Brian Rudman: Civic revamp that needs Pol Pot's guiding hand

If you haven't caught up with the Metro Project, don't feel too guilty about it. Keeping on top of every last scheme to turn Auckland into "a world-class, successful and dynamic city-region" is has hard as ensuring you're up to date with every last official tweak of the Windows XP operating system.

But if you're a sucker for latest models, especially ones designed by overseas experts, the version issued last week is the de luxe edition.

What's even better, it comes free of charge at Economic Development and the ARC.

Last April, Michael Barnett, chairman of the Auckland Regional Economic Development Forum, said the new edition was nigh.

Experts from London, New York, California, Johannesburg and Toronto were about to whirlwind through town, meeting locals to fine-tune a set of plans "transforming Auckland into a leading international city-region".

Last week, in unveiling the final blueprint, Mr Barnett had calmed down enough to admit "a report alone will not make the difference".

The onus, he said, was on "Auckland city-region's leaders to move quickly and turn the report's recommendations into a big, bold and transformational action plan".

And there, sadly, is the rub. Auckland civic's archives are bulging with unfulfilled visions, unrealised, for lack of leaders with the charisma or the drive to see them through.

The 2006 model unveiled last week comes with all the familiar old features, despite its overseas parentage.

The need, for instance, for a single master plan for Auckland, "integrating other plans around a single vision" with "single evidence base" (whatever that means) and "single time frames".

It proposes we identify eight to 12 "key interventions" needed to "drive Auckland's future forward", and says we will need a single regional financing plan to pay for them. Popular endorsement for this would be sought in a referendum with next year's local body elections.

There's a demand for a jointly owned regional development organisation to deliver major projects and for labour market intervention "to improve the interaction between employers and skills providers".

There's also the 21st century genuflection to the god of broadband connectivity, which is "critical to overcoming some of the challenges of geographical location".

There's even a knee bend to the Rugby World Cup 2011 as an important catalyst for getting us off our backsides to execute the other recommendations.

But intriguingly, the first of the international review team's 15 key recommendations has mysteriously dropped off the press release.

I guess it could have been an accident, but being of a suspicious bent I suspect it's more likely it's been shelved in the "if we ignore it, it might go away" basket.

This is the recommendation for "an enhanced leadership commission for Auckland", a proposal that has already had anxious local politicians dashing for their smelling salts.

The international team highlighted "the functional interdependence of the various parts of the metropolitan region" and the need "to build a leadership function for the region as a whole (either through collaboration or through reform of governance, or both) to articulate a vision for the region and to be accountable for efforts to achieve that vision".

It says the region must address co-ordination and integration failures, and that "major governance reform" may be necessary.

One plan, one vision, one leadership is the project. But what does that add up to in the real world? One big pipe-dream, or one world-class, dynamic city-region?

It's no doubt useful to have the old dream of a united Auckland spruced up and debated again by the city's university and business and political chattering classes. But then what?

It's easy to call for regional leadership arrived at "through collaboration or through reform of governance" or, for that matter, through revolution. But how this is to be masterminded, and how existing politicians are to be persuaded of the need for change, is left blank.

With no Pol Pot to take us back to Year One and declare it's time to try again, it's hard to imagine Auckland suddenly embracing a single vision under one leader, enhanced or otherwise.

Not without the mind-concentrating force of some natural calamity that erupts us on to the world stage for all the wrong reasons.