The city is a leader among peers in sustainability driven by its potential for low-consumption living and a higher awareness of the need to be sustainable. Global awareness of Auckland’s destination appeal, welcome and friendliness is also a strength. There is strong place identity in many established and regenerated locations, and the city has an acknowledged capacity to withstand and rebound from shocks.
Auckland faces challenges
The report was also clear about Auckland’s challenges. Auckland risks getting stuck in an economy that fails to deliver the promise of broad-based prosperity, with productivity and wages overall lower than most comparable cities. The report said threats to liveability have become more obvious in the city, with concerns about housing affordability and perceptions of safety becoming chronic, despite settling trends.
Auckland’s transport and wider infrastructure deficit presents ongoing challenges. It ranks last among its peers for the share of people living within walking distance of public transport. The infrastructure shortfall is also making it harder to achieve resilience as climate change-induced effects become more regular and severe.
Auckland was ranked lowest for both its innovation ecosystem and for skills development and retention. Although Auckland has promising advantages in foodtech, fintech and gaming, the level of help that start-up founders receive is lower than our peers. We are in the bottom 20 per cent of how much large companies spend on research and development and Auckland does not rank in the global top 25 across any of the 11 strategically important, future-facing sectors, unlike most of our peers.
Auckland’s tertiary institutions are well regarded, though the city is bottom among its peers for the share of locals with education of degree level or higher. The city’s supply of skills is not keeping pace with the needs of fast-moving technology sectors and Auckland is losing more of its graduate talent than peer cities. It also has the lowest productivity among our peers and has the least affordable housing relative to incomes.
Championing action
A steering group has been formed to champion action.
A December update found Auckland is up to ninth among 30 global cities for progress embedding the circular economy, aided by the work under way reducing construction and demolition waste.
Auckland is also back among the top 30 most student-friendly cities globally for the first time since 2019, due to an improvement in student satisfaction and experience. However, perception of the city’s safety as well as its traffic performance, measured by commute time, dissatisfaction, network inefficiencies and CO2 emissions, had deteriorated.
Encouragingly, a wide range of Auckland council, government, private and other agency-led projects are under way to improve the state of the city.
Tātaki Auckland Unlimited has celebrated year one of Tech Tāmaki Makaurau, a three-year strategy to develop Auckland’s tech industry, and bolstered the transtasman innovation network through a partnership between GridAKL, its inner-city innovation hub and Stone & Chalk, Australia’s largest start-up community. The partnership provides resources for start-ups, including access to expertise and investor connectivity.
A digital twin pilot project is being established by Auckland Council, the University of Auckland, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and the Construction Sector Accord.
This would create a digital representation of the Auckland city centre to improve decision-making, increase citizen engagement and enhance co-ordination between planners, agencies, and property owners.
The University of Auckland’s think tank, Koi Tū, is trialling further deliberative democracy approaches that include online tools to support citizens’ assemblies, which can lead to improved plan-making.
This builds on the success of the award-winning Watercare citizens’ assembly decision-making project “What should be the next source of water for Auckland by 2040?”
State of the City 2024
The findings in the 2023 report will take time, effort and resources to move.
Mayor Wayne Brown’s Manifesto for Auckland, aligned with the Government’s regional and city deals policy, has the potential to create new and more durable solutions.
But this will also need a concerted effort by all those interested in Auckland’s progress - particularly as the challenges facing the city in some areas are only growing, and our peer cities are getting more innovative with their responses.
State of the City 2024 will be out later this year.
The report
The State of the City report is an initiative of the Committee for Auckland in partnership with Deloitte and Tātaki Auckland Unlimited and with support from Auckland University’s Koi Tū think tank and the New Zealand Government’s Auckland Policy Office.
Lead contributors were Dr Tim Moonen, Jake Nunley, Borane Gille and Benjamin Lahai-Taylor at The Business of Cities — an urban intelligence firm providing data and advice to 100 global cities, companies and institutions.
· See the video here
· Mark Thomas is a director of the Committee for Auckland.
