Auckland Waterfront Fantastic

I went down to the Waterfront this morning for an opening celebration. There was a Maori Pouwhiri at sunrise. Waka. Classic boats lined the wharves. And so did the people. The public spaces and places down here are a revelation. Auckland has done itself proud. Go there. Walk around. And enjoy....

Youth Olympics on Singapore Waterfront

The Singpore Waterfront is a busy place. It will have a major role to play in the 2010 Youth Olympics being hosted there in a few weeks. As I wondered round there, all of a sudden this band of drummer kids came racing past...

... hundreds of them. I found out there were all sorts of rehearsals for events happening. If you look past that large brown box in the middle distance, you will see what caught my eye down there....

A huge puppet, and if you look at its feet you can see hundreds of kids up to their ankles in water. They are reheasring - who knows what - splashing of water was a major part of it, and sound effects and music like I've never heard...

I never did find out what the chrome monster is just the other side. And by the way. This is all happening on a floating stadium. If you scroll back up you will see how this platform is moored against the waterfront for this event. The other major event happening in Singapore streets, a few weeks after the Youth Olympics is Formular One racing. In the city streets. Talk about a happening place.

This visit made me think a little about Auckland's aspirations on the global stage. Singapore is one hard act to follow. I checked out Wikipaedia.

One of the first attempts to define, categorize, and rank global cities was made in 1998 by the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC) based at the geography department of Loughborough University, United Kingdom. The roster was outlined in the GaWC Research Bulletin 5 and ranked cities based on their provision of "advanced producer services" such as accountancy, advertising, finance, and law.[5] The GaWC inventory identifies three levels of global cities and several sub-ranks. This roster generally denotes cities in which there are offices of certain multinational corporations providing financial and consulting services rather than denoting other cultural, political, and economic centres.

The 2004 rankings acknowledged several new indicators while continuing to rank city economics more heavily than political or cultural factors. The 2008 roster, similar to the 1998 version is sorted into categories of "Alpha" world cities (with four sub-categories), "Beta" world cities (three sub-categories), "Gamma" world cities (three sub-categories), and cities with "High sufficiency" or "Sufficiency" world city presence.

The 2008 roster of leading Alpha, Beta and Gamma World Cities is reproduced below:

Alpha World Cities ++: London, New York

Alpha World Cities +: Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney, Milan, Shanghai, Beijing

Alpha World Cities: Madrid, Moscow, Seoul, Toronto, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, Chicago

Alpha World Cities –: Warsaw, São Paulo, Zürich, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Jakarta, Dublin, Bangkok, Taipei, Istanbul, Rome, Lisbon, Frankfurt am Main, Stockholm, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Athens, Caracas, Los Angeles, Auckland, Santiago

Beta World Cities +: Washington, Melbourne, Johannesburg, Atlanta, Barcelona, San Francisco, Manila, Bogotá, Tel Aviv, New Delhi, Dubai, Bucharest

Beta World Cities: Oslo, Berlin, Helsinki, Geneva, Copenhagen, Riyadh, Hamburg, Cairo, Luxembourg, Bangalore, Dallas, Kuwait City, Boston

Beta World Cities –: Munich, Jeddah, Miami, Lima, Kiev, Houston, Guangzhou, Beirut, Karachi, Düsseldorf, Sofia, Montevideo, Nicosia, Rio de Janeiro, Ho Chi Minh City

Gamma World Cities +: Montreal, Nairobi, Bratislava, Panama City, Chennai, Brisbane, Casablanca, Denver, Quito, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Zagreb, Manama, Guatemala City, Cape Town, San José, Minneapolis, Santo Domingo, Seattle

Gamma World Cities: Ljubljana, Shenzhen, Perth, Kolkata, Guadalajara, Antwerp, Philadelphia, Rotterdam, Amman, Portland, Lagos

Gamma World Cities –: Detroit, Manchester, Wellington, Riga, Guayaquil, Edinburgh, Porto, San Salvador, St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Port Louis, San Diego, Islamabad, Birmingham, Doha, Calgary, Almaty, Columbus

So there you go. Interesting. But you can see that Auckland has a long way to go. And frankly, when you think of NZ's extraordinary isolation from its markets (draw a circle 500kms, then one 1000kms, then one 1500 kms, and finally your 2000 km circle takes in Sydney), you begin to see that jumping from low down the OECD ranking to number 2 (where we were in the 1950's) will be an impossible task. Might as well aspire to something different....

Auckland Waterfront Big Picture - Quay Street Boulevard

A little while ago, in the midst of the design competition around Queens Wharf and talk of "whole of waterfront" approaches, Coopers & Co put forward a suggestion which revolves around transforming Quay Street into a waterfront boulevarde.

This is a closeup of a section of that image showing the Queen Street end of Queens Wharf, and Quay Street between Queens Wharf and Captain Cook wharf.The little structure between could be pontoons, and holds three big screens...

Here's how it might look with the big screens fired up. People on three sides: Captain Cook Wharf, Quay Street and Queens Wharf. You can see how this treatment of the waterfront opens it up to the urban core of Britomart especially, but also Queen Street.

You can see in all of these images that the fence sections of the Red Fence have been removed - or partly removed - so that there is much more public access and permeability from the urban core, across Quay Street, and onto the pedestrianised waterfront. In times of an event there would be planned reduction in traffic flows along Quay Street. Maybe only 1 lane each way. When Britomart Station was under construction Quay Street was sometimes closed entirely and all traffic flowed along Custom House Quay. I think - in fact - that a lot of traffic (big trucks etc) travel along Quay Street now because they can. This sort of traffic should not be encouraged to go through the CBD. This traffic should flow around the CBD. That's why Grafton Gully was built, connecting with SH1, and the huge one-ways of Hobson and Nelson also. Ideally, we should be trying to minimise traffic along Quay Street - and making pedestrian traffic the priority.

It is more appropriate to plan for public transport access to this part of time, and to open up Quay Street - all the way to the water's edge for pedestrian activity. The Rugby World Cup is a pretext to give it a try - associated with Queens Wharf - but in the long term, something like this is what Auckland's waterfront needs.

...and we need to think of Quay Street all the way along to the Viaduct - so that it is a pedestrian boulevard all the way. Not blocked by the red fence. Leave the heritage posts in place - and maybe some sections of fence. This approach needs to become a major plank in Auckland's waterfront planning.

Queen Victoria Comes to Auckland

Last Saturday, Queen Victoria made a scheduled "Port of Call" visit to Auckland, and berthed at Princes Wharf. (You can just make out the scaffolding and sheets being used while the leaky building issues are sorted out on those rooms at the end of Hotel Hilton.)

Queen Victoria looks a little smaller than Dawn Princess (pictured here at Princes Wharf last week). Queen Victoria is 90,000 tonnes gross tonnage. Length 294 metres. Beam 32.3 metres.

It appears that Princes Wharf is not standing up the strain of cruise ship visits that well. Not sure if this is because of Hilton Hotel or Apartment resident grumpiness, or if the wharf and cruise ship terminal fittings need maintenance. If so - get it done. BTW, at least one person has asked me: why don't we allow cruise ships to berth on both sides of Princes Wharf. Make it work for its living.

You can make out Queen Victoria to the right of this picture. On Princes Wharf. Queens Wharf is right of centre - with the brown ferry building behind. The red feright ship to the left is berthed at Bledisloe Wharf. This is where Queen Mark II could be berthed safely (length and strength is good for something the size of Queen Mary II.

Queens Wharf - Hasten Slowly

At last. Thanks to a mixture of Ports of Auckland suffering from effects of recessionary trading conditions, and a Government keen to be seen to be doing something positive in Auckland for a change, Queens Wharf has been taken for other purposes. It is now 50/50 owned by Auckland Regional Council and Central Government.

Government has a short term vision of the space being freed up to become "Party Central" during Rugby World Cup. Auckland Regional Council has voted for a mixed use development including public access, ferry services and a "fit for purpose" cruise ship terminal. These two ideas are not incompatible.

The Rugby World Cup event is about 2 years away, and in between Auckland's Local Government will be abolished and re-established. That's a big ask to do anything big on Queens Wharf. So. I think it very sensible that we do enough down there to tie up a couple of Ocean Liners as temporary Hotel accommodation during Rugby World Cup, and provide some amenity on the wharf that will attract the locals and keep them happy during large events. More later on this. I did a lot of work preparing an Urban Design Framework for Queens Wharf with some fellow Masters students at Auckland University. This work included a detailed analysis and critique of Auckland's existing waterfront spaces, and concludes with an Urban Design Framework for Queens Wharf in the medium term.

You can download this from links you will see on this page: Queens Wharf

But in the meantime, here's the big picture we came to: