University Planners Connect Auckland Waterfront

The Masters in Planning Practice class of 2011 prepare to present their Auckland Waterfront Design Projects in the 7th Floor studio. This is the Planning 701 Urban Design course. Prof Kai Gu is the lecturer.

There were 9 team projects this year, ranging from 2 to 3 students apiece. They covered topics including Princes Wharf, Queens Wharf, Quay Street, Copthorne Hotel corner of the Viaduct, and the Waitemata Plaza area of the Viaduct. Each project identified a particular focus area, mapped the history and planning environment, set out constraints, illustrated opportunities, and provided designs.

I was taken by many of the ideas, and am considering how to get a productive relationship going between Auckland Council and the Urban Design and Urban Planning research of Auckland University. This particular project was primarily about the public access between Britomart and Vector Arena. They proposed an elevated pedestrian walkway along the alignment of access lanes. It got me thinking....

So I took a few photos along that walkway. Here we are leaving Britomart Railway station building... looking towards the Ernst and Young branded building...

The generous walkway takes you past the interesting features built into the roof of the Britomart Station...

And there are several of these volcanic features, pedestrian friendly environment...

This takes us to the entry of the public walkway throuhg and under the Ernst and Young building...

This is a real opportunity inside the Ernst and young building. A generous and safe public space, well integrated with the public walkway we've just come along...

When we reach the end of the Ernst and Young building, you look across a street to see where to go next...

And there you are stranded. You've had a good experience so far, and now you are faced with signs pointing to a relatively unattractive back alley, a service lane designed for trucks and service vehicles, not the same sort of pedestrian experience. So that was the opportunity (and need) identified by the Design Project team.

Their suggestion of an elevated pedestrian walkway through this alignment got me thinking. That's the purpose of these projects. That's why I think Auckland should be benefitting from this sort of research and thinking. It made me remember this wonderful elevated walkway in Singapore...

Here it is again. Generous. Safe. Full of light. and what an extraordinary Helix design. Auckland's weather as we know can be unpredictable. Walking back to the station or to Vector in the rain not much fun in concert gear.

So here's that back alley walkway to Vector as it is now...

How about we try an elevated walkway though there. One that leaves room for vehicles. Runs behind what is now a parking building. Takes up some air space above the back alley...

Here's another view. (BTW, this is my output using SketchUp. A good tool for playing with ideas. Not my strength. Not a designer. But it is a good way to experiment and illustrate ideas.)

Here's another view. I agree that this walkway is a bit on the steep side! But you get the picture.

And here's a pic of the inside which I kind of enjoyed.... And the thing about Skletchup is you can produce animations very easily of your design. That's fun....

Auckland Unleashed - Part II

Auckland Unleashed generally got the panning it deserved from the media and those who have been immersed in Auckland Regional planning for a long time. (You can see my first take on it here). And while Auckland Unleashed generally respects the Mayor's election vision of rail (Britomart Loop, Airport Link and North Shore Rail), I am of the view that the new Council (Councillors plus Mayor) are only partly responsible for what is actually in the document - with its emphasis on growth and economy and its relative silence on affordable housing, transport energy and Auckland's traditional planning failure to accommodate growth. So who is to blame and where is this huge emphasis on economic growth coming from? I attended the IPANZ event last year where Roger Blakely (General Manager Planning) presented preliminary thoughts about the spatial plan. His use of a definition of spatial planning that was almost 30 years old (from previous failed European regimes) did not augur well. Nor did his use of a map drawn from Metropolitan London's recent planning exercise. I spoke with Ree Anderson (Manager - Regional Planning Strategy) at this event and expressed concern. I challenged the assumptions and approach, and its emphasis on economic growth. She told me the plan needed to be "aspirational". There needed to be things in there that were "exciting". Man oh man. You can see for yourself her views expressed in her presentation to the NZ Planning Institute late last year. These are all about geography and maps and economic growth. No mention of growing pains and other major issues facing the region. I had previously advised Ree Anderson of my work at university on strategic spatial planning. It drew together the strands of Auckland Regional planning, critical assessments of its failures, and embraced modern European approaches. Later I was contacted by Auckland Council Planning staff and asked to produce an Executive Summary of that work and its recommendations for circulation to Councillors. I prepared this. You can see it here. It is highly critical of adopting a regional plan emphasising economic growth driven by Government funded infrastructure priorities. The paper summary was not circulated to Auckland Council. I have tried to find out why. No answer. My thoughts on Auckland Planning are neither here nor there in the big scheme of things - but I know I am not alone in these thoughts. Many others with long memories and long experience share my views, and have their own views in a similar vein. It is hard to escape the conclusion that these alternative views and inconvenient experience are being kept from councillors by senior Auckland Council staff. Or at the very least marginalised. More than one planner has advised me that the mantra in the new Auckland Council planning hierarchy appears to be: "...if the ARC had anything to do with it we won't touch it....". So what we appear to have is a bunch of planning newbies foisting their own ideas on Auckland, without due regard for its planning history, and actively filtering from the political process views which conflict with their own. We might not like Auckland's planning history. But if we don't learn from it we will almost certainly repeat it....

I took this picture of the slide put up at the Auckland Unleashed get-together. It is a summary of the "Auckland Future" workshops. Even without the filtration that I know went into preparing this slide, the emphasis of the day was one of community led development and neighbourhoods. There was a lot of talk about "self-contained" and "complete" communities. There are always the cheerleaders that argue for Auckland to be the "Lead City in the Asia Pacific". You only have to visit Sydney and Singapore to know that Auckland will never be that lead city. I was part of the infrastructure workshop, and if my memory serves me right a tiny minority there argued for Auckland to "internationally lead and shape rather than follow...". That view was certainly not held by the majority of those at that workshop by a long shot. So even the workshop reports are being manipulated. If you think I'm sounding grumpy - then you've read me correctly. Auckland's local government reorganisation may have led to integration and amalgamation, but it is at the cost of severe institutional fragmentation and memory loss, and where aspirational hopes that Auckland can somehow be like London and better than Singapore and Sydney are blinding Councillors to the reality that is Auckland.

Singapore gets more people out of cars

Singapore, sun is setting, and the cost of using this motorway is getting cheaper. Singapore - like London - has a congestion charge approach to state highway management. This gantry shows the price you will pay for access...

In this closeup you can see what the time is, but more importantly you can see that a car will be charged $2:00 Singapore (about the same as $2:00NZ), for access. While a truck will be charged $4:00. That rate applies between 6:30pm and 7:55pm. It's more expensive earlier in the evening (peak rush hour), and cheaper later. Once you're at this point there's no going back I suspect, but it's a constant reminder how much your driving will cost at the time.

Just up the road from the tolls gantry is a major building site. (You can just make it out in the top picture). Many of the workers come by bike, and many also come by bus. I think you do take your life in your hands to an extent biking in parts of Singapore downtown, but just outside the city urban area are cycleways to die for. But what really tickled me about Singapore transport was the idea of Off-Peak Cars. Imagine buying an Off Peak Car.... See more....

Apparently Singapore's Off-Peak Car scheme was introduced 15 years ago. The idea was you buy a car with a RED registration plate, and you can only drive it between 7pm and 7am on weekdays, and without restriction on Sundays and public holidays. It seems that the scheme has been tweaked by Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA).

The updated scheme kicked off on January 25 this year. Under the scheme car owners who convert their normal plates to OPC red plates receive $1,100 in cash for every 6 months the car remains an OPC. The new scheme also allows OPC drivers to use their cars unrestricted on Saturdays. If owners want to drive on days outside the licence they can pay $20/day for an "e-licence" in advance via internet etc.

The LTA envisages between 10 and 15% of all cars in Singapore will be OPCs. At present 8.6% of Singapore's car population are OPCs.

As you might expect things are more complicated than this. For example to buy a new car in Singapore (OPC) or not, you need a Certificate of Entitlement (COE). These are issued in restricted supply. This is a further means of controlling the population of cars.

But I thought the OPC was an interesting idea. A cheap way of keeping cars off the road. Auckland could do the sums on this....

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....

Singapore - Urban Design 4 - Little India

Here I am, drinking my Lassi in the Tekka Market of the Little India precinct in Singapore. Time out from the City Development conference. Actually I was escaping a tropical downpour. A fantastic electrical storm outside. Lightning about every 30 seconds and the most violent claps of thunder. The market roof was metal. Every crash the whole place shook, and everyone banged their tables...!

The careful retention of two storey terraces - homes above and shops below - was delightful. Lively and authentic. Little India is a central attraction for Singapore's tourist economy...

And the shops were as you would expect, and hope for. An eye feast. Made me yearn for Auckland to give more attention to the multi-cultural city we have, and make more of it.

Just as the storm struck, everybody looked around for a place to go and sit or stand it out. Was all very quick. Great street scapes. Protected by strong town plans I am sure. This environment is an asset for Singapore, and strongly features in maps for tourists like me. I didn't spend much money, but I took a heap of photos.

There was something about this street corner that I liked. It's the signs, the colour, the wall finishings, and the vibrancy of traffic. Sometimes cars and their movement - provided there are lights and pedestrian crossings to slow it down - add to tne energy of a street.

But there are other corners where there are no cars. Quiet corners to sit and chat. With gods nearby. Stree furniture and window shutters and cinema hoardings to decorate the scene. None of this happens by accident. All by design. There is much attention to detail here.

I liked this little village square. People here are looking at the plasma TV screens hung just inside the cafe fronts. You can just see the screen above the pair in white shirts walking out. And soon the time will come to go to church....

Singapore - Urban Design 3 - Chinatown

I always like to explore the indigenous bits of cities I visit. Maps of Singapore for tourists and from hotels, emphasise the location of Chinatown, Little India, and even a bit of Arabia with souks and the like. Parts of it can be a bit touristy, but the markets are real enough, and it's all lively and thriving. These destinations are very attractive with tourists and visitors, and are a big part of keeping this multicultural place alive and kicking. Well - that's how it seemed to me as an outsider...

And I liked seeing the bikes and the three-wheelers used to move goods. Singpapore does have it's share of big motorways and road congestion charge systems. At the conference I heard from a member of the Transport Council how they want to get the peak am mode share of public transport up to 70% from 63%...

Here, mum buys the kids some Chinese sweets and ice-creams from the local sweet shop. Plenty of other bits and pieces to buy too.

Great places to sit - with the climatic conditions well provided for. Heat of the sun and torrential downpours alternate. Lot of style.

I liked the chinese laundry effect. Boy - a lot of people live out this way. This is Chinatown.

A very people-oriented public space. No cars here - even though this is a very car-oriented city. Cars have their place - but there are also rigorously protected areas for people. Auckland could learn a lot about vehicular delineation from Singapore.

Singapore Waterfront Urban Design 2

The heritage building in the background is the Fullerton Hotel. As you can see, it's located in the foreground of a number of vast new tower buildings. But sufficiently alone that it is not dominated by them. Visitors to the waterfront love it. Most of the photos taken have it in the background. The favorite pose is to appear to be "lifting it".

This is part of the garden on top of one of the waterfront developments described in the previous blog. You can see a fountain. Little garden squares. Paving. Seating. And trees to shelter you from the merciless heat of the tropics. In the mid-background is the top of a light well used to bring natural light to two levels below.

Bronze artworks of all sorts decorate public places. Much loved and photographed. Heritage stonework predominates. Sometimes the wateredge is fenced - as here - sometimes not...

... as here, where people love to sit dangling their legs and feet above the water. In the background is a popular restaurant area. The polished black basalt (I think) blocks make good seats.

The quality of public open space finish is exemplary. Even Baron Haussmann (the destroyer and rebuilder of heritage Paris) would be impressed to see his ideas for tree root planting and protection, public seating, and paving done with so much style and attention to detail.

And what really strikes you, coming to Singapore from the Auckland waterfront, is the total absence of cars. And the piece and quiet and sense of calm that goes with that determination to exclude the motor vehicle from the waterfront.

Singapore Waterfront Urban Design 1

A few weeks ago I was fortunate to be invited to make a couple of presentations to the Annual Marcus Evans City Development Conference. It gave me an opportunity to look around that modern Asian city - especially the waterfront.




This montage is from an outside walkway outside a Mall by the waterfront. I'm not especially keen on malls, but the way the design resolutely provided quality public space - while allowing shops of all sorts to operate within the building - was very interesting. These next three pictures give a flavour of the actual waterfront space and design adjacent to the mall building, and also looking back into the shopping area.












This next montage (below) shows another example of this spatial approach to development adjacent to the waterfront. The circular enclosed space is public space. It is very sheltered from prevailing winds, while providing a sort of market square focus for the retail and cafe activities at ground level. There is considerable public space provision on top of this building, and this space is well planted with small trees, gardens and shrubs. The classic green roof - but actually a park, very useable and with great amenity.



Stepping through the rooftop garden, you can then view the adjacent waterfront spaces and views. The next montage (below) is from the roof. You can see the carefully designed waterfront spaces and planting. The sail shaded area is a a public performance area - bands and informal concerts occur there.



This final montage (below) actually contains 3 shots of the same slice of waterfront space between the built edge, and the water edge. What the photos try to show (!?) is the fact that there is a public pavement directly adjacent to to the buildings (some of which are activated), then there is a planted strip that contains outdoor restaurant seating and cafes (you can make out the StarBucks umbrellas here), and then there is another wide public pavement.



These designs show the kind of approaches that can be adopted to waterfront edges which genuinely respect public space, and provide for successful private business, without getting them all mixed up and in conflict.