Crossing the growing divide

By GEOFF CUMMING

More than 3000 South Aucklanders are expected at Ngati Otara Park today for an inaugural youth festival featuring hip hop acts, DJs, fast cars and aerosol bombing demonstrations.

The young crowd will reflect the multi-ethnic melting pot that is Manukau - the face of the future.

Over at North Harbour Stadium, the Auckland Aces will be happy if half that number turn up to back them in the national one-day cricket final against Northern Districts. The fans will be old Auckland - largely European, and ageing.

Aucklanders' lukewarm support for their representative sporting teams is said to sum up their attitude to most things and is associated with a lack of pride and passion. But the fact that the cricket final is no real magnet also reflects the diverse interests of the city's mishmash of inhabitants.

Different sectors of the community this weekend can catch a demonstration by professional Chinese ice sculptors and dancers in Manukau, outdoor Shakespeare at the Parnell Rose Gardens or a performance of African drumming at the Museum.

Of course, tonight's big event, the Starlight Symphony, will draw Aucklanders of all ages, from north, west, east and south. They will converge on somewhere approximating the city centre, the Domain.

But such mass comings-together are a rarity. Rather than a city, Auckland is often summed up as a collection of villages without a heart, let alone a soul.

Stretched around twin harbours with sandy beaches, volcanoes, parks and green belts, subtropical Auckland is blessed . But its strengths can be weaknesses.

Geography, multiheaded administration, settlement patterns, wealth disparities and a reliance on the motor car combine to divide Aucklanders. Fifteen years of migration and economic change have entrenched these rifts.

Certainly, the organisers of Otara's State of Mind Youth Festival have no doubt where their loyalties lie.

For school-leaver Samiu Taufa, how local teams fare in rugby, touch and volleyball matter more than the Blues' efforts in the Super 12 and whether the America's Cup remains in Auckland. When locals go overseas, he says, they describe themselves as Otarians, not Aucklanders. They are Urban Pacific; they are South Side.

Another volunteer, Leiana Halalilo, says she rarely visits Queen St. "It's better down here in Otara." She says the public transport system is one barrier but "everything you need is here".

Festival organiser Debbie Grant says these attitudes are typical. "Out here, it's Otara first, Manukau second, Auckland third,"

Grant attributes the sense of community support and endeavour in Otara to notions of whanau and fonu - concepts not associated with better-off suburbs where privacy and individualism flourish.

To the legions of Auckland-bashers who throw Jafa jokes from afar, the popular image is of greedy, self-centred prima donnas who would sooner chew the fat than do anything. This is reinforced by the decentralised local government structure which stifles progress .

Central governments have used the messy structure for years as an excuse to do nothing: "Auckland can't agree."

In the absence of a unity and direction, the city has spread like a virus over the countryside, heightening the sense of disconnectedness.

Auckland City's pre-eminence as an employment centre has diminished as subregional employment centres have grown. Sixty per cent of North Shore workers now stay on the Shore and 56 per cent of Manukau residents live and work in the same area.

Auckland City remains easily the main place of work and 60,000 work in the CBD, but for others there is less reason to go to Queen St.

The inner city's heritage and housing were demolished in the name of progress and only in recent years have residents been wooed back.

It is a young city with an identity crisis. Manukau is the face of the future, Waitakere the ecocity, Auckland City the city of sails or the first city of the Pacific or, um, Auckland A.

It is characterised by the transience of its people. The 2001 census revealed that only 40 per cent of residents lived at the same address as five years before. Nearly 200,000 moved to Auckland in that period - 130,000 from overseas.

A minority were born here. Its migrants include refugees from Canterbury, Waikato, Southland, Wellington, Taranaki and Gisborne who swear undying allegiance to their province of origin but happily embrace the benefits of big city living.

Residents of wealthier suburbs enjoy the cafe lifestyle . Poorer suburbs are increasingly enclaves of ethnic minorities from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Sociologist David Craig says people growing up in different parts of Auckland have very different experiences. New Zealand's economic reforms of the 1980s and early-1990s drove a wedge between rich and poor and led to ghettoisation in Auckland. Another consequence has been "middle class cocooning," with better-off areas segregating themselves with "streetscaping" and security measures.

In Auckland, where growth has been guided by the motor car and motorway development, mobility is all important, says Dr Craig, of Auckland University. "I live in Mt Roskill and can take my kids to play in Mission Bay or Devonport or to the west coast beaches, but it's very different for people who don't have a car."

Craig, who convenes a stage one sociology paper on Auckland which the university has introduced, says the city is a mild example of the segregated, polarised communities that emerged in many American cities where development was guided by the car.

Inequality issues need to be addressed before underclasses emerge and crime worsens.

When English migrant Laurette Worsnop moved to Bucklands Beach, near Howick, 14 years ago she says it was "Kiwiland." Now it's a community where "you can't talk to your neighbours because of language barriers - it's like living in a transit camp."

"There's only three people in my street who were here when I arrived. People draw curtains, they shut the gate. They don't want to know each other."

Like many in the area, she has lobbied against being part of Manukau City - "I feel more like an Aucklander."

Over the harbour bridge, however, they take pride in North Shore's separation from Auckland City. Enterprise North Shore general manager Terry Hoskins says local businesses are fiercely parochial and there's no shortage of support for local events, or the North Harbour rugby team.

"We have a thriving, self-contained infrastructure."

But Hoskins says attitudes change as firms grow beyond the Shore. Most residents are dual citizens, he says.

"There are people who say 'blow up the bridge' and operate here. But we recognise that we are part of the region and we promote regional growth."

Birkenhead public relations consultant Sylvia Zlami is passionate about living on the Shore surrounded by bush, birdlife and close to the water. "It's a very beautiful environment to live in considering you're 15 minutes from the city."

But the widely travelled Austrian immigrant is also proud to be an Aucklander. "It depends who you're talking to. If I'm speaking to somebody outside Auckland I'm from Auckland, but once I'm speaking to an Aucklander I'm most definitely from the Shore."

She was taken aback by the level of anti-Auckland sentiment when she first arrived in New Zealand and travelled the country. "You tended to feel like a second-class New Zealander, the poor city slicker cousin.

"It used to bother me, but now I stick up for Auckland. It is not a bad place to live in international terms and the North Shore in particular is a great place to live."

Auckland University urban geographer Larry Murphy says Auckland is a collection of very distinct localities. Even within suburbs, there are huge variations in wealth, ethnicity and lifestyles. Kingsland, for instance, has undergone a Ponsonby-like gentrification - Maori and Polynesian moving out, European professionals moving in - while just down the road in Sandringham are Muslim and Hindu communities.

Dr Murphy says the local body structure has contributed to the disparities, each city developing distinct identities and providing facilities like convention centres, stadiums and cultural venues. Auckland needs to develop a "unity of purpose" to deal with its infrastructure problems and attract international business, he says.

Metropolises like London, New York and Paris project an image of being whole entities - largely because they have a centre, he says.

"Go to London and it's probably Oxford St, in Paris its des Champs-Elysees ... If you want to find out what's going on in Auckland, Queen St is not actually the hub."

"Auckland is more like Los Angeles - definitely a car trip city. We have a centre which is devoid of life after 5pm."

But Murphy concedes it's an international trend for modern cities to have more than one centre, with subregional office parks emerging in response to inner city traffic problems.

Branding consultant Brian Richards describes Auckland as nine boroughs looking for a metropolis. "We are slowly Los Angelising it in the way it is laid out, the places we work, the way we participate in events."

He agrees with Murphy that the city needs a coherent vision to make progress on issues like transport and to bridge the gaps between communities.

"We've got to emotionally belong to a place."

All that's needed to develop a strong single identity is goodwill, he says. "We need to communicate the benefits of getting together. It's not about making one big fiefdom, it's about creating a coherent vision for Auckland whether you are in Manukau or the Waitakeres."

Richards is optimistic that Aucklanders will pull together. It's a matter of fusion - blending the talents of its new ethnic enclaves with established communities.

He compares Auckland to US industrial cities like Chicago, which gained fresh life from the influx of European migrants before World War II.

Infusing our new migrants with the "fertile thinking and inventiveness" of Aucklanders will create "something that's incredibly new and exciting". He says the city will find its identity in its open style, its unbridled thinking, and in the generation of recent migrants whose children are graduating from our universities.

"These are the kind of people that will help change this town. The crosscultural thing will produce a new energy that will make this city a fantastic place to come to."

Counting on Auckland:

* Regional gross domestic product figures are not available but economists estimate Auckland is responsible for a third of the country's economic worth, with Wellington and Canterbury responsible for 13 per cent each.

* Auckland is the most ethnically diverse region. Just over 68 per cent of Aucklanders are European, compared to the national average of 80 per cent. Pacific Island people make up 14 per cent of Auckland's population, Asian 13.8 per cent and Maori 11.6 per cent.

Almost a third of Auckland residents were born overseas, compared to a fifth nationally.

* The median age of Aucklanders is 33.3 years, second lowest in the country after Gisborne's 33.1 years. Auckland has the lowest proportion of over-65s (10 per cent) in the country.

* Aucklanders' median annual income is $27,200 for men and $16,400 for women, second to Wellingtonians' $28,300 for men and $17,600 for women.

* The latest median house price in Auckland is $280,000, compared to $222,000 in Wellington, $149,950 in Canterbury-Westland and $84,375 in Southland.

The median weekly rent for a three-bedroom house in Ponsonby is $520, compared to $400 for a three-bedroom house in Wellington central and $260 in Christchurch central.

Herald feature: Mighty Auckland