Other suburbs have their appeal, but one rises above them all. Hayden Donnell argues Mt Albert is the best place to live in Auckland.

First, a terrible confession: I grew up on Auckland’s North Shore. For most of my life, all I knew were Planet 8 board shorts and bowl lattes; golden sand beaches clogged with upper-middle-class dog walkers. Most property sections were the size of a rugby field. Most houses had 14 unnecessary rooms. Density was a curse word. Diversity was seeing a South African south of Rothesay Bay.

At age 26, I went to a flat viewing at Springleigh Ave in Mt Albert. The house was a 1970s A-frame with a courtyard out front just big enough for a small garden and a table. We managed to convince the landlords to rent it out to us with some big talk about our gardening ambitions. It had taken more than a quarter of a century, but I was heading south of the Harbour Bridge.

Living in Mt Albert was a revelation. Many of Auckland’s suburbs are specialists. Mt Eden has its austere villas and weird circus restaurant; Grey Lynn its gardens and coffee. Sandringham is the home to the city’s best Indian food. Titirangi is governed by a horde of huge, pack-hunting rats.

Mt Albert is more of an all-rounder. On one of my first weeks there, I followed the walkway through Oakley Creek reserve to Auckland’s only urban waterfall. Teenagers were jumping off the rocks into the pool at the base of the falls, backflipping and screaming as they went. From there it was a 30 minute stroll to Ōwairaka/Mt Albert, the maunga that gives the suburb its name.

The route to the mountain doubles as a tour of the things that set Mt Albert apart. It takes you past the former Whau Lunatic Asylum where they once administered electroconvulsive therapy to Janet Frame. These days the huge, historic red brick building is occupied by Unitec students. The adjacent grounds are green and expansive. I walked through them, past the fields where Blues players gather to train for their horrific Super Rugby seasons, and up to the town centre.

The food in Mt Albert’s centre can foot it with any other suburb in Auckland. It’s also testament to the area’s diversity. The BBQ Noodle House near the intersection of Carrington and New North Rds is an institution. It’s packed from 5pm every day, serving up gigantic helpings of roast duck on rice. If it’s full, you can head next door to… The BBQ Noodle House. The owners of the two establishments are engaged in a long and acrimonious dispute over who owns the BBQ Noodle House IP and each refuse to change their identities.

Nearby, Taste In Memory serves some of best xiao long bao in Auckland, Lemongrass offers a mean laksa, and Boston Bakery serves award-winning pies. Muzza’s Pies would too, if Muzza didn’t have an ethical objection to entering pie awards. A bit further down the road, Chill Out Thai offers proper “thai hot” curries. The restaurants staff will ask Pākehā-sounding customers if they know what they’re getting into when they call in asking for medium heat. There’s croissants and coffee a little further east at Pyrénées, desserts at Eggloo and tacos at Taco Loco.

The walk from the centre up to the mountain is littered with the kind of old villas you’d see in a place like Mt Eden or Grey Lynn. Mt Albert has the history and architecture of those suburbs, but it’s better anchored around public transport. A train station sits in the centre of town, and New North Rd is an arterial busway. It has the more peaceful feel of a city fringe suburb without the sense of disconnection – close to town without being flash, overbearing, or Kingsland.

But like the rest of Auckland, Mt Albert is changing and growing, fast. And it’s trying to hold on to what makes it special at the same time. At 6pm on June 26, The Spinoff is running the first event in a new series called In My Backyard at Ferndale House in Mt Albert (email kerryanne@thespinoff.co.nz if you’re interested in coming along). It’s a celebration of the area: what’s good about it now. But it’s also a chance to look at the town’s potential. When the City Rail Link arrives in 2024, the suburb will be 15 minutes from downtown Auckland.

It will also be home to a huge amount of new development. One of Auckland’s prime council-owned sites sits on a section abutting the station, and is currently tenanted by a one-storey real-estate agency. A chunk of Unitec will soon be replaced with 4000 new houses. Much of the area is zoned for three-storey apartments, and more places like Ockham’s Tuatahi are surely on the horizon. It may never have Titirangi’s rat lords, but Mt Albert already has everything you could want from a place – now it just needs to hold on to it as it grows.

At the end of my walk, I climbed some steps to the trig at the mountain’s summit. Ōwairaka/Mt Albert has some of the most underrated views in Auckland. While busloads of tourists clamber up Mt Eden to take in the Sky Tower, this peak looks out to the Manukau Harbour and beyond. I took my takeaways a little way down the hill and watched the sun set below the Waitākere Ranges. For the first time in Auckland, I felt like I’d found a place I could stay in for good. I felt at home.

Will Pukekohe continue to be a food bowl for Auckland and New Zealand, or yet another victim of the Super City’s metropolitan sprawl? Stephen Forbes for interest.co.nz looks at the small rural town at the frontline of the battle between sustainable development and urban encroachment.

The ongoing importance of Pukekohe and the need to preserve it was highlighted in the Auckland Council’s recently released Climate Action Framework. It goes out for consultation next month and states:

“The Pukekohe hub comprises 4,359 hectares of some of New Zealand’s most fertile and productive soils. Fruit and vegetable production contribute $1.2 billion to Auckland’s economy. The hub generates $327 million, which is 26% of NZ’s total domestic value of vegetable production.

“From 2002 to 2016, vegetable-growing land across the country was reduced by 30%. Land like the hub faces increasing threats like urban sprawl. The future of the hub is important for Auckland. With a forgiving and temperate climate and proximity to essential transport routes, the hub is well-positioned to supply year-round vegetables to help feed Auckland’s growing demand for fresh food.”

But the horticultural value of the area seems to be on track for a head-on collision with the Auckland Council’s wider plan for the area, which sees Pukekohe’s growth as part of the solution to the city’s burgeoning population.

Urban development and future growth

The council’s Planning Committee has recommended the sale of a number of properties in and around the Pukekohe town centre that are owned by the Auckland Council, Panuku and Auckland Transport for redevelopment. It also approved the Unlock Pukekohe High Level Project Plan and Panuku’s role in the urban regeneration project.

The Draft Pukekohe-Paerata Structure Plan released in April states:

“The Auckland Plan 2050 (Auckland Plan) signals that Auckland’s population could grow by another 720,000 people to reach 2.4 million people over the next 30 years. This growth is an opportunity for Auckland as a catalyst for cultural and economic success.

“The Auckland Plan identifies Pukekohe as a “satellite town” with the potential to accommodate up to 14,000 additional dwellings. The Auckland Unitary Plan Operative in Part (Auckland Unitary Plan) has zoned 1,262 hectares (gross) around Pukekohe-Paerata as Future Urban Zone – a transitional zone (refer to Map 2 below). The development of the Future Urban zoned land in Pukekohe-Paerata is part of the solution to the growth challenge.”

According to Auckland Council Pukekohe’s population is projected to grow from 23,600 people (2013 Census) to over 50,000 people by 2040.

The council says this will require upgrades to water, wastewater, stormwater and transport infrastructure. While plans are already in place to electrify the Auckland rail network between Papakura and Pukekohe and improvements to the road network to deal with increased capacity.

Environmental tensions

Auckland Council’s chief sustainability officer John Mauro says it does highlight the obvious tensions between development on the one hand and the need to maintain a source of horticulture and food for the city on the other.

Mauro helped to author the council’s Climate Action Framework. “Pukekohe is a bit of a gem and it has some of the best soils in the country,” he says. “So I think it is a concern, and I have said many times before, that when it comes to land use urban sprawl doesn’t work – for the environment, for people, for infrastructure, or for rates. Greenfields developments just commit people to a lot of time in their cars.”

That’s a position shared by the council’s Environment and Community Committee chairwoman Penny Hulse. She says Pukekohe is an important source of food for the entire country, not just Auckland, and it’s important that it isn’t lost to the Super City’s endless urban sprawl.

Hulse says she has been reassured by Panuku that the development won’t carry over into adjoining horticultural areas, but she still has some concerns about growing development in the area.

“It’s critical not just for Auckland, but New Zealand,” she says. “The worry I have is in the rush to build houses we’ve lost sight of some of the key issues.

“We’ve got to hold a line and not just allow the city to spread all the way to Hamilton. The bottom line is we need houses, but we also need food security for New Zealand and the Auckland region.”

Past decisions and protections

Auckland deputy mayor and Franklin Ward councillor Bill Cashmore says some of the land-use issues in the area are the result of historical decisions by the now defunct Franklin District Council, as well as Auckland Council’s Unitary Plan which came into effect in 2016.

“There has been some existing blocks subdivided on the hills above Pukekohe and the landholders had the rights to do that. But all of the productive soils to the west [of Pukekohe] have been protected.”

He says most of the areas earmarked for development are in East Pukekohe, Paerata and Drury. While Cashmore says Panuku’s work centres on increasing the amount of residential, retail and commercial space in and around the existing town centre.

“However, under the Resource Management Act (RMA) someone can still apply for a plan change or resource consent and they can apply to change the zoning from rural to urban, but under the Auckland policy statement it says that should be discouraged.”

But Cashmore concedes that Pukekohe was identified as part of the city’s future land supply under the council’s Unitary Plan.

Metropolitan pressures

The property sales by Auckland Council, Panuku and Auckland Transport to allow for the redevelopment of Pukekohe town centre are expected to be signed off by the council later this month.

And while Panuku’s regeneration project isn’t going to spell the end of horticulture in Pukekohe, increased development in the area means the ongoing threat of Auckland’s urban sprawl is very real.

A joint report by the Ministry for the Environment and Stats NZ titled Environment Aotearoa 2019, released in April, highlights many of the same problems Pukekohe’s facing.

“The growth of urban centres has led to land fragmentation and threatens the limited supply of versatile land near Auckland and other regional centres. Our urban areas are spreading – the area of urban land increased by 10% between 1996 and 2012, especially around Auckland, Waikato, and Canterbury.

“Our versatile land and high-class soils are gradually being lost to urban growth, making them unavailable for growing food. The loss of versatile land is happening at the same time as our food production system is under pressure to increase production without increasing its effect on the environment. This loss can force growers onto more marginal land that is naturally less productive and requires more inputs, like fertiliser.”