Our Vision

Auckland is a great city, but it can and must become greater.

Auckland faces challenges to becoming a sustainable and equitable city that can only be resolved through bold leadership, excellent planning and design. We are also not yet a city that is equipped for current nor future challenges. We have come a long way over the last few decades, but many issues are becoming more urgent.

Auckland is increasingly different from the rest of New Zealand. We are younger, more diverse, more educated and more productive. We are also growing much faster and will continue to do so. The narrow isthmus that makes Auckland such an attractive place to live adds further challenges to the way people get around. The impacts of historic underinvestment in public transport, active transport and safety, along with development patterns that have served us poorly, still remain.

A greater Auckland must become a better place to live in, to move around and to connect with others. This forms the three pillars of our vision:

1. Live. We must improve housing in Auckland in a way that provides better choices for our highly diverse population. This means reducing regulations that stifle quality intensification, finding ways to ramp up construction of apartments and improving rental laws to better protect the majority of Aucklanders who now live in rental accommodation. Improving our living conditions requires enhancing the urban environment, too. We need healthy streets and places with clean air, low noise levels, good tree cover, and flourishing waterways.
2. Move. We must provide Aucklanders with congestion free and low carbon travel options. Key to this is encouraging modeshift from private vehicles to public transport, walking, cycling (and other small wheels) by making these travel options safe and attractive. Transport is a significant contributor to the carbon footprint of cities so providing low carbon travel options will improve our air quality and better equip us to respond to climate change.
3. Connect. We must make Auckland a far more equitable place to reside so that we can truly take advantage of the clustering of creative, intelligent, diverse and fantastic people this city attracts. This means ensuring that our transport network can get people to where they need to go as well as thinking of our streets as a core part of the city’s public space. We need to make the city safe and easy to access, and create places where people want to linger, chat, play and enjoy life.

Auckland is undoubtedly a more vibrant, exciting and better city than it was several decades ago. We need to make sure that this progress continues and accelerates.

We stand for a Greater Auckland.