Long Bay - Okura Great Park Society
Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand (population almost one million), is growing rapidly, pushing north and south out of a narrow volcanic isthmus between the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. Coastal property is prime estate, and in recent years, an epic struggle has been waged between property speculators and city residents for the preservation of open space in one of the largest undeveloped areas of coastline in the Auckland East Coast.
The Okura and Long Bay Promintory lies alongside an undisturbed estuary of immense ecological value for the preservation and regeneration of marine life. The beaches along this promintory are among the most accessible and popular open spaces in Auckland region, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, on weekends and holidays, from all over the Auckland region.
The local city council (North Shore City), was previously dominated by members in favour of urban development above all else, but has gradually - over several years - changed and responded to local pressure to preserve the rural landscape. Unfortunately it is now constrained by the decisions of previous ruling councils, and faces huge costs when buying land because of a previous zoning as rural-future-residential (with minimal public consultation). Developers were allowed to assume that this meant a definite legal right to subdivide in the future, and profit from what had been rural land. Ideally such zoning would be neutral - conferring no legal expectation in either direction, whether future rural or future residential, but merely indicating that more than one possibility is being considered.
Here - understandably but regretably - is a glowing and gloating promotion by the present landowner.
The Long Bay - Okura Great Park Society has been steadfastly fighting, through all possible legal channels, to creat a Great Park that will add hugely to the value of Auckland City as a place to live. Property developers other than those invested in the land itself stand to benefit just as much from this as the residents of Auckland City, and the many travellers who visit Auckland.
The Society has formed a Land Purchase Fund which at the moment is largely symbolic in value: it demonstrates the determination and long-term vision of the Society to help create a wonderful park for the Auckland region. The Fund itself has very little money, so far. All contributions are welcome, large and small. The hopes of this Society are largely directed towards persuading public authorities to invest in the Park as much as they can, using all possible means to raise funds for this purpose.
Is time against us, or for us?Whether or not the Park is entirely funded though public sources, the present author believes that by taking a very long-term view of the situation, it may be possible to buy land in the area of interest, piece by piece, regardless of how far the process of urbanisation has proceeded. Few modern houses are permanent structures, of the sort that might be expected to last for centuries. They are built, last a few generations, and then disappear again - if they have not acquired special historical significance, making their preservation desirable. Perhaps, by actively participating in the development, profits can be generated that are then invested in the creation of open space - over decades, half-centuries, and centuries. Time can be on our side, if we have the vision for it, and can transmit our aims across generations. Urban expansion is not necessarily uni-directional, forever increasing outwward and upward, across and over a landscape.
Many societies around the world are contracting, for demographic reasons, creating new as yet unimagined possibilities for the development of what are now urban areas. Population decline is usually seen as a negative thing for economic and social development, but this is because we do not have many (or any?) examples, historically, of how to manage decline in creative, economically beneficial ways. Auckland now is expanding not through natural increase but through social and political policies that encourage immigration, from other cities in New Zealand, from rural areas, and from outside New Zealand.
Auckland has thus become an economic black hole for New Zealand, sucking in resources, and perhaps not giving much in return, while cities and rural areas around the country have difficulty in attracting funds - public and private - to maintain or improve services, employment opportunities, and infrastructure.
Creating the Great Park is thus an effort that is linked to arguments about the feasability or desirability of setting limits to the growth of a city, in theory and in practice.
A lot is at stake in the Great Park project. Developing the Park is a pro-development proposal, but pro-development on a larger geographical scale, on a longer time-scale, and for the benefit of a larger number of people, than anything imagined by the speculators seeking to enrich themselves and a few shareholders (PJM 18.4.03). Yes - houses need to be built - but this does mean they automatically have a priority over other land uses.
Local history
The Torbay Historical Society has been looking after the old Vaughn Homestead, whose last resident, Tom Vaughn, generously donated land for the well-used Anglican Church Retreat at the city end of Long Bay. Tom is remembered here for letting me store my first boat - a small dinghy - behind the trees below his house, ready for easy launching into the surf (PJM 18.1.05).
