KEY POINTS:
For Auckland, 2008 was all a bit of an anticlimax. A year of waiting about, wondering if more heritage buildings would topple, waiting about for trains to be double tracked and electrified, waiting about for the waterfront to be transformed and, most of all, waiting about for the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance to declare its hand.
Of course, there was a good side to all that marking time. The financial storms blowing in from afar that caused such a halt to speculative property development did guarantee a few more years of life for some of the few remaining relics of our built heritage - the old Fitzroy Hotel in Wakefield St, for one.
The impending depression also prevented such outrages as the proposed high-rise hotel in the middle of the Britomart heritage precinct.
The burst property development bubble has also saved the ancient Orakei Basin's volcanic-tuff ring from being bulldozed off the heritage landscape to make way for a mess of apartments memorably christened "East Germany by the Sea" by local politician Aaron Bhatnagar.
Hats off to the locals who led the fight against that proposal, and to Mayor John Banks who can add this to his growing list of conservation successes.
But, cynic that I am, I have to give the biggest credit to that invisible economic hand which every decade or so whacks developers around the ears and gives our imperilled heritage the sort of reprieve no Auckland politician or city planner seems to be able to.
My big fear for 2009 is that if the Jeremiahs are proven true, and Auckland is pummelled by the economic storms, then politicians - local and national - will batten down the hatches and use the downturn as an excuse for delaying or shelving any restructuring the royal commission may recommend.
The commissioners have certainly hinted at their support for strengthening powers at a regional level, which comes as little surprise as the majority of the 3500 submissions received argued for it.
To a degree, extending the scope of Auckland regional government will merely be formalising what has been slowly developing in a de facto way through sheer need.
The best example this year was the passage of the Regional Amenities Funding Act, which forced the parochial territorial councils outside Auckland City to start sharing the funding load for various regional amenities that they'd been happy to let the ratepayers of the old city carry.
The interesting aspect of this lengthy and fractious debate was that, on the whole, the ordinary citizens of greater Auckland agreed they were, on the whole, all Aucklanders first.
The recalcitrance and the meanness over funding was strongest among the petty politicians who felt - and feel - their little empires could disappear if reform were to ensue. And so they might.
But would that be such a bad thing? Would it set the general populace a-wailing? Somehow I doubt it.
The last major reform of Auckland local government came with the nationwide amalgamations of 1989. That was an upheaval, not just of boundaries, but of loyalty to communities that had survived for decades. The people of enclaves like Newmarket and picture-postcard suburbs like Devonport fought change to the bitter end. Many are still grumpy.
I suspect even now there'll be few tears shed in parts of Devonport if North Shore City disappears. Ditto for parts of Howick if it's cut free from Manukau City. Especially if these old entities are revived in some form as local administrative entities within a greater Auckland structure.
I hasten to say I have no inside running on the commissioners' thinking. But if they're to come to the party with a plan that gives Aucklanders the stronger regional governance most are clamouring for and at the same time keeps the local in local government, then there are only a limited number of solutions.
The commissioners have until March 31 to submit their report. If they can beat that deadline, then so much the better. I'm sick of the waiting. We have work to do.
* This is my last column for the year. Thanks, as always, for all the feedback over the year and my apologies for anyone I didn't get back to, among them the climate-change deniers who launched something of a blizzard in my direction in recent weeks.
