Tips on City Making from Tel Aviv and Brisbane

Yesterday I travelled to the deep South of Auckland where the first Auckland Conversations’ outside of the City Centre was held – in Pukekohe. The subject matter? Managing growth in the South. 

From Auckland Conservations: 

The New South? Managing Growth in Auckland

Join us at Auckland Conversations as we discuss how to manage urban growth with world leading expert city-maker, Hila Oren.

Auckland’s growth is far from slowing and looking ahead 30 years, our urban area will grow and change. How do we manage this growth? A big part of the future lies within south Auckland.

The south is the largest future urban growth area in Auckland with around 5,300 hectares of land identified for urban development.

Auckland Council are currently working on structure plans for both Drury and Pukekohe and the Supporting Growth Alliance between NZTA, Auckland Transport and Auckland Council are providing expertise in the transport planning for that area.

Urban development expert Hila Oren, CEO of the Tel-Aviv Foundation, will speak on her experiences in infrastructure development around the world. She will be joined by a panel of industry experts to discuss how areas in South Auckland, such as Drury and Pukekohe, can leverage off the changes in Auckland to create a platform for future development.

Andrew Baker, deputy chair of Franklin Local Board, will MC the night with Deputy Mayor Bill Cashmore providing closing remarks. Hila will also be joined by a panel of industry experts including: 
John Duguid, General Manager Plans & Places, Auckland Council
Cynthia Gillespie, Executive General Manager, Planning & Investment, Auckland Transport
Quin Henderson, Chief Executive Officer, Southbase Construction Ltd

The entire livestream including Q+A can be seen here:

The night was a very good night with lots of banter on the issues facing the rural South as well as Southern Auckland in general. With planning going on at the moment (see: Answers to my Questions on Southern Auckland’s Future Transport Network. Also DON’T FORGET TO SUBMIT!) there was a lot of excitement but also apprehension. 

The apprehension that Central Government will let us down in not delivering infrastructure (water, road and transit) fast enough given the rapid growth rate down here.  Note to Phil Twyford – all on you!

I did manage to get first question of the night asking about how the Southern Line and Motorway will not be able to cope sending Southern residents to work in the Isthmus, so what are the plans to have more jobs at home (I know 50% of the South works within the South already but that figure needs to be higher)? You can hear the question and answer in the video above. 

All-in-all a good night out and as I said above, the South wants to just do it but apprehension is ever so prevalent owing to well Phil Twyford and if he can deliver what he said he would for the South!

Brisbane has Tips

My fellow City Skylines player Sam Burr from Brisbane (so he like me but unlike Biffa uses Left Hand Drive so I can understand it and not be confused) is in the middle of building a new city.

This means seeing how a planning in a simulator is done from scratch rather than when the City is at mature stage. I will leave you with three videos no doubt engineers and planners alike get frustrated over in real cities while players like myself also get frustrated with. All valuable lessons for the South and its own rapid expansion