Not-Auckland

BY SALLY CONOR

Where does Auckland begin and end exactly? In a city that is characterised by its sprawl, it is almost impossible to tell. The only silly metaphor I can think of is a fried egg… built up in the middle and with a fairly definite central area but sort of tapering out into almost translucent thinness somewhere around Albany in the north and Manurewa in the south. Does Orewa count as a suburb yet? It can’t be more than five years before it does, surely.

The disease of mass suburban development is spreading north like a terracotta-tiled architectural plague. The Hibiscus Coast is already being eaten alive by the canker, and soon Orewa will be engulfed, as will acres of beautiful rolling arable land and dark forest. Auckland seems to be something of an insatiable beast, always spreading, always expanding, in the manner of The Blob. Stand still in the outer suburbs for too long and you might find you have been paved over to make way for a carpark.

Two consecutive weekends have seen me uncharacteristically venture north out of Auckland and I have found myself to remark on several occasions: “I really must get out of Auckland more. I find myself forgetting what a gorgeous country New Zealand is”, but if I’m honest, these brief sojourns have left me conflicted. It’s clear that I love Auckland. Most of the time on this blog I won’t shut up about how great I think it is. So any trip away from it, however brief, leaves me feeling mildly homesick and a little discombobulated. The country is so QUIET. You can hear The Wind. You can see the shape of the landscape for miles. You have to drive for ten minutes to get to THE Shop, singular.

For any institutionalised city-dweller, these things are beautiful and pleasant but nonetheless unsettling. I like the country but I miss the city. And then at the same time I resent the encroachment of the city into the country. I want them to be able to exist together in harmony without the growth of the one equalling the death of the other. I want Auckland and Not-Yet-Auckland to sign some kind of Treaty:

“I, Auckland, promise to be a more considerate neighbour and to not keep moving my borders further into Not-Auckland’s territory at night when no one is looking. I promise to be satisfied with the already massive space that I occupy and to focus on utilising it more effectively and making it better for those who already live there rather than exacerbating my already significant problems by ravenously expanding even further. I acknowledge that my expansion problem stems from insecurity and that I need to look inside myself for validation rather than eating more of the country in attempt to fill the void. I promise to respect the integrity of the countryside and to leave it the fuck alone for the sake of Nature and for those small communities that make New Zealand awesome and of which I have already gobbled hundreds. I promise to go on a diet. I promise to purge myself of asshole developers, bad architects and Mark Ellis. I promise to love myself and my brother, Not-Auckland and to respect his private space.”

Cities are characterised not only by what they contain, but by what surrounds them – everyone needs to get away from the city sometimes, and where will we go if Not-Auckland is subsumed into Auckland? Somewhere, somebody needs to draw a line.



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