Entrepreneur Andrew Barnes say Auckland has built transport without building a destination.
THE FACTS
The $5.5 billion City Rail Link promises $11.9 billion in economic benefits but Auckland remains underwhelming.
Queen St lacks attractions compared to Newmarket and Ponsonby, making it less appealing to visitors.
Proposed solutions include converting office blocks to apartments and creating permanent cultural drawcards.
On the Melanesian islands during World War II, the local tribes observed that when soldiers landed, the first thing they did was build a wharf and, upon its completion, goods in abundance flowed in. The tribes drew the conclusion that if they built a wharf, they too wouldreceive such goods. This evolved into what anthropologists refer to as a Cargo Cult: “Build it and they will come.” The reality, sadly, was somewhat different.
Now, on another Pacific island in the 21st century, a similar Cargo Cult is flourishing. In Auckland’s case, the $5.5 billion City Rail Link is (nearly) finished. Its advocates promise it will change how we get around central Auckland and significant benefits will flow to the city centre. But just as the Melanesian tribes were disappointed when no benefits flowed from their construction project, arguably we are following a similar path. Auckland still is not the destination it needs to be to justify the infrastructure. What if we reversed the calculus?
The pie chart on the official City Rail Link (CRL) website promises the new train line will deliver total economic benefits of $11.9 billion. This includes $4.5b in travel time benefits for public transport users, $4.2b in increased productivity and economic output, $1.6b in “reliability benefits”, and more benefits in decongestion and people walking around the city. People travelling east, west, and south from the city centre and back will variously save between 165 and 312 hours annually by using the CRL, the site says.
There is just one problem. When I walk around the city centre, it feels somewhat hollowed out. Queen St has become an asphalt wasteland with no street cafes or attractions to entice the visitor and convince them to stay. By comparison, the other central commercial, hospitality, and entertainment districts of Newmarket and Ponsonby are easy to navigate, with more parking, luxe shops, and thriving cafes and restaurants.
Having handed responsibility to the unlamented Auckland Transport, we empowered those whose sole purpose was the efficient movement of people, with little consideration given as to why a journey might be made in the first place.
Here are two key steps to fix the city centre:
1: Think radically and stop fighting the last war
The conventional thinking is about a world in which we want (and expect) people to come to the city centre — but with so many people now working from home at least some of the time, it is no longer truly a central business district and never will be again.
What if we had been radical – had taken that $5.5b spent on the CRL and instead bought vacant downtown office blocks and converted them to apartments for rent? We still could, and we should. The council, the Government and the private sector could collaborate to make it happen, and the apartments would be owned by the city so the revenue would be ours. They don’t even need to be earthquake-strengthened anymore.
If the population increased by 30,000 this way, that is roughly the number we need to bring into the centre daily to make it socially and economically functional. And if those people are already living and working here, they are not commuting and we don’t need expensive infrastructure to move them around. Those benefits listed on the CRL website would have accrued anyway, and would we have had to spend billions to build a new underground railway line?
But now the CRL is here, we can turbocharge its effects by creating a real inner-city population. Rather than building high-density in the suburbs, which puts more cars on the road and pressure on public transport infrastructure, we should invest money to do what every major city does – make the centre a great place to visit and live, with markets, pop-up shops, cafes and restaurants, cultural and arts events, museums and galleries. The transport network radiates out from the centre, so it makes sense to put more people there.
If the centre were home to more people, there would be more demand for shops, cafes, and entertainment, more ratepayers to fund cleaner, better streets and a greater sense of safety from having a busier downtown.
Finally, as part of that process, implement a simple “use it or lose it” policy to prevent long-term land-banking, giving the city the power to compulsorily buy sites that remain undeveloped. In addition, obligate all owners of vacant land to create proper pop-up parks until such time as development commences.
Auckland needs a central-city fix, Andrew Barnes writes. Photo / Getty Images
2: Change the calculus
In laying the CRL and reconfiguring Queen St, we have built the infrastructure first. Most of our investment in the city centre has been to put in cycleways and pave things over. Yes, this makes moving around on foot or two wheels a bit easier, but that is all. It certainly has not helped landlocked retailers who had benefited from shoppers and delivery drivers being able to access them at the street front. We have it the wrong way around: we should have instead created a destination that would attract people and then added to the framework to move people.
Our entertainment debate is usually around sport and concerts, which bring people to the city but concentrate activity in one place, such as Eden Park. But the high cost of the ticket and travel means people come here just for the show and then leave, so the economic benefit to Auckland is somewhat curtailed.
We need permanent drawcards. Look at Tasmania, whose Mona is an art museum so special and unusual that it is an international attraction for the city of Hobart. France has added a major new contemporary art destination in Paris by relocating the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain on top of all the sites it already has. When you go to those places, the cost of entry is relatively low or even free, so people stay and do more.
What if Auckland had a Smithsonian-type museum? A good contemporary art museum, in addition to the art gallery? A destination for Māori and Pacific history, culture, and art in Aotearoa? People would come and stay, spend multiple hotel nights, eat and drink and shop, spend the kind of money that helps a city invest in itself.
We need to reverse the calculus and focus on the economic drivers that create the destination, so there are more and more reasons to come here and stay.
