KEY POINTS:
What makes a city a city? What are the crucial elements that conspire together to turn mere topography into an entity with a distinct energy and identity of its own?
For Plato it was the inhabitants of a place who come together and partake in its daily life: "The city is what it is because the citizens are what they are." Shakespeare agreed, asking "what is the city but the people?" Certainly it takes more than footpaths, roads and often dodgy public art to turn a convergence of thoroughfares and an assortment of dwellings into a living, breathing hub. But is it just the people? Or is there something else, some ineffable, unquantifiable something that calls a city into being?
I'm pondering this question as my month in Wellington draws to its close. It's been hard to think about anything else really, such is the frequency and intensity with which Wellingtonians question me about how I, a blow-in from that sprawling conurbation up north, feel about their home.
Has there ever been a city as obsessed with its own image as our nation's Capital? "Do you like it?" "It's different here isn't it?" "Not at all like Auckland, don't you think?"
This is a chorus that has followed me around since I stepped off the plane, from the taxi driver who drove me from the airport to the man who sells me the paper every morning. And they call Aucklanders self-obsessed. For a collective which affects to despise all things Jafa-like, Wellingtonians can at times display a preoccupation with Auckland that borders on the pathological. It's cloaked in disdain of course. "Awful." "Shallow." "Trite" Or damned with faint praise: "Not quite the same, is it?" Or, quite mad : "Full of toilet paper magnates and race horse trainers".
Wellingtonians are certainly not backward about coming forward when it comes to sharing their opinions about the City of Sails. Funnily enough, the rest of the country never seems to come in for the same sort of excoriation.The provinces may escape their attention, but the merest mention of Auckland is guaranteed to get them frothing.
I can't really understand why this is. Because Wellington is fabulous.
It really is. Absolutely positively and all the rest. A compact city nestled oh so picturesquely among pretty hills facing bravely out to the sea. A city of boulevards and promenades and a sense of its history. A city with heart and soul and excellent bartenders. A city of talkers and smokers and suits. Having a conversation here is like trying to catch a butterfly as it weaves fluently and fruitily over all manner of terrain. Wellingtonians expound as easily about philosophy, theology and art as they do about the inevitable - politics, pressure groups and the civil service. Everyone may work for the government here, but at least they seem to get plenty of reading done in their spare time.
There are a few things about Wellington and Wellingtonians that take some getting used to, though. The insistence on hosiery by the female population every day and in all weathers. Recklessly careering buses. The preponderance of bloggers and gossipers. The blithe self-confidence in their own abilities displayed by everyone involved in artistic endeavours.
And yet, such is the energy and imagination that Wellingtonians put into life in their city, it seems churlish to mock. Yes it's easy to scoff at the typical Wellingtonian, twirling fire poi to dub music in Island Bay, reinventing theatre, knowing all the words to Fat Freddy's, swooning over Brett from Flight of The Conchords as he cycles past. But compare that archetype to your typical Aucklander; overtanned and filthy with property development lucre, braying nonsense at a table outside SPQR. Suddenly being absolutely positively Wellington doesn't seem so bad after all. There are many things Wellington can teach Auckland about city life. The need to participate for one thing; if we followed their lead and got on with staging decent inner city events, maybe we'd have something a little better than Boobs on Bikes. And what about a decent waterfront? Wellington gets a promenade with witty, thought-provoking public art, we get the collection of prefabs and tourist traps that is the Viaduct. Lauris Edmond called Wellington "the city of action. The world headquarters of the verb". Perhaps it's time for Auckland to take a leaf out of the capital's book, less being and more doing.