City of muscle

By GRAHAM REID

The visitor from Melbourne sits outside a Ponsonby cafe. He's scanning a newspaper photograph of a suburban Canberra street devastated by bushfires.

"Oh well," he says drily. "It's only the capital. It's not like it's an important city or anything."

His wit might be wanting, but he has a point.

A capital that is not a country's largest city is not unique, but is unusual.

Australia has Canberra and we have Wellington. But there is an important distinction: Canberra vies for attention with rivals like Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. In New Zealand the size and scale of Auckland overwhelms all others.

With around 1.25 million people sprawling from Whangaparaoa to Papakura, Auckland is, without challenge, the hub of the nation.

When Auckland projects were recently given $1.2 billion of the $1.6 billion allocated for roading, there were predictable howls of complaint from around the country.

But Aucklanders who watched television news at the end of the holiday period laughed aloud as a Wellington reporter spoke of hold-ups for returning holidaymakers. Behind her, the motorway into the capital was all but deserted.

Aucklanders can tell the rest of the country a thing or two about traffic, and it isn't pleasant.

However, the perception that Auckland is hogging Transit funds is just more ammunition for those outside the city who say, once again, that it is a drain on the nation's economy.

"Auckland is an economic powerhouse, I accept that," says Wellington's mayor Kerry Prendergast. "But we are all helping to pay for Auckland's problems."

Prendergast says while she has pressing transport problems in the capital - the inner-city bypass desperately needs finishing because delays add 12 minutes to commuter trips and that means lost productivity - she is genuinely sympathetic to Auckland's woes.

She is frustrated that some parts of the media portray issues such as the Transit spend as an Auckland-Wellington spat. There is a bigger issue at stake.

She says if successive governments continue to prop up Auckland's infrastructure, the problems will continue. Businesses and migrants will continue to move to the city if there is a perception the infrastructure is improving. So the social problems will grow and the systems will continue to be under pressure.

"There are only three cities in the world which have population concentrations greater than Auckland: Athens, Buenos Aires and Mexico City."

All these cities house 30 per cent of their countries' populations. Auckland has 26 per cent of New Zealand's. That single-city domination could be unhealthy for the economic balance of the nation.

Wellington has lost major corporations to the north and while they have been replaced by start-up businesses in the arts and technology, these do not have the same dollar value as those which have fled.

According to the National Bank Regional Trends Survey published late last year, Wellington's annual average economic growth rate was just 1.3 per cent in the quarter to September, the weakest pace of year-on-year growth among New Zealand's 14 regions.

Despite Prendergast's cheery welcome on her council's answerphone - she describes Wellington as "the most energetic, diverse and creative city in New Zealand" - it has serious economic burdens.

But get a better infrastructure - Prendergast specifically mentions upgrading a rail service she describes as "Third World" - in Wellington, Christchurch or elsewhere, and businesses and migrants would move there.

"You are an international gateway for New Zealand, as is Christchurch. But you are our biggest one.

"You are the economic powerhouse, you still have a large number of corporates, and you are probably better known on the world stage than the rest of the country.

"So it's critical that you survive and do well, for everybody's sake. But by not investing in our infrastructure you are guaranteeing the rest of the country will not grow."

Prendergast has been having meetings with Economic Development Minister Jim Anderton and Transport Minister Paul Swain to address these larger and long-term issues.

"I accept Auckland needs help, but if there isn't enough money to help Auckland and also the rest of New Zealand, because this isn't just an Auckland-Wellington issue, then grow the pie."

There is a new Transport Act before a select committee and she is encouraging people to make submissions asking for regional petrol taxes, regional transport levies, tolling and congestion pricing.

Anderton is sympathetic, and a fortnight ago said Wellington's regional development would be a government priority.

"Cities around the world are now competing hard to attract and keep the people and skills needed to sustain future economic activity.

"We need to ensure that central government agencies are doing their part to make sure New Zealand's capital city is one of the clear winners in that global contest," Anderton says.

Auckland, perhaps, doesn't need much help.

It has an almost independent economy, its news dominates the nation's headlines, and it is a magnet for business and culture. It may not be able to hold a decent arts festival, but it doesn't need to.

International touring acts often come to Auckland and stop right there.

It may be amorphous, but it is the only city to have a designated MP, Judith Tizard, looking after it.

And Auckland's diversity - a central city girls' school has students from more than 50 cultures - presents unique problems ... and possibilities.

The city has both in abundance - if you can get through the gridlock to find them.

Hamilton's mayor, David Braithwaite, may have good reason to feel cowed by the weight of the metropolis to his north, but has many good things to say about the city and its mayors.

He sees Hamilton has an important role as a satellite city and if State Highway 1 between Mercer and Cambridge is upgraded, economic traffic can grow.

"You can provide a big market for the Waikato, both economically and as an employment resource.

"We can provide people and be a satellite service. We have a very good international airport and I have a vision that it ought to be able to complement Auckland's."

Braithwaite says there is increasing recognition in his region - which is enjoying the trickle-down from the America's Cup and its position near the tourist gateway - that Hamilton and Auckland need to work together for mutual success.

If mayors Braithwaite and Prendergast are sympathetic, there still seems to be a perception among some of their city folk that Aucklanders sip lattes on Ponsonby Road while the horny-handed sons of the soil in the provinces do all the hard yakka.

But Auckland, despite being chaotic and difficult to define, does have a purpose, and it's paying its way.

Despite the latte jokes, it is the country's export centre and its suburbs are punctuated by industrial parks and factories. The chairman of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Michael Barnett, suggests some of the resentment and envy of Auckland comes from the culture that emanates from Auckland.

It is brash, loud, unafraid of displaying its wealth - which accounts for all those off-road urban assault vehicles on Remuera Rd - and has a spending culture.

It even brags about its brashness. The city's official website says, "Auckland's urban personality is bold, fast and fashionable".

But it also pays its taxes - it fuels about a third of the nation's economy - and provides the buying power of the nation.

"Without us," says Barnett, "the rest of the country would probably have to pay more taxes and not have the same level of wealth that they have."

Auckland, because of its sheer size, is also the place which buys produce from the rest of the country. It may be rapaciously greedy, but as Gordon Gecko said in Wall Street, "Greed is good".

Auckland's greed is certainly good if you own a vineyard in the Hawkes Bay.

Barnett says the nation's economy needs a city like Auckland to drive it, and that the schism between the civil capital - Wellington - and the economic one - Auckland - is useful in creating a point of difference.

Traditionally this divide has meant rivalry, misunderstanding, even hostility.

No one would seriously suggest Auckland become the capital - it has enough problems already, and most Aucklanders don't want to see Wellington reduced to a windy village - but the overdue desperately needed roading finance was very welcome, he says.

Auckland may be cosmopolitan and diverse, but it comes at a price. Crime.

"A maze of streets affords better cover to the criminal than does the most tangled forest. And while the great increase of realisable wealth acts as an incentive to the lawless, the general merging of individuality in a great city's multitudes shields the burglar and the robber from the eye of the Law.

"It is a melancholy admission, but one which cannot be denied, that as Auckland increases in population and in prosperity we must expect to have our old-time security threatened by that modern banditti whose raids are already in evidence."

As true as the day it was written - in the Herald 100 years ago.

The article concludes with a line of contemporary resonance in a city where a former minister of police is its mayor: "The local police force must be considerably strengthened".

Whatever Auckland is - shapeless, troubled and clumsy like an adolescent, violent, exhibitionist - it is also where the money and produce flows freely, where tourists get their first taste of New Zealand, and where thousands of people from other regions come to make their home and seek opportunity or advancement.

As the American business consultant and planner Robert Dahl observed: "If to live in cities is our fate, to live in great cities is our opportunity.

Counting on Auckland:


The latest population figures from June last year estimate the Auckland region's population - from Mangawhai in the north to Pukekohe in the south - at 1,251,400. That is 32 per cent of New Zealand's 3.94 million people even though Auckland takes up only 2 per cent of the land mass.

Auckland's population dwarfs the next most populated region, Canterbury, with 503,800 people, followed by Wellington 445,400, and Waikato 373,200.

Herald feature: Mighty Auckland