Ask Phoebe: Suburb boundaries set by emergency services

Arch Hill Scenic Reserve. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Council has responsibility of naming suburbs but is not specific.

In my youth I lived in Elgin St, close to Great North Rd. We lived in the suburb of Arch Hill then and even had our own parliamentary electorate. Arch Hill took in the northern side of Great North Rd and embraced Elgin, Grosvenor, Harcourt and Beaconsfield Sts, among others. Maps seem to imply Arch Hill covers only the southern side centred on Bond St. Could you enlighten me please? Also, are there any specific boundaries set for Auckland City suburbs, as these seem to be dictated by the whims of real estate agents and their ilk. Lyle Fraser, Chatswood.

Arch Hill was named by early settlers who farmed in the area, after their home farm in Northern Ireland, according to Wikipedia. Other records suggest it was named for the topography of the area.

Whichever, it did indeed have its own electorate, created for the 1946 elections from bits of the Auckland Central, Auckland West and Grey Lynn electorates.

Terralink, which provides location data to emergency services, says that it is not just a matter of locating these streets in so-called "vanity suburbs".

The naming of suburbs is the responsibility of the local council. However, very few councils define the "official" suburbs in their area. In the absence of this, the Fire Service, in consultation with other parties, determined a need to specify a set of localities.

The emergency services as a whole, and many other bodies such as telecommunications and utility companies, as well as Terralink, have adopted these "suburb definitions".

Real estate firms have taken up these suburb definitions, as have websites such as www.zoodle.co.nz. These Fire Service localities may be known locally by different names, commonly adjoining or nearby suburbs.

The only practical way to change this definition would be for the Auckland Council to define the suburb as something else as it has the official responsibility to provide suburb naming.

•Here is some information on Auckland's concrete roads, courtesy of Michael Gibbons:

"I am fairly certain that that [concrete road, between Pakuranga and Howick] was one of a number of roads built by NZ Roads Ltd, many of which were of concrete construction.

"That company was set up by my forebears with the prime purpose of showing the value and versatility of Fordson tractors. In the 1920s, there was a lot of competition between horse-drawn implements and the emerging combustion engine-powered machines, in which Fordson tractors were a significant player.

The Colonial Motor Company Ltd put a lot of resources into establishing a tractor market as at that time it was Ford in New Zealand.

"Numerous clever attachments were mounted on or drawn by those early tractors which, in addition to agricultural purposes, were used for earth moving and allied construction before larger machines from Caterpillar, etcetera, came along.

New Zealand Roads ceased operating in the mid-1930s."