The harbour bath in the Danish city of Aarhus, which inspired Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.
The harbour bath in the Danish city of Aarhus, which inspired Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.
ANALYSIS
In Denmark they say “harbour bath”. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown saw one in Aarhus, a city on the Jutland peninsula that also boasts an underground Viking museum.
It was the Aarhus Harbour Bath, an open-air swimming pool at the edge of the central city, set into a large woodenplatform with the sea washing in and out beneath and lots of people hanging out in their togs.
You swim in safety, in the sea. Brown returned to New Zealand inspired: Auckland could do that too!
The mayor has released new plans for the waterfront and they start with a harbour bath.
It’s a lovely idea and it wouldn’t be hard or expensive. It would work supremely well in the area of the finger wharves – Captain Cook and Marsden – immediately to the east of Queens Wharf. Swimming at the bottom of Queen St? What’s not to love?
Brown believes the vehicle-importing operation currently using those wharves could be moved east, allowing the public in, and that seems eminently reasonable.
In time, the cars might quit the wharves altogether, but there’s no reason a medium- or long-term plan should hold up a quick conversion of Captain Cook and Marsden. If those wharves can be public amenities, they should be.
The beauty of doing this as quickly as possible, apart from its inherent value, is that it becomes an exemplar. Introduce safe swimming right on the edge of the central city, and watch how quickly people start to demand other great things to do there.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown seems to have developed a taste for Danish urban design. How far will it go? Photo / Michael Craig
But there are some questions.
First, central Auckland already has an open-air seawater swimming pool: the beautiful Parnell Baths. It also has the open-air pools at Pt Erin and the enclosed Tepid Baths. None offers as much as a pool by Queens Wharf would, but there probably should be some kind of strategy involving them all.
There are also the magnificent tidal steps at Karanga Plaza, just by the Wynyard Crossing and the Viaduct Events Centre. Kids jump into the water there all summer long and families take toddlers paddling too.
It’s weird that area isn’t properly enclosed to keep it safe for swimming, with a safe shallow area and lifeguards.
So many good things happen in this city, but far too often their potential is only half realised. Where’s the determination to make the good into wonderful?
Second, downtown Auckland is not the only part of the city that needs some sea-swimming TLC. A hundred years ago, the beachfront and lagoon at Onehunga were premier recreation spots.
They’ve both been restored, but the motorway divides the beach from the suburb and it’s not at all clear that light-rail planning will improve this. Again, there’s more work to do.
And it’s not hard to spot other parts of this city’s 3000km coastline where there’s no good swimming beach but every opportunity for an enclosed open-air seawater pool. Beach Haven? Weymouth? Pt England?
There’s another issue with Mayor Brown’s Danish-inspired enthusiasm for recreation on the waterfront. The Aarhus bath is great, but what about all the other urban-design things he must have stumbled over?
There are several harbour baths in Denmark, and they’re there because the country works hard to improve the quality of life in its cities. This inspires the architecture and the planning and use of public spaces, including streets.
It also inspires the wholesale revitalisation of waterfront precincts, with not just swimming baths but new industries, high-quality housing density at all price points, parklands, concert halls and other public buildings. And, dare I say it, transport, including cycleways and walkways.
In Auckland, Denmark has been inspiring our own urban designers for years. Despite their being so often ignored by the politicians. Brown’s predecessor even abolished the council’s design office when what he should have done is strengthen and empower it.
A seawater pool, inspired by the Aarhus Harbour Bath in Denmark, is one of the new features for the Auckland waterfront being promoted by Mayor Wayne Brown. Image / Nick McKay, Eke Panuku
The harbour bath in the Danish city of Aarhus, which inspired Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown.
The mayor says he wants “to deliver to Auckland the most beautiful and loved publicly owned waterfront of any harbour city in the world”.
That’s admirable. But it’s a high bar. Sydney makes a good claim to the title, with the opera house and all the other attractions of Circular Quay. The Molo and St Mark’s Square in Venice are pretty good too. Europe also boasts Barcelona, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Hamburg ... while in North America, there’s Vancouver, Baltimore and San Francisco.
Perhaps more to the point, pretty much every coastal city in the world has been renovating its waterfront over the past few decades. Just as almost every city wants to become an IT centre and is creating flexible rules for density, inspiring its architects to dream, pedestrianising its centre and trying to calm and reduce its traffic.
What reformers in Auckland bang on about is normal elsewhere. It’s not just about harbour baths and the mayor, along with every other traveller abroad, has surely noticed.
Perhaps one day we will become “most beautiful and loved” in the world. Right now, though, we’re playing catch-up.
To get there we’ll need political leaders with courage and vision, good public engagement including partnerships with mana whenua, and a very capable team. So step up, Wayne, your time has come.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
