KEY POINTS:
What is a community? In my experience, it's the result of a whole bunch of strangers moving into houses someone else has built as a moneymaking venture. As far as the developer is concerned, who cares if the customers bond in any meaningful fashion, as long as they can afford the price tag? Just cover the mortgage, watch where we park and respect our neighbour's privacy, then we'll all get along as well as we have to.
It sounds rather one-size-fits-all, but if I mentioned Henderson, Remuera or Botany Downs, I'm fairly certain you could conjure some kind of mental image of your typical resident.
Does that make them communities? Possibly, but it's hard to imagine how anyone can get to know their neighbours when we live in faux-columned homes with a built-on garage, remote-activated door and internal access. Toss in a lawnmowing contractor and a few kids to split mail and rubbish duty and you don't even need to know where the front door is, let alone the name of whoever's living next door.
No, real communities are obvious and there are more of them dotted around Auckland than you may realise. Hidden in plain sight, these discrete little pockets enable lifestyles that aren't quite the same as what goes on further along the road. Mostly they just keep their heads down and get on with loving where they live, which isn't to say they have found nirvana, because real communities always interact in a real way. Enjoying a similar lifestyle to the bloke next door doesn't guarantee you'd enjoy sharing a cup of tea.
Canvas has visited three such communities. Each is as unique from others as they are from the rest of Auckland and each has developed for different reasons: Out west we found one built on intellectual idealism; to the east, life is dictated by geography; while down south, spiritual values battle on.
EARTHSONG
It's been 15 years since Robin Allison kicked off her concept for a green, group-hug of a settlement inside suburban Ranui in West Auckland and now she's looking to relax. "You could say this has been a dream for me for a very, very long time. When it's done, I'm going on holiday." that holiday is just one driveway away, and once it's laid she can finally say everything has been done by the book, quite literally. In this case, it was Co-Housing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves by US architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett.
But Allison's work will never be finished, because Earthsong isn't just a lifestyle option, it's also a showcase for an idealised community offering a blend of environmental and social sustainability. But if such high-faluting ideals produce any strains or pressures, they're presently masked by an air of celebration. After all, the earliest subscribers willingly mortgaged their homes to help get everything off the ground. With the building phase almost over, everyone is hoping they can soon get on with life as they wish to live it.
Earthsong is a co-housing project, a Danish idea for self-contained, medium-density developments made up of private homes where residents share common facilities and duties. All going to plan, they will have created an ungated settlement as friendly to the planet as it is to families. But they're not easy - planning for Allison's $15 million project began shortly after an ill-fated co-housing venture was launched in Mission Bay. Very few seem to succeed because of the high financial commitment, but there's no shortage of people wanting to have a crack; the group behind the Mission Bay failure is now planning another in Whitford.
To Allison, Earthsong, which has about 60 residents spread across 32 one-to-four-bedroom homes, is a lesson that social-sustainability within an eco-friendly environment is possible.
"We've retained the good bits of those old feudal village ideas. It's about creating a flourishing community. We will not be isolated people living isolated suburban lives. We know our neighbours, we cook for each other, we share our organic veges, we have old people, we have young children. I did not just want to build a lovely place to live, I wanted to be able to educate and teach what we have learned." That'll be where the regular visitor tours come in, but if you're curious, remember to ask permission first.
So there isn't much room for shrinking violets or anyone who obsesses about their privacy. And there's no avoiding the cooking roster which drives twice-weekly informal meals in the communal meeting hall, not to mention the working bees which keep a handle on the the communal gardens. Then there are the meetings, lots of meetings. Every decision has be thrashed out to a consensus: "But it's worth it in the end," says Allison. "Just look at what we've built, I'd say it works pretty damned fine."
As yet, no one has tried to flossy up the exterior of their identical, rammed-earth homes, so it's too early to say how Earthsong will deal with rebels. "It'll be an interesting day when it happens," she says. Still, residents come and go and houses do change hands, some are even rented out. Allison is coy about what prices they command, but claims their price has doubled since 2002.
Christof Schneider built his house almost two years ago. The 42-year-old likes the idea of an "intentional" community as opposed to the "accidental" variety most contend with. "That was my main reason, but it was also about knowing and trusting the people here, and the decision-making process which allows some degree of self-governing. But the biggest change for me is the support here, giving and taking. I work from home and that can be quite an isolating experience. I'm working now, but I was just heading out for a cup of tea with a neighbour. To my mind, being able to do that makes my working life sustainable and more productive."
So, far so good, says Schneider. The only potential bump he sees will be how Earthsong deals with changing housing needs - couples require more bedrooms once they have kids, then fewer rooms when they leave. Maybe negotiated swaps will come into play?
Helen McNeil, a home-based child psychologist who left a 2.5ha organic farm in Rodney to move here, says the change has meant relearning how to live with people. "But in that way, it almost self-selects, you're either into this lifestyle or you're not. And the diversity here - ages, occupations and nationalities - that was really important to us. It brings a richness I think and it also helps bring a lot of different perspectives to any problems." But even when that last driveway is finished, the community will still be a work in progress. Sure, there's some partying to do, but there's a block of offices and retail stores to be planned and constructed between the community and Ranui's main road. "We don't want to isolate ourselves," says Allison. "That building will be about integrating into the wider community as well as serving as our economic workplace. Dreaming of a flourishing community based on some fundamental principles of sustainability is one thing, but you have to be able to live within your means as well."
KARAKA BAY
It doesn't take long to identify the Karaka Bay stayers. Not that there's anything unwelcome in the greeting you may get from these Glendowie residents, it's all down to their attitude towards their footpath. The steep, twisting pathway leading from their Peacock St parking area is the only way in or out of this historic beachfront community. Everything from mail to new fridges and old rubbish must make the journey, no matter the conditions. On a good day it's a boon, as the noise of suburbia makes way for the sounds of the sea with every tree-lined step. But on a bad day ... that's when some start thinking about jacking it in.
"It usually sorts people out within six months," says one of the longest residents, former surgeon Joan Chapple. "A lot of people have strong emotional connections to Karaka Bay, it's a beautiful place to live, but life isn't always comfortable. It's very different to the rest of the area, you're forced to deal with the weather and the tides and the fact of the walkway."
Not to mention each other. Everyone knows everyone's business down here.
But even if the footpath is often cursed, it is also blessed. If getting here was any easier, the 10 homes and seaside gardens squeezed into this sliver of urban bach-life would have succumbed to developers long ago.
So, instead of identical town houses, the 20 or so residents wake up in homes where elements of the baches from which they have grown still show through. Well, there is one flash-Harry home which was rudely plonked on top of a charming old relic, but the people here seem to cope by ignoring it. That's how life is, you do what you must to get along. It's a fairly eclectic community made up of doctors, scholars and artists. Most have been here for decades, but they all profess a deep love for the bay and a different story for how they found it.
"It might sound a bit arrogant, but intellectually, it's quite a high-powered little hamlet," says Doug Armstrong, former Unitech CEO and current Auckland City councillor.
The tiny bay was his favourite childhood haunt while growing up in Kohimarama so when, in 1976, he saw some building going on, he leapt at the chance to buy the last empty property.
"I saw the building work and thought 'you can buy property here? This is where I want to live.' And we've been here since. Other people have their own idea of what goes on, but we're not a group of alternative lifestylers, it's a group of successful, qualified people who have chosen to live in an area that's different to the rest of Auckland. Take the walkway, that's such a defining characteristic, it means that we're all clustered together and we're almost forced to interact because we have to walk past each other's houses every day. That's created a sort of community really. But it doesn't suit everyone, most of us can look back on the days when we built our homes and lugged things down the hill in wheelbarrows. It's not easy."
With all those individualists and egos squashed together, it's no surprise that as communities go, this one can be as odd as its roots are old - even if its oddest, hell-raising velvet artist, Charles McPhee, is long gone. For starters, Karaka Bay had a long history of Maori occupation, chiefs of the Ngati Paoa assembled on the beach twice in 1840 to sign the Treaty of Waitangi, an occasion now marked by a broken water fountain. Then it became an isolated holiday spot for Aucklanders in the days when Glendowie was considered out-of-town, a sleepy status which allowed what long-term resident, former university lecturer and self-styled pot-stirrer Tony Watkins calls "slow growth".
First, holidaymakers built simple structures - such as the boat house still standing on his property - that became social meeting points, then baches began to appear. These slowly evolved into proper, if unorthodox, homes for proper, if unorthodox, people and for a short time, one very large pig. Change becomes noticeable only after years, not months.
Watkins settled in the bay 40 years ago after creating two maps, one showing his ideal locations and the other showing areas where development would always be difficult. Karaka Bay topped his shortlist of places sharing each.
"The stories here go way back to our earliest history, they attract the people who come here, fall in love with it, and want to keep those stories going - the children's swing used to be the drying net for sprats and maybe that matters or maybe it doesn't, but it's fantastic to know the story. Karaka Bay also attracts people who only see potential and want to change everything to fit in their own view of how things should be. That's about control, but Karaka Bay, at its best, is about not having control, it's about diversity, uniqueness and eccentricity. Social life is reinvented with every party and every battle that is fought is fought hard. If you want safe, secure and mediocre, you'll have to look somewhere else. This is a place where you can feel alive. I'd like the whole world to be like Karaka Bay."
PUKAKI MARAE
It may be little more than mud, mangroves and a few homes with a touch of "shanty" about them, but it's a sight that brings happy tears.
"This means everything, it is everything," say Donna Richards. "To you it might not look like much, and it doesn't, but we are just so happy and so proud to have it back, so very proud. I feel that my people are here, they are all around us, all the time. Even when times were difficult it was easy to keep going, to keep working, because we could feel them here with us."
"Here" is just over 3ha of land at the end of Mangere's Pukaki Rd, which is known mostly for the nearby Pukaki crater, a tidal lagoon until it was drained for farmland. Despite the nearby airport, the suburbs feel a lot further away than a two-minute drive, but then so does the notion of this eroded, estuarine headland having ever hosted the 2500 or so members of the Te Akitai hapu and their enormous marae, one of the oldest in Auckland and their pride and joy with its crystal chandeliers and 1000-seat dining room.
But then it's harder to imagine that these Waiohua people, who've maintained a fingertip grip on this, well, right now it's a swampy paddock really, once owned 720ha and counted One Tree Hill and Mangere Mountain as possessions. Just reclaiming this final refuge has been an exercise in patient lobbying, a battle obscured by a green barrier of market gardens, the shadow of an international airport, and indifference.
But to Richards and her family, this has been their true home since their ancestors climbed out of the Tainui waka however many years ago. It binds them even when it has been lost. The first rupture came during the Waikato wars of 1860s when their Kingite sympathies saw them sent south by Governor Grey, a move that cost the iwi about 520ha. Still, they returned and re-established themselves on their diminished holding and by 1890 had built that enormous marae.
Life went on until the 1950s when planning started for Auckland International Airport. The marae found itself in the middle of an area zoned for a second runway and all building work was declared illegal. Inevitably, the aging meeting house and associated buildings deteriorated and in 1966 the hapu was forced to demolish them. All but a tiny handful then left for nearby Ihumatao, another Maori settlement on the other side of the airport, and there they stayed, separated from home but still seeing themselves as a distinct community, until someone asked if the land was still needed. It wasn't. Their new marae was opened by the late Maori Queen, Te Arikinui Te Atairangikaahu, in 2004 and plans for the construction of almost 20 homes are now underway.
With the dark times behind them, the people of Pukaki talk only about recovery.
"When we found out we might be able to return, we rejoiced for days and weeks," says Richards. "We came here and slept out under the stars. There's a little concrete path that used to lead to our meeting house. We squashed in on that little bit of concrete because we'd got it back, we could build again. That night was about a new beginning for us."
Richards grew up here when the marae was in its heyday and knows what has been lost. She can still see the tiny island, now swamped under mangroves, that served as their diving board and knows where the fresh water springs can be found. Now she is back and living in the transplanted house her grandchildren are renovating for her. Despite the discomfort of a wet winter, it's an exciting time, so much so that it took a family intervention to prise her out when she succumbed to a cold. "Even the young ones are excited because they only saw this place through our eyes. They say: 'We've never lived here, but it feels like we have, because you talk about it so much.' Oh, we know we've got so much work to do, but we're starting to bounce back. Mind you, nothing worries us now, we've got it back and that's what matters. It's a great achievement."
Maintaining their sense of community wasn't easy, says Brownie Rauwhero. "We were lucky in that we had a wonderful woman, Mahia Wilson [a Te Akitai kuia who died earlier this year]. She was the one who held Te Akitai together and kept us going for years and years. She would not allow anything negative to be said, only positive. There was a lot of hurt, but every time someone stood up and began talking about what had happened in the past she would stand up straight away and say 'talk about positive things, that is the past. The future is what matters'. It is because of that magnificent woman that we are where we are now."
They may be only 50-strong now, but he says Wilson's legacy has helped recruit considerable outside help. The hapu are being assisted to varying degrees by agencies such as Te Puni Kokiri, Auckland Regional Council, Papakura District Council and Manukau City Council.
Phil Wilson, Manukau City's chief adviser to the CEO, says they are mostly playing a brokering role between the airport and Te Akitai. But they have secured ownership of the crater, regarded as one of the footsteps of Mataaoho (Nga Tapuwae o Mataaoho), and hope to play a co-managerial role in its preservation.
As far as its future is concerned, the hapu is interested in exploring the area's tourist potential so, all going well, it hopes to restore the lagoon and construct an historic village.
