We remain hopeful that the recently signed City Deal might improve things if the Government takes it seriously. City states like Singapore and capital cities like London seem to fare better in this dynamic.
Mayors from around the world were also keen to hear about how we had gone from the most ill-prepared city for a storm to now being one of the best prepared in just three years.
Having a mayor with an engineering background helped with this. I was proud to tell them about Making Space for Water and suggested they should come to Auckland and have a look at this great initiative.
Australia has no large councils, with larger cities like Melbourne and Sydney having lots of mayors and councils. Quite a few showed up and with typical Australian lack of humility called themselves Lord Mayors.
South Eastern Queensland brought 12 wildly optimistic blue-sky thinking mayors all expecting to be the first city to host a money-making cost-controlled Olympics in 2032 – bucking a worldwide trend of the Olympics leaving a trail of financial problems.
A bloke sitting next to me agreed with my pessimistic view that a profitable 2032 Olympics was unlikely. He then revealed that he was chief executive of the largest of the 12 Queensland councils.
There was a lot of focus on keeping cities cool with tree planting, which we are doing, but probably not enough of. While our traffic planners annoy everyone with rock gardens and other dumb stuff, simply planting a tree in places where you’re not supposed to park is cheaper and more effective. Although I have uncovered some horrendously expensive tree planting from the CRL team who seem hell-bent on wasting cash.
One quickly realises that while Auckland’s population is big by Kiwi standards, it is our land area that is truly large with our sprawling city covering 1600sq km.
This is 50% more than Hong Kong and over double the area of Singapore. No wonder we are seeking to intensify Auckland’s housing to gain some of the efficiencies of many other global cities.
Nothing compares to a statistic to reveal why all cities seem to battle with the same issues.
Since 2000, the number of recorded flood-related disasters across the world has risen by 134% compared with the two previous decades. Hard to ignore climate change with those numbers.
Some cities face serious infrastructure issues that place things in context.
Rotterdam has over 90% of its land area below sea level with some parts 7m below. Obviously, the pumps to prevent flooding are running fulltime. I had a chat with the Rotterdam mayor about what would happen in the case of a power failure.
He was fairly confident in their fail-safes until I told him about the only time Auckland has even been truly famous when in 1998 the CBD went without power for six weeks. I was called in back then to chair Vector back to health.
I told the Rotterdam mayor that a power failure will eventually happen and it sets off an unstoppable chain reaction. One circuit fails and immediately offloads to another which overloads to another etc. The risk of this is especially heightened these days with everything digitally linked. You need to have at least one half of the system separated by an analogue switch.
Climate change issues are also increasingly being responded to at a city level.
This was highlighted by the World Bank director of water who pointed out that most countries had borrowed so much that they had no more headroom to deal with climate issues.
Nations often had worse credit ratings than well-run cities, which reminded me of how dumb the rates cap will be if it drops our credit ratings. The world has already borrowed more than its GDP!
Overall it was comforting to know that Auckland’s general direction was right and we are lucky to have the climate moderating influence of being surrounded by oceans. All cities talk of attracting talent so our Tech Alliance looks very good with our wonderful harbour-based environment making it a great place to make your way.
By the way, given the sullen attitude of some of our commentators, it is worth noting that my trip cost the ratepayers the princely sum of $8560 which given my 180,000 voters is just under 5c per voter.
This compares quite well with my mate Jonesy attending the very valid Canadian mining conference for a mere $63,000. That cost divided by his 8100 voters (in his 2023 Northland electoral seat result), equates to $7.80 per voter – 165 times my cost. Who’d have thought!
Wayne Brown has been the Mayor of Auckland since 2022, and was the Mayor of the Far North from 2007-2013.
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