Context 167 - March 2021

20 C O N T E X T 1 6 7 : M A R C H 2 0 2 1 1840.While ostensibly aiming to provide a stable, bi-cultural foundation to the new country, key differences in the English and Māori translations have caused significant pain since 1840. As the capital of the new colony, Auckland needed a town plan. Surveyor general Felton Mathew was engaged for this task. Having grown up in Bath, he adapted his hometown’s crescents, circuses and avenues to fit into the volcanic landscape, with a new plan published in 1841. Felton Mathew’s plan failed to be built in its entirety, but a walk around Auckland’s city centre streets provides a roll-call of 19th- century British luminaries: Victoria, Albert and Pitt Streets were all built under this plan. Due in part to this early growth, more than 10 per cent of Auckland’s scheduled places are in the city centre. Heritage outcomes are enshrined in the Auckland City Centre Master Plan (CCMP), which was refreshed in 2020 1 . As Auckland grew steadily during the 19th century, its growth was shaped by its transport infrastructure, which meant water. For most of human history (and particularly for island nations) people and goods travelled by sea. This is particularly true here; the Auckland to Wellington railway line was only completed in 1908. From 1859, new quays were built in Auckland city centre on reclaimed land, typi- cally obtained from dynamiting the nearest sea cliff, as at Te Rerenga Ora Iti/Point Britomart. Most of the flat land in Auckland city centre is reclaimed. Some of the finest Edwardian build- ings are found on reclaimed land, including the Ferry Building and the Chief Post Office. Auckland’s natural stone is a combination of soft sandstone and very hard volcanic basalt. The latter, while unpleasant to work, is ideal for kerbstones. These were originally mined by prisoners in what must have been relent- lessly unpleasant conditions. Hand-cut and machine-cut basalt kerbstones have proven highly durable and can still be seen in parts of Auckland city centre. A revolution in Auckland’s urban form came in 1902 with the first electric tram (just one year after London), followed by a spiderweb of new lines. With cheap transport, suburbia boomed along these lines, shaping many of Auckland’s most attractive suburbs: Remuera, Epsom, Mt Eden and others. At its peak in the 1940s the Auckland tram system carried 100 million passengers per year; not bad for a city with just 250,000 people. With modern transport and a growing population, the city centre and inner- city suburbs boomed. Heritage buildings from interwar Auckland include the art-deco Civic Theatre and St Kevin’s Arcade, the Chicago- style General Buildings and the neo-gothic Auckland Electric Power Board Building. Similar to American and Australian cities, Auckland’s tram system connected walkable suburbs with a bustling city centre. From the late 1940s, transport planning increasingly took its cue from the USA (specifically Los Angeles). The tram system was completely dismantled by 1956, to be replaced by an urban motorway plan that Paul Mees describes as ‘almost hysterically anti-public transport and pro-motorway… even by the standards of the 1950s 2 .’ The subsequent decline in public transport use was more pre- cipitous than in almost any other major city. A brutal urban ring motorway displaced 15,000 people during its construction and effectively severed the central and inner city from its sur- roundings, a problem that remains today. As suburbanisation continued into the 1960s and 70s, Auckland’s city centre entered a period of relative stagnation. The absence of extensive development provided a respite to many of its fine city centre heritage buildings. This stability received a major shock in the 1980s as New Zealand underwent ‘Rogernomics’ (broadly equivalent to Thatcherism or Reaganomics). This saw supply-side measures to unblock the economy, with a loose money supply and deregulation. With cheap money sloshing around in an atmosphere of exuberant entrepreneurialism, a commercial property boom erupted through- out the country, most intensely in Auckland city centre. Demolition of unprotected heritage buildings proceeded at a frightening pace to make way for mirror-glass skyscrapers. Heritage protection in this era was often down to good luck. The party came to an end with the early 1990s recession, by which point many fine buildings had been lost.The Royal International Hotel was demolished in 1987, shortly before a major stock market crash. Its site has spent most of the intervening 33 years as a surface car park; a painful hole in the urban fabric. Māori heritage fared even worse, due to a lack of official recognition by successive iterations of colonial and dominion machinery and decision- making. Auckland’s maunga (volcanic cones and features), long-venerated by local tribes, were viewed as a good source of aggregate by Pākehā Queen Street, Auckland, in 1913 (Photo: David Paul Gooding, Wikimedia) 1 Auckland CCMP (2020) Outcome 8: Heritage-defined city centre https:// aucklandccmp. co.nz/outcomes/ outcome-8-heritage- defined-city-centre/ protecting-our-unique- heritage/ ² Auckland City of Cars (2006) www. youtube.com/watch?v =sCKDBHT3i74