Urbanists who want their city to have more people-friendly streets need to face up to the biggest barrier to their goal: everything takes too damn long.
This coming weekend, the annual CubaDupa festival will be held on and around Cuba Street. Some 80,000 people will descend on the central precinct to enjoy live music, street food, and the beauty of pedestrian spaces.
Many of those who wander the area will ask themselves “why can’t it always be like this?”. Cuba Mall is the most successful example of a pedestrian street in Aotearoa (even if it is a bit scruffy at the moment) and upper Cuba Street (the non-pedestrianised bit) is lined by businesses that overwhelmingly serve people on foot: op shops, music venues, eateries and ice cream bars. So it would seem like an obvious decision to expand on what works and pedestrianise the rest of the space.
Wellington City Council is currently working on a proposal to widen some of the footpaths on upper Cuba Street by removing about 20 car parks. The project is budgeted at $3.8 million and isn’t likely to happen until at least year three of the long term plan which is currently out for consultation.
I have no doubt that a pedestrian upgrade would be a good thing for upper Cuba Street, but this project risks making the same mistakes that made the Golden Mile an albatross around the council’s neck. Urbanists who want their city to have more people-friendly streets need to face up to the biggest barrier to their goal: everything takes too damn long.
Many of the leading thinkers on progressive urban design, which includes council staff, are well-meaning nerds who are obsessed with the craft. They talk endlessly about “best practice”, “global design principles” and “master plans” – but the pursuit of perfection is self-defeating.
The problem is that overdesigned projects have longer construction schedules. The ideological divide between cars and pedestrians isn’t as big as it may seem. Many business owners would be perfectly happy to pedestrian upgrades on their street – their real concern is the months of disruptive construction driving away customers. Losing a couple of car parks isn’t going to kill a hospo business in the city centre. A year of road comes and jackhammers might.
In Auckland, Wayne Brown is cruising to re-election in large part because he recognised voters’ frustration with extended construction. His war on road cones and his focus on getting things done quicker and cheaper is a direct response to that. Browny’s Pool, the unfortunately-nicknamed saltwater pool in Wynyard Quarter, is a vote winner specifically because he got it done quickly and without succumbing to the temptation to turn it into a multi-year, multi-million dollar boondoggle. In an era of mega-projects that never seem to go anywhere, voters appreciate small but tangible changes.
The Golden Mile upgrade, by comparison, involved literally thousands of pages of business cases and design analysis over seven years. The construction, which begins in April, will take another three years. This is mostly the fault of the famously inefficient Let’s Get Wellington Moving, but Wellington City Council is forced to go along with it in order to keep the 50% funding promised by Waka Kotahi NZTA.
Tory Whanau said she is so committed to the Golden Mile that she is willing to lose the election over it. That’s a rare and admirable example of a politician putting the kaupapa ahead of their career – but it should be a flashing red light something has gone wrong with the council’s approach to urbanism. Upgrading a dilapidated main street shouldn’t have to be career suicide for a mayor.
It hasn’t always been this way. The original Cuba Street pedestrianisation was the result of an unintentional trial. Cuba Street was closed to traffic in 1965 while the council removed the tram lines, which gave pedestrians the chance to experience Cuba Street without vehicles. Business owners noticed an increase in customers and some asked the council to make the change permanent. Only then did the pavers and diggers come in to make it permanent. It wasn’t universally popular, but it had a greater social license because people had the chance to test the change, and it could be framed as a request from the community rather than a council diktat.
This approach could still be applied today. I’d like to see the council introduce a contestable fund where business and resident groups can bid for some money – say $100,000 or so – to trial small but effective upgrades to their street. It could be as little as some hanging lights and street art, or as much as a full closure of the street to vehicle traffic. There are several other similar funds, including City Growth Fund focused on events, but nothing specific to street changes.
Janette Sadik-Khan, the former New York transport chief who visited Wellington last year, is a champion of this approach, known as tactical urbanism. “The proof is in the project,” she likes to say. Some people will never be convinced until they see the change with their own eyes, so the key is to make it happen as quickly as possible. When Sadik-Khan oversaw the pedestrianisation of Times Square, she trialled the change with street paint and 376 folding chairs from a homeware store. Only once it was tested and measured did New York spend $55 million on a permanent change.
Before Wellington City Council repeats the mistakes of the Golden Mile on Cuba Street, it would be worth remembering the lessons of the past. Temporarily closing the section of Cuba Street between Ghuznee and Victoria Streets for a couple of weeks would only require a traffic resolution and a few bollards. You could put a few planter boxes and picnic tables in the middle, some boxes of chalk for kids to draw on the street, and see what happens. If this had been done years ago on Courtenay Place, it could have avoided a lot of drama.
