working close together in campus style developments.
Imagine if you can then, the Wynyard Quarter in 20 years when it is very near to completion. There will be at least 10,000 people working there, including those marine pioneers who continue to service a global market for equipment, refits and new builds, and who have grown into and beyond a $2bn industry. Alongside them will still be the fishing industry, no longer ploughing the seas in the wooden boats of yesteryear but in sophisticated steel craft, with state of the art GPS and satellite systems, adding to New Zealand's export earnings.
The new waterfront destination, its attractions and its festivals will have captured Auckland's visitors for "one more night" and added new casual jobs as well as the skilled tourism operators. These are three familiar sectors of the economy which will thrive in the redeveloped brown fields of the Wynyard Quarter. However the designers of the Wynyard Quarter are intent on much more.
This new part of the inner city will be highly resilient because it won't depend too much on any one industry. Each industry will make up only a quarter of the spaces or jobs in the area, to avoid dominating what is planned as a place of mixed uses: a mixed community, and a mixed economy.
Other productive and innovative sectors in the economy will also be needed in this new place.
Wynyard Quarter is also poised to be resilient because its floor spaces are the size suited to incubating and nurturing new capital, new jobs and new activities, because Auckland badly needs them.
There is little gain for Auckland's contribution to the country's GDP in simply recycling growth and business from one location to another - displacing activities. The economy has to grow.
To add to Auckland's productivity, Wynyard Quarter's design has meant that there are a small number of sites suited to tenants such as the ASB Bank who aim at higher workplace productivity as a result of relocating functions together in more efficient, more environmentally sustainable buildings.
The great gain may be in the new workplaces for new businesses.
Auckland stands to attract globally mobile capital and, just as importantly, footloose talent. We already do this very well, with one in three Aucklanders born off-shore. People find Auckland an attractive place, and who wouldn't? The city will still be rated in the top four cities in the world for its liveability, and the regeneration of areas like the Wynyard Quarter and Britomart go toward making Auckland a great place.
However by 2025 we should be mastering the challenge of being an equally attractive place to work.
Cities other than Auckland also pay attention to making great places in which to live and work, and they are our competition. The new places don't separate living and working - they mix them together so that people can live close to their jobs.
These new spots in cities, and Wynyard Quarter will be one of them, attract talented people who are drawn by a certain vibe, lots of activity, pleasant amenities, good facilities and styley housing.
They bring their fresh ideas and new skills to start new businesses, create new products and ideas, and to help existing businesses to grow.
About 7000 people will live in the Wynyard Quarter. The aim is for these people also to be a mixture of family types, ages and professions, rather than an apartment mono-culture. There is as much space for new housing across the Quarter as there would be if three or so Metropolis developments were laid on their sides. Some people will live where they work.
The Wynyard workplaces will also be closer together and this proximity (or agglomeration) is another factor in higher productivity from new mixed urban communities. Proximity leads to the exchange of knowledge and ideas, and to greater innovation. This innovation is at the heart of a high value economy.
Economists have added up the growth for the area and have shown that redevelopment of this part of the waterfront alone will produce an additional net economic benefit of $1800m from 2010 to 2026 in 2009 dollars - that's $105m a year in present value terms to Auckland's economy.
With Wynyard Quarter's additional contribution to Auckland's GDP or wealth, (remember it comes from a small base as old industrial uses have moved) the Auckland Council and the Government, which receive more rates and taxes, will be able to reinvest in the facilities and infrastructure for growing Auckland needs. So the cycle starts again - a great place attracts more talented people; talented people drive productivity and generate wealth, more investment follows.
Making this cycle work on the ground in the Wynyard Quarter as well as other parts of town where employment is dense, matters to Auckland.
Given the bow wave of investment needed in Auckland to keep pace with fast growth and to provide opportunities for more people, it's important that the new city earns more to fund the projects and services we need. Indeed that is one of the fundamental reasons for metropolitan reform. $15bn of projects with only $600m committed by Auckland is the gap a stronger economy must bridge.
Back to the harbour's edge. Picture people living and working, visiting - in a play space that is as carefully designed and developed as the workspaces, side by side. Designed to be authentically Auckland yet the contemporary of any of the global cities that Kiwis visit and admire. Home to more retailers and hospitality workers, to more scientists, researchers, inventors, creatives, entrepreneurs, and global firms, to more of those marine pioneers so envied by the world for their ability to turn out a fast boat.
We can use our liveable city reputation to retain and draw talent - 10,000 jobs and 7000 residents will come to Wynyard Quarter and create new wealth for Auckland. This is surely a vision that is good for every Aucklander and one that warrants our commitment, priority and focus.
Kaaren Goodall is Place Manager at Sea + City Projects and a director of the Committee for Auckland
