Wellington City Council asked residents where they’d like to see Wellington in 2040, so a group of experts told them.

IMAGINE a Wellington with floating houses, rooftop gardens, light-rail, rentable electric cars and a waterfront haven where Jervois and Customhouse Quays once were.
This is the vision the Architectural Centre has submitted to Wellington City Council’s 2040 plan, which called for residents to put forward ideas for a Wellington 30 years from now.
“We do have to be bold,” says member and past president Christine McCarthy. “The council has made some attempts, but hasn’t been bold enough. We need to come to terms with some big issues, whether global warming, or a change in demographics.”
She says the fun will come in creatively and innovatively addressing those issues so the capital will be a world leader in design. “We don’t need to be sad and dreary about it.”
Current president Guy Marriage says we need to start the planning now, so that when it’s time to face future issues, Wellington is ready.
“If you don’t plan ahead, you don’t get a result. One of the key things the city will need in 30 years is light rail – we need to plan that now,” he says.
Many of the 100-strong members of the Architectural Centre, which includes public figures such as Bill Toomath, are architects, artists or designers.
Marriage has been an architect for 20 years, which included a 10-year stint in the UK working on massive infrastructure projects.
McCarthy is the chair of the New Zealand chapter of Docomomo, a non-governmental organisation that deals with the history, preservation and reassessment of modern architecture.
The Centre collaboratively worked over two months on its Wellington 2040 submission, and chose not to fill out the form about its “favourite things in the city”.
Instead, it submitted a lengthy and detailed proposal complete with mock-up designs.
“[The council form] means that people look at what they like now, but that’s not the basis towards how you build the future. There needs to be a request for bolder and more abstract ideas, as well as specific things. I think the public is smarter then that request assumes,” McCarthy says, but adds the council are at least moving in the right direction.
The pair agrees council and Wellington residents may be sceptical about the scale of their plan, which would see a complete overthrow of transport priorities.
But they say you can get things done quickly and efficiently if you have the support of local and central government, as well as meaningful public engagement and education.
“It’s amazing what human being can do – people can fly to the moon, and that only took 10 years, it’s just a matter of priorities. Transmission Gully cost-wise will give us about 12 light rails,” says McCarthy.
By 2040, the Centre’s plan suggests pedestrians come first, bikes second and public transport third. Electric cars are available to rent from street vendors, and petrol ran out 20 years ago.
This means there’s little need for car parks, and since 2010, inner-city parks have been progressively reduced and replaced by cycle lanes and green space.
City living developments are sustainable, and include wind and solar power, and rooftop gardens. Floating accommodation on the waterfront, similar to the floating homes in San Francisco and Amsterdam, take into account sea-level rises.
Jervois and Customhouse Quay car lanes have also been progressively reduced and any traffic uses the bypass. This enhances the city-waterfront access.
“You’ve got the sea, and the city, and then you have a thick barrier called Jervois Quay,” says McCarthy, adding various visiting urban design experts, including Danish architect Jan Gehl, have pointed out that the Jervois Quay barrier is a weak point in Wellington design.
Lastly, no more money must be spent on entertaining the idea that cars have a future, the submission says.
“Road planning is a very imprecise science, because cars will go down whatever road they can find. After the 1989 San Francisco earthquake part of the freeway fell down. The next day people went to work by different routes, so they never rebuilt it,” says Marriage. “Auckland has been building new roads frantically for the past 10 years and it’s no less congested.”
Most importantly however, planning for Wellington 2040 needs to encourage spaces people will enjoy spending time in, rather than being seen as pragmatic infrastructure.
“These ideas will go into a pool of other ideas, and now the council need to take control of the process,” says Marriage. “But planning needs to start happening now, and we’re keen on democratic consultation. We’ve got some things here we think would work.”