STUART HOUGHTON and KIER IBANEZ live in Parliament Street near the University of Auckland campus. With two decades of central- city living between them, they wouldn’t live anywhere else.
JEREMY HANSEN Would you guys like to introduce yourselves?
KIER IBANEZ I’m Kier. I’m a chef by profession. I’ve been working in city centre cafes for 10 years, and I’ve also done food pop-ups around Auckland, Christchurch and other places under my business, Long Table. We live in Parliament Street in the central city, and we have a wee dog named Daphne, a little dachshund. I’ve been living in the city centre for nine years now – like many other immigrants I lived in an apartment in Hobson Street for a while after I got here.
STUART HOUGHTON I returned from London in 2010 and have been living in the city centre ever since. Living right in the city is how I could continue some of the things that I was enjoying in London, like being car-free and having almost no commute, and the freedom that really gives you.
JEREMY HANSEN Kier, you’ve been managing a café on Shortland Street, and I wondered how you feel the city centre is doing from that perspective.
KIER IBANEZ I can feel that the city’s coming back. To me, there’s a lot of potential in the city because we have the tourists, we have the people who work in the city, we have residents and we have students. So business-wise, it’s getting better. We’re not as busy as it was pre-Covid, but it’s definitely coming back.
JEREMY HANSEN Stuart, you’re an urban designer. How do you feel the city’s changed in the last five years?
STUART HOUGHTON Before Covid, we were on the cusp of some major city change: Commercial Bay and the downtown programme – the redevelopment of Quay Street, including Te Wānanga, the new plaza beside the Ferry Building – are two really big things that emerged during or post-Covid, and I think people tend to forget that when they’re talking about things being bad in the central city. It’s only this past summer when tourism bounced back that I think you could really see what that waterfront precinct is all about: it’s a natural place for residents and visitors to gravitate to. A lot of it used to be rammed with buses and diesel fumes, but now I hear a lot of Aucklanders saying how good it is, the way the streetscapes and public spaces just flow through to Britomart and to the water. There’s also the perennial Queen Street conversation. The experience of Queen Street is actually all sorts of things as you move from the water’s edge through midtown and up to Karangahape Road. There are elements of the good, the bad, and the ugly in that: there’s one really down-at-heel block of Queen Street that has undeniably got worse in the last five years, but there are big developments coming around the City Rail Link stations. The road cones are beginning to recede and there are some streetscapes being rebuilt. I think the central city is getting more diverse in that different parts of the central city have different offerings. City Rail Link will put a rocket under some of that as well, and make people think differently about how those places – from Karangahape Road to Midtown to the waterfront – are connected.
JEREMY HANSEN What do you like about living in the central city?
STUART HOUGHTON Everything I need to do day-to-day is walkable in the city centre, and there’s a freedom of how you construct your day to do the different things you might need to do in addition to work. But I also feel really connected into a community of other city dwellers or people that spend a lot of time in the central city. You get to know each other because go to the same cafés, or you become friends with the people that work in the café, that sort of thing. That feels really, really good, and is kind of underappreciated by people who don’t have that, I think.
JEREMY HANSEN What else do you like here about living in the central city?
KIER IBANEZ I love living in the city because I like to eat a lot. There’s all this really good stuff in the city that makes me happy. And there are also places like the lawn at Old Government House where you can just sit in the park and read, or have a picnic.
STUART HOUGHTON The central city has all those things that support apartment living. The streets aren’t very green, but there are some wonderful green spaces in the central city, and when you live here you use them in a different way.
JEREMY HANSEN What would you change about the central city?
KIER IBANEZ Probably better bike lanes. I’d like to do more biking, but without more bike lanes it just feels too dangerous.
STUART HOUGHTON I think the biggest change that I’d want isn’t a physical change to the city itself, but a mindset change for Aucklanders, so they can positively engage with their central city and actually spend time and experience what it can be. It’d also be good to see more Aucklanders investing in the city centre, in businesses and in buildings and property, so we could see more independent small businesses. I think other cities are more attuned to actively creating a good business mix, but I don’t see much conversation about that here. There are a lot of people who want to do something potentially great in a business sense who would identify a city fringe location or neighbourhood as the natural place to do that. That’s good, but I think the city centre needs a version of that too. Karangahape Road is wonderful in that way, but we need other parts of the city to foster more of it.
JEREMY HANSEN There’s been a whole recent conversation around safety and security. Have those things deteriorated, in your experience?
KIER IBANEZ I think yes and no. I’ve experienced some of it first-hand in the café that I manage, where some crazy guy comes in the morning and starts doing crazy stuff, and it’s affecting my customers because they don’t want to be there, and I have to call the police and ask some of my regular customers to help. The police moved that person on, but then he was just around the corner, hassling people on the street. When I moved here from the Philippines and saw beggars, it was a shocker for me, because I didn’t think New Zealand was like that. But I didn’t think of it as a dangerous thing. I do see a lot more police presence and other security now, such as the Heart of the City guards, which makes things feel a bit more secure. It’s generally much better.
STUART HOUGHTON This year there’s been an improvement. There are definitely still some big problems to work on. Central city safety wasn’t a mainstream conversation for Aucklanders until recently. Some of the anti-social behaviour has gone over a threshold where it’s just not acceptable, and we need to understand that these are people that need help, and how do you do that? We’ve got better support networks around the City Mission and other things to help manage some of that, but it’s also helpful just to see police on the beat.
JEREMY HANSEN How do you think the central city will feel in five years’ time?
STUART HOUGHTON I was at a talk last week where somebody said, ‘Auckland’s going to be really great by 2029’. I’d quite like it to be really great before then, but there was a good point around City Rail Link — I don’t think Aucklanders really appreciate how much that’s going to change the city until the trains start running. There’s another wave of development that’s underway and will open around the same time. So I do feel increasingly optimistic.
BUILDING A BETTER CITY
STUART AND KIER’S SUGGESTIONS
1. Build more bike lanes to make city cycling safer.
2. Keep improving support networks for people in need, while maintaining a police presence with clear guidelines around antisocial behaviour.
3. Create a better mix of small independent businesses by offering lower-rent opportunities to up-and-coming entrepreneurs.
