Compared to US we can't really complain

Auckland's traffic problems pale into insignificance compared with the LA gridlock. Picture / Martin Sykes

So you're stuck nose-to-tail in an endless stream of traffic on the way into work and on comes the news telling you that, get ready, another 9000 people or so will pack into Manukau this year. You think, this is getting to be Los Angeles; it just can't keep going like this.

Right? Wrong, says Bernard Salt, the Australian demographer who has been closely watching how people live and move on both sides of the Tasman for the past decade. Auckland's mushrooming population is not even a blip on growth in Los Angeles, or in any other number of American cities.

Even Sydney, the buzzing metropolis of Australasia, is just a demographic baby in comparison.

"It's time for a reality check," says Salt. "Everyone on the Gold Coast or in Manukau pulling their hair out and saying, 'How can we cope with this extraordinary growth?' should go to Riverside in Los Angeles, or Phoenix, Arizona, and see a county growing at a rate of 120,000 a year.

"Los Angeles as a whole is growing at 260,000 people a year. Now that is another planet in terms of scale of growth."

Salt, a partner in consultant KPMG's risk-advisory services practice, has just produced his latest population growth report for New Zealand and Australia, introducing for the first time a comparative section on the US.

He believes there are valuable lessons to be learned by including America. While it demonstrates many similarities in the population trends emerging for the 21st century, he says the comparison also places in context the growth at present frightening New Zealand and Australia.

"It is not impossible to manage an extra 8000 to 9000 people a year in Manukau," he says. "Other people do it, and they do it many, many times over."

Salt expects to ruffle more than a few feathers with these sorts of views. He hit social nerves at the start of the week by identifying the "man drought" emerging on both sides of the Tasman, pointing to an exodus of educated and trained young men to richer northern-hemisphere economies.

In Australia, Salt angered other demographers by defining the rush for the coast and naming it "seachange" after a popular ABC television drama about a big-city lawyer dropping out of the rat race to live in a small coastal town. Despite the criticism, his latest report confirms the trend.

"I copped crap all around the country from academics and whatever, saying the seachange wasn't as big as I said, that it's contracting now and it's all past, and so forth," he says. "But the figures are there."

In Australia, the number of people living on the coast outside the capital cities increased by 66,000 in the year to the end of June last year. The "provincial" coast holds 3.9 million or 20 per cent of the population.

New Zealand and the US are somewhat different in detail but subject to the same drivers. The drift to the coast and areas such as the Coromandel, Tauranga and the Kapiti Coast is apparent, but there is also - unlike Australia - a move to the mountains and regions like Nelson.

"It comes down to the values people hold and the geography of the nation," Salt says. "No place in New Zealand is more than 100km from the coast, so there's no need to be as obsessively on the coast as Australians are."

The US is similar, with growth heavily centred on the "sun states", where more than half of America's population gain has occurred over the past 25 years.

But as in New Zealand, there is a difference. Americans have headed for the deserts as well as the coast.

The lessons for both Australia and New Zealand are clear, Salt believes. Lifestyle and the draw of beach, mountains and - in the US - the broad expanses of desert states - will not only rebalance our population centres, but will also change the way we live and place new demands on planners who have yet to recognise that a new 21st-century city is evolving.

"There is a consistency, a certainty, a predictability about what is happening in the US, which suggests that the principles are the same even if expressed differently.

"Americans go to the desert as well as the coast; Australians, a bit different, just go to the coast; New Zealand has the same drivers but is a bit different again, going to the coast as well as the mountains.

"It's all lifestyle, and it's the diminution of attachment to the 19th-century cities of the world - the Dunedins, if you like; the Pittsburghs - and the formulation of new cities, of new lifestyles and of new geographies."

Salt believes that from these changes two types of cities are emerging. One is the 19th-century city that began in Australia and New Zealand as a village that grew around a radial rail and road network. The other is a fusion of settlements unconstrained by fixed-transport routes.

"I think that's what you're getting in places like Tauranga and Kapiti," he says. "One town fuses into another, all facilitated by motor-vehicle transport, whereas 100 years ago you had to be radial along transportation networks. Now you can have a little village here, a little village there.

"Look what's happening on Queensland's Sunshine Coast - Caloundra and Maroochydore fusing together - and the Gold Coast, 40km of little beachside villages fused together into one amorphous mass. That, I think, is the model of the future."

It is not a change that will come without conflict. Salt says there is already prejudice against the new cities, typified by criticism of Los Angeles and the Gold Coast.

The view is that they are not "real places" because they have not evolved in the way people have come to expect cities to evolve, and because their inhabitants work in sectors such as tourism and consulting rather than in manufacturing, milling, refining or machining.

Salt believes planners have yet to appreciate the way in which society has shifted and that their minds are lodged in the mid-20th century, despite the divergence of demographics on to new paths. "It requires a paradigm shift in thinking."

In the meantime, can we cope with the growth we have? Auckland dominates New Zealand, adding 24,000 people a year, compared with 33,500 for the much larger Sydney. Christchurch grew by 4200 last year and at present rates of growth will eclipse Wellington as the nation's second-biggest city within two years.

Tauranga is accelerating ahead at an annual population growth rate of 2.8 per cent a year, followed by Pukekohe, Kapiti and Nelson.

Facing similar Australian worries of growth outstripping the ability of cities and seachange towns to cope, Salt simply points to the US.

"Los Angeles copes with 260,000 extra people a year and there are 10 cities of more than 5 million people right now, and here we are, whinging and bitching and complaining.

"If Sydney was in America it would be the 13th-largest US city. [Auckland would be No 47, Wellington No 141 and Christchurch 144.] We're sort of struggling with 5 million people in Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong and we're saying we can't cope and that we're turning into Los Angeles."

What about Boston, Houston, Detroit, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas, Philadelphia? All those places are coping, aren't they? Why can't we?

"I think Australians and New Zealanders have not really looked at it and measured it - how big is big? How fast is fast? How extensive is extensive? And then, how do we compare? Where is our place in the world? Do we have a legitimate right to whinge about it?

"Well yes, we do, but keep it in reality, keep a check on it."