Editorial: Fiddling at fringes of our shame

Vulcan Lane's storm in a latte cup has touched a nerve that has been rubbed raw for more people than a handful of trendy city-centre Aucklanders, as the avalanche of letters to this newspaper has shown.

It is not just a matter of a few paving stones. In its own way this fuss about a very short street, which in most cities would be completely unremarkable, is symptomatic of a wider malaise.

The apparent total surprise, mingled with resentment, shown by Auckland politicians at the outcry was reminiscent of the shock and hurt shown by French and other European politicians when their populations greeted the EU constitution proposals with a derisive gesture. How could the public have been so out of touch ?

Some Auckland councillors seem to believe they have carried out a realistic consultative exercise. The reaction suggests the opposite. Large numbers of our correspondents consider the Vulcan Lane alterations were being sprung on them unannounced by a group of anonymous backroom boys with an agenda to which the public has never subscribed.

Planners in particular are regarded with - if such a thing is possible - even more suspicion than politicians. This may be unfair but looking round our cities - and Auckland is not alone - it would be hard to deny that the suspicion is well-founded.

If their past record has left a legacy of doubt about planners, their pronouncements of what they would like for the future, with their "compact city" dreams with high-density populations nailed to public transport corridors, have done little to dispel the belief that their mindset is "We know what's best for you whether you like it or not."

Other planners knew best when they were building high-rise housing all over Europe, now widely acknowledged as a well-intentioned but disastrous social experiment ending in the sound of former residents cheering as tower blocks were blown up by the hundred.

The Vulcan Lane treatment is also being demonised as part of a drive for a relentless uniformity. This may be unjust, given the light-hearted tui feeder notion, but this debate is about public feeling, not fairness.

The proposals are also being seen as planners fiddling round the peripheries without being able to tackle the real issue. The response was not merely "It's not broke, why fix it?' but "Why don't you fix things that are broken?"

Few would resist attempts to make Auckland more attractive. Queen St remains spectacularly nondescript and a source of embarrassment, while the waterfront is universally acknowledged to be a showpiece of the inadequate and the lost opportunity.

One of the reasons behind the outpouring of righteous indignation over Vulcan Lane is that it is one of the few bright spots in the city. Making the pavements all one colour seems not only misguided but feeble.

Mayor Dick Hubbard's striding about the uneven streets is a reflection that the council has woken up to the gap between the public and the political establishment, although the doggedness of some sticking to the line that the Vulcan Lane critics are unrepresentative malcontents is revealing.

As in the case of the European referendum, the politicians and their bureaucratic servants (or is that the other way round?) were convinced that they had done their best to bring their constituents onside. The uproar shows how wrong they were and whether Vulcan Lane stays vaguely pink or goes blue, that lesson ought to be learned.