After publishing my last post on what I feel Wellington needs I came to realise that maybe I was being overly negative and saying Wellington isn’t doing enough to remain a competitive city. That definitely isn’t so. Following the last post’s formula here are three things, in my personal opinion and based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence, that Wellington has that helps make it a globally competitive and relevant city.
1. Internet infrastructure.
I remember when I used to live in Dunedin, we were terribly jealous of Wellington’s inner-city fibre loop. One of the things we couldn’t believe was that a council would have the foresight and the ability to drive something like this forward. It really is amazing. And people have heard about it all over the world, it’s kinda scary how much so…
Obviously Wellington lends itself really well to this kind of network as it is a compact city with a lot of high users in a small area but it still is an impressive accomplishment and asset while providing an excellent model for other cities to follow.
2. Transport infrastructure
While our transport network and infrastructure isn’t perfect (and a key focus of my last post) it is still very good compared to other cities especially in our corner of the world. Let’s recognise that a lot of good progress has been made, but let’s not stop or rest there.
A good friend of mine who recently moved to the Wellington region remarked firstly how good public transport was but how easy it made his life… that’s fantastic. Again, Wellington really lends itself to this kind of network as a compact city with a few corridors of population that can be efficiently and effectively served by public transport.
3. Compact village-city
One of things many people love about Wellington is it’s compactness. As an example, Wellington has the largest numbers of people who walk to work in New Zealand (11%). As Tom Beard has said: “Wellington is a city pretending to be a village”. It forces people to interact and come together in a really comfortable way. It saddens me to think humans couldn’t build a city like this unless forced by some limitation or factor. Wellington’s geography is the only real reason that this has come about; wedged together between mountains and sea. While urban sprawl does rears it’s head from time to time, it has been starved compared to other cities.
