WELLINGTON

UDF Wellington Branch

Marc Baily wraps up

Event 3 : 21 March 2011
Moving to a High Quality Public Transport for Wellington

Four speakers gave a 15 minute take each on their perspectives for what would make a quality public transport system for the City.  About 40 people attended and the event venue supplied by Wellington City Council (thanks).  This event was catalysed by Greater Wellington Regional Council’s imminent study to look at the options and feasibility of a quality public transport system through the city with a tie into the city spatial plan for a spine with nodes at each end – Johnsonville and Kilbirnie. 

First speaker Luke Troy, Corporate Planning Manager  from the Regional Council outlined the study and how a light rail system could connect with bus networks to deliver a more efficient system than currently operates.   download Luke Troy's presentation

NZTA’s Public Transport Planning Manager Michelle McCormick outlined the work NZTA is undertaking – she referred to various research projects underway and urged people to see what they were up to in this space.  download Michelle McCormick's presentation

The action group for public transport in Wellington – Transaction’s Mike Mellor – spoke passionately about the opportunities for a tram-train system that will allow for rail to move seamlessly between the wider rail network and a new street rail track network.  They supported much of what the regional council were prospecting about the opportunities that might come from the study. 

The last speaker – Martin Butterworth from Space Syntax – has been working for the city looking at movement and the way this can be directed to support economic or other planning objectives.  The tool to provide an evidence base for predictive movement can be applied at regional right down to the street block scale or public spaces – he spoke about how this had been applied in Trafalgar Square in London to make this space more effective as  a public place. 

The question session got into the issue of the constraints to public transport systems given the cost outlay and the user numbers required to sustain it – the old chicken and egg problem.  There seemed to be a recognition that an intervention would be required to change the way we provided for urban development if we wanted to reap the benefits of this as a society – the PPP Public/Private Partnership approach and  TIF Tax Increment Finance were mentioned as options. The need for some dedicated development agency was seen as a good delivery model once the city/region had determined its plan.
 

Event 2  : 10 November 2010
The Quake - Lessons for Wellington urban design from Christchurch earthquake
The Wellington group of UDF held a well attended (70 people)  early evening session to hear about the Christchurch earthquake experience from Ian Athfeild – two co presenters  Paul Kos [Greater Wellington Regional Council] and  Murray Chalmers[ BECA engineer]- added to the session with their thoughts on how Wellington is placed to address earthquake hazard.  As always with Ath the presentation was both entertaining and thought provoking - his clear message was that the city needed to take the time to make progress in the process of planning and redevelopment post the quake, rather than rushing to rebuild and repeat urban conditions which are no longer helpful for a city of the future.   Clearly there are challenges being faced in allowing the time to rethink while the pressure is on to get people back to a more normal life again.  For Wellington we heard that the issues are likely to be different than in Christchurch – as always the context will significantly influence what happens should Wellington face an equivalent scale of quake.  The fault the movement occurs on will influence the type of quake we might get, the potential for land slide is significant and often underplayed in our thinking, issues with water and transport will occur given the  position of the city in relation to supply routes and those routes crossing the Wellington fault line several times. Fire is a hazard also given the reticulated gas supply and the inner city residential neighbourhoods density and wooden construction.

In summary, thinking about New Zealand urban environments in relation to the dynamic natural processes at work in New Zealand and the more dramatic event hazards they present  is not always on the urban design radar – the Christchurch quake may change that – at least for that city for a while.  What about the rest of us?  In response to the questions about whether we should be continuing to develop our cities and towns following the existing patterns we accept that we have been dealt a certain hand – it would be extreme to suggest that we upstakes and shift some of the more vulnerable urban areas to safer ground – and anyway does such a thing exist in New Zealand?  The more practicable approach will be awareness and deliberate urban planning that looks to better provide resilience in the parts of the environment that are most at risk and the systems that make it tick.



Event 1 : 19 May 2010
The Region's City Centres are Actively Planning and Designing for their Future...
a show and tell of the central area design and planning work being undertaken in  Porirua, Wellington and Hutt. 

The Regional Council provided a regional overview perspective of its work on the regional strategy and how this interfaces at a local level.  The event was very well attended and owing to the size of venue we had to restrict  numbers – lesson for next time is go for a bigger venue.  There was a lot of discussion which was good to see.  Each of the Councils projects are on their respective websites.