Amanda Reynolds: Last thing city needs is another shopping mall

Vulcan Lane is an attractive, street-level connection, easily used by pedestrians. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

It is of course hard to keep smiling when "expert" expats or similar visitors whiz into town to tell you what's wrong with the place.

I read Sydney Professor Peter Curson's suggestions for Vulcan Lane last week and felt inspired to defend this unpretentious and attractive public space.

Like the professor, I come back to Auckland most summers to see friends and family. Exchanging wintry London for gulf islands and west coast beaches is an added impetus, as is watching Auckland growing and responding to the pressures of change.

Predictably I see both charms and challenges here, and commentary on these is always interesting. However, the professor's proposal that one of Auckland's few enduringly charming urban spaces - Vulcan Lane - should be roofed over, is a travesty. Aucklanders are outdoor people.

While the city's characteristic street verandas cope with rainstorms, intimate open spaces and wide footpaths in the city sun and shade are highly attractive places to sit with a coffee or beer, enjoy the breeze and watch the world go by.

The last thing you need in Auckland is another shopping mall.

It is notable that some of the least used pedestrian routes in the centre are those constructed and covered retail routes between Queen St and High/Lorne Sts. In contrast, Vulcan Lane and Durham St, High St and the other older, narrow routes in this area, are natural, historical, street-level connections attractive to and easily used by pedestrians.

Their cafes and bars are creative about arranging seating on varying slopes, adding to the charm of the spaces - these are not "ill-fitting tables and chairs" as claimed by the professor, but locations of character and individuality.

High St itself is a great survivor and though it and these other streets could do with improved treatment (repaving as a shared surface with greater pedestrian priority for instance), completely removing the cars as suggested would be a mistake.

This would reduce activity, accessibility and pedestrian safety, particularly in the evenings when all movement is reduced.

Professor Curson also derides Freyberg Place and the very special Pioneer Women's Memorial Hall - a rare survivor. Although the square is seriously in need of repaving and new seats, it is a gem spatially, connecting as it does some of Auckland city's trickier topographical changes to provide a level surface for seating and performance, and an open space for light, sun and trees.

The urban form around this small square also represents an Auckland city microcosm with buildings ranging from two to 35-odd storeys edging and overlooking it.

This provides a genuine sense of urban context as opposed to many of Auckland's wide city streets and low buildings, which speak inappropriately of suburbia.

The success of the older, smaller streets in the city centre - frequently in spite of, rather than because of, the city fathers - is most clearly expressed in the appealing tradition of small cafes and independent designer shops which are hard to find in major cities of the world - and much sought after.

This unique character reinforces the attraction of the "off-Queen" streets in this part of the city and, alongside the mainstream of "on-Queen", it will continue to make the city centre a destination that offers more than the suburban malls ever can. This is the essence of urbanity for Auckland.

The city does, however, have challenges which can overcome its charms at times, and here I tend to agree with Professor Curson in his criticism of the "all-pervading motor vehicle".

Regardless of the improvements in public transport in Auckland (three cheers for the train, but only when its electrified, double-tracked and loops through the centre), the car is unlikely to ever disappear - though it may run on chip fat or sunshine! However, too much effort is given to keeping the damn things moving at the expense of the pedestrian experience.

Considerable numbers of Aucklanders now live within walking distance of the city centre and many more would walk to work/play if the experience, particularly coming from the western inner suburbs, were not so miserable, requiring travel along or across motorway-style roads that ring the centre.

The main culprits here are the one-way "motorway access arms" - Nelson and Hobson Sts. Looked at dispassionately these routes should be busy, comfortable boulevards with an excellent mix of uses including apartments (glossing over the banal quality of these for the moment), businesses, retail and cultural functions.

There are even a number of large trees along both routes. But ... they will never be seen like this until they are normalised and returned to function as two-way streets, genuine access routes rather than just extensions of the motorway down to the harbour.

The looming super city changes for Auckland provide a major new opportunity for genuine joined-up thinking about the city's movement patterns and transport systems, and most particularly about improving the quality of Auckland's urban environment by shifting the view of the street from car-priority to pedestrian-priority.

It would be great to see more of Auckland's challenges turned into charms and now is the time to do it - by tackling the bigger problems without tinkering with the small-scale stuff, like Vulcan Lane, that happily looks after itself.

* Amanda Reynolds is an architect and urban designer.