Occupying Our Street
THE roadway running along the base of Mount Victoria has always been symptomatic of both not only nobility of the human imagination but also the stinking grossness of dull-witted bureaucracy.
You know where I mean: Kent Terrace and Cambridge Terrace. Two “Terraces”. Why can’t they just be one Terrace, with one name? Even this nonsensical ‘seeing double’ where there’s really ‘only one’ is in keeping with the nature of this area of Wellington.
And historically, it’s always been like this. In the early days of the city, it was actually full of seawater and our Councillors of the day decided that a clever idea would be to really dig it out and make it into a kind of deep-water canal up which ships could sail and moor closer to Newtown. While they were busy beavering away on this plan, Wellington (in fact, the whole lower North Island) suffered one of the world’s most serious earthquakes of the last thousand years. The quake turned the proposed ‘canal’ into a long strip of dry land, and the deep basin at the end became a big slimy lawn (renamed the Basin Reserve and turned into a cricket ground).
Then some bright spark proposed modelling the Kent/Cambridge strip on the beautiful Champs Elysées [Elysian Fields] Avenue in Paris. It would be long and wide and offer the good citizens a breath-taking vista to the southern skies at the end. And to cap it off, a towering bronze statue of the Empire’s ruler, Queen Victoria, was erected at Courtenay Place as a taste of what was to come beyond.
And despite it degenerating into a grey route to the Airport in recent times, with the northern aspect to the sea blocked by a supermarket, the area still boasts (almost defiantly) bars, cafes and pockets of rare culture and intellectual vitality. But even this needs defending. Our City Council has done well lately to fight to preserve the grandeur of the Terraces by supporting the idea of a tunnel under the Basin. However, the Wellington Regional Council has overridden us and put its weight behind a sick, overhead, concrete autobahn funnelling traffic into Mount Vic Tunnel. Why? We’re told it will speed up traffic. Duh. And like a winning card, they also tell us it is the ‘cheapest option’. Duh and double duh. The Flyover is a fast track to the Mines of Moria. And, agreed, it’s the cheapest piece of thinking we’ve ever seen in the Capital. These people lack any aesthetic sensibility. They are Orcs. Why should we make The Hobbit here, when the Shire is being so uglily desecrated?
And while they no doubt feel proud of themselves pouring New Zealand’s precious dollars into this abomination, the key problem is that the city itself (us) will have to live with it for decades. They must feel very powerful because they can mangle our city so quickly and so easily. But they should also reflect on the fact that the environment we mould around ourselves eventually moulds us.
You know where I mean: Kent Terrace and Cambridge Terrace. Two “Terraces”. Why can’t they just be one Terrace, with one name? Even this nonsensical ‘seeing double’ where there’s really ‘only one’ is in keeping with the nature of this area of Wellington.
And historically, it’s always been like this. In the early days of the city, it was actually full of seawater and our Councillors of the day decided that a clever idea would be to really dig it out and make it into a kind of deep-water canal up which ships could sail and moor closer to Newtown. While they were busy beavering away on this plan, Wellington (in fact, the whole lower North Island) suffered one of the world’s most serious earthquakes of the last thousand years. The quake turned the proposed ‘canal’ into a long strip of dry land, and the deep basin at the end became a big slimy lawn (renamed the Basin Reserve and turned into a cricket ground).
Then some bright spark proposed modelling the Kent/Cambridge strip on the beautiful Champs Elysées [Elysian Fields] Avenue in Paris. It would be long and wide and offer the good citizens a breath-taking vista to the southern skies at the end. And to cap it off, a towering bronze statue of the Empire’s ruler, Queen Victoria, was erected at Courtenay Place as a taste of what was to come beyond.
And despite it degenerating into a grey route to the Airport in recent times, with the northern aspect to the sea blocked by a supermarket, the area still boasts (almost defiantly) bars, cafes and pockets of rare culture and intellectual vitality. But even this needs defending. Our City Council has done well lately to fight to preserve the grandeur of the Terraces by supporting the idea of a tunnel under the Basin. However, the Wellington Regional Council has overridden us and put its weight behind a sick, overhead, concrete autobahn funnelling traffic into Mount Vic Tunnel. Why? We’re told it will speed up traffic. Duh. And like a winning card, they also tell us it is the ‘cheapest option’. Duh and double duh. The Flyover is a fast track to the Mines of Moria. And, agreed, it’s the cheapest piece of thinking we’ve ever seen in the Capital. These people lack any aesthetic sensibility. They are Orcs. Why should we make The Hobbit here, when the Shire is being so uglily desecrated?
And while they no doubt feel proud of themselves pouring New Zealand’s precious dollars into this abomination, the key problem is that the city itself (us) will have to live with it for decades. They must feel very powerful because they can mangle our city so quickly and so easily. But they should also reflect on the fact that the environment we mould around ourselves eventually moulds us.
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