Simon Wilson: Trigger warning: Conspiracists, the masterplan and the 15-minute city

Freyberg Place and the Ellen Melville Centre: Local centres all over Auckland deserve beautiful town squares.

At a local board candidates' meeting recently in the beautiful Ellen Melville Centre in central Auckland, members of the group Rock the Vote, which has links to the conspiracists of Voices for Freedom, spoke out against the City Centre Masterplan. It was, they said, "part of a global plot to control us all".

I think they were triggered by the word "masterplan".

Freyberg Place seen from inside the Ellen Melville Centre, with the ground floor opened up.

Shouldn't laugh, they were quite right. Auckland is very definitely part of a global movement. The plan for the city centre, developed 10 years ago and updated again and again since, reflects a whole lot of international thinking about how to make city centres thrive in the modern world.

One organisation that promotes this work is called C40, which probably sounds like another conspiratorial name but is actually a group of cities helping each other meet the challenges of the climate crisis. It used to be C20, comprising 18 cities, then they invited another 22 to join, and now there are 100, but they're still called C40. I know, if they're plotting to take over the world, the thinking does seem a little loose.

Auckland belongs to C40, though maybe don't tell the conspiracists that.

The Ellen Melville Centre is named for Auckland's first woman city councillor. It's a mid-century modernist masterpiece, designed by the city's chief architect, Tibor Donner, back in the day when Auckland was smart enough to have such a role. Renovated in 2017 by Stevens Lawson Architects, it has public spaces for working, meetings and hanging out, a kitchen, fully accessible toilet and other facilities. The council runs it.

The building sits on the edge of the marvellous Freyberg Place on High St, designed by Isthmus with the artist John Reynolds and others, and used by TikTok dancers, lunch eaters, art shows, soup-kitchen customers, performances and all kinds of urban assignations. A delightful public space in the middle of the city.

The Ellen Melville Centre lends itself superbly to art shows.

Together, the square and the building form one small part of Auckland Council's work to enliven the central city. How appropriate it was, for the Rock the Vote people to be literally sitting in the Ellen Melville, benefiting from that work, in order to complain about it.

Just this month, C40 launched a new conspiracy, sorry, initiative. They're going to choose five cities for a pilot "15-minute city" programme. The idea comes from Paris, reputed to be full of people who are not only conspiracists, but French conspiracists to boot. Zut alors!

In a 15-minute city, it is possible for large numbers of people to walk or ride a bicycle to most of the places they regularly go: work, school, the local shops, the playground, the park, places of entertainment.

It wouldn't work everywhere: sprawling Auckland, for example, doesn't seem like an obvious candidate.

But the fundamental question is relevant: How do you build self-sustaining, low-carbon communities on a neighbourhood scale? One way is to make sure the streets are safe for people to walk in. Another is to create places like Freyberg Place and the Ellen Melville Centre all over the city.

Safe streets and town squares with civic buildings for public use - we've got many already, but we need many more. If we vote enough sensible people who value these things on to the council and its local boards, we might even get them.

A good place for a crowd.

A good place to dance.

A good place to hang out.

Design for Living appears weekly in Canvas magazine.