Twenty-three year old Tommy de Silva dreams up a hopeful, sustainable future for Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland, 50 years into the future.

The year is 2074, and I am 74 years old. I must be getting sentimental in my old age since last night I dreamt of my grandfather explaining how much Tāmaki Makaurau-Auckland changed over his lifetime. As I wake up from my time machine, my dream inspires me to teach my mokos how much my hometown and tūrangawaewae has changed during my life. I tell my AI assistant to check which grandkid wants to be lectured today, and my granddaughter Moeroa responds. Our first stop will be Te Manukanuka o Hoturoa (Te Manuka for short), known in my youth incorrectly as the Manukau Harbour, our once polluted but now replenished ancestral moana and source of mauri for our Waiohua iwi.

To get there, we’ll use Dominion Road’s light rail, part of what is now a fully-fledged light rail network spanning Māngere to Silverdale. It has been half a century since the now-dead Labour and National parties squabbled over whether Auckland should reinstate trams, the city’s public transport backbone in my grandparents’ youth. We begin our journey by bike, using the citywide safe, separated cycleway network built to combat Tāmaki’s once-treacherous traffic. As we ride, I explain to my moko how difficult it was in my youth to leisurely chat while cycling two abreast due to the lousy bike infrastructure. Nearing Dominion Road, I point out the vast multi-storey mixed-use development where New Zealand’s preeminent stadium, the long-gone Eden Park, used to sit.

From Dominion Road, we take the tram which, like all public transport, is free for under-25s like Moeroa and over-65s like me. At Māngere Bridge, we disembark to walk along Te Manuka’s shoreline. When I was Moeroa’s age, I tell her, I didn’t swim in our ancestral moana because it was so polluted. But the harbour’s mauri now resembles what my own nana knew as a tamariki, before the airport and the sewage plant (plopped on top of some of Tāmaki’s best shellfish beds) destroyed the ecosystem. Today, the water is always clean enough for swimming (with no heavy rainfall-induced sewage overflows because of improved pipes), and abundant kaimoana can once again be found in Te Manuka.

Replenishing the harbour’s mauri helped renew commercial interest in the Manukanuka shoreline, particularly on the Onehunga side. Now a waterfront hospitality and retail precinct there rivals those along Te Waitematā in the central city. Moeroa and I stop there for kai, crossing Ngā Hau Māngere along the way, before boarding a city-bound tram. Onboard, I tell my moko how turning up at a public transit stop expecting a frequent, reliable service was a privilege that just didn’t exist in my youth.

We get off the tram at Maungawhau station to summit its namesake mountain, one of the city’s OG green “skyscrapers” that inspired a building wave of nature-infused highrises. But climbing 196m is challenging for a 74-year-old like me, so Moeroa has a bright idea. “Can we scooter up?” she asks. Maungawhau station, like all Auckland public transit hubs, has a dedicated fleet of rental bikes/scooters to solve the wretched last-mile problem that historically limited buses, trams, trains and ferries reach. At Maungawhau’s tihi, Moeroa identifies the river-like channels of busways, cycleways, tramlines and parks that outline the CBD in a wonky upside-down triangle. I explain that those channels were the CBD’s inner-city motorways that were removed or undergrounded to promote bike/scooter and public transport use. While these former highways may resemble riverbeds, from atop Maungawhau, Moeroa points out the CBD’s actual awa, Te Waihorotiu – our next stop.

While scootering towards Karanga-a-Hape – bastardised to just “K’ Road” in my youth before te reo Māori was made compulsory in schools – Moeroa asks if the city was always as peaceful as it is now. My answer encompasses the effects of congestion charging and the national ban on fossil fuel cars a few decades ago. Having parked our scooters at Karanga-a-Hape station – to the sound of birdsong and not cars like in my youth – we walk through St Kevins Arcade, via Mercury Lane’s pedestrian plaza, and into Myers Park. It’s a place which has changed dramatically since I went to kindergarten here 70 years ago.

Today, the ancient awa Te Waihorotiu, forced underground two centuries ago, flows again through Myers Park, Aotea Square and Queen Street into Te Waitematā. Sitting on its bank, Moeroa and I discuss how Te Waihorotiu resurfaced. She vaguely remembers learning in school about a deadly 2020s deluge, which, after many years of fruitless political debate, inspired the city to daylight undergrounded awa. Not only do the resurfaced rivers ensure Auckland is better prepared for extreme rain, but they imbue it with te taiao’s beauty.

When my achy joints finally permit me to rise from the bank, Moeroa leads us along the river’s calming course towards Te Waitematā, whose mauri, much like Te Manukanuka o Hoturoa’s, has now been restored. Nearing the harbour, we avoid the cargo-bike deliveries that have become synonymous with supplying CBD stores since the area was made car-free. At the foreshore, we admire the plentiful mussel pots that filter runoff before entering the harbour.

I look eastward along the waterfront, where the old port has been replaced by public space and Eden Park’s successor stadium – a better-designed building than the silly “sunken stadium” that ignored sea level rise. Moeroa notices the imposing Auckland Harbour Bridge to our west. “Can we bike up the old bridge?” she asks. “The view from up there is so much better than on the new one!”. Grabbing rental bikes at Waitematā station (once called Britomart), we pedal towards and then up the old harbour bridge. At its apex, I explain to Moeroa how fortunate she is to cross Te Waitematā other than on a bus, car or ferry. When I was her age, Aucklanders only cycled or walked this bridge during marathons or protests. Pedestrian and cycle access to the bridge had been repeatedly promised, and postponed, since the era when my nana, then a schoolgirl, walked the bridge during its 1959 christening.

Atop the old bridge, I gaze westward, seeing dense housing corridors along train and tram lines, while Moeroa tugs at my shirt. “Um, aren’t we supposed to meet grandma in Whangaparāoa soon?” she says. We pedal northward to the nearest station on the northern light rail line, which used to be a busway that went only as far as Albany. Unlike when I was Moeroa’s age, we’re not worried about leaving our own bikes parked on Dominion Road overnight, thanks to the safe and secure citywide bicycle storage.

Onboard the tram, we’re heading for our Whangaparāoa transfer bus at the PenLink. By the point we pass the old Takapuna Golf Course, which was developed to maximise Smales Farm station’s catchment, I’m starting to doze off. In my dream, this time, I am greeted by my younger self. While he is happy that today I can take our mokos on a Tāmaki tiki tour via sustainable transport, he has one pressing and pertinent question. “In the face of the climate crisis, economic hardship and the pollution of our ancestral moana and whenua, why did it take our city so goddamn long to take sustainability seriously?”

This is Public Interest Journalism funded by NZ On Air.