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(Image: Archi Banal)
(Image: Archi Banal)

SocietySeptember 5, 2022

NZ’s most walkable towns and cities ranked: How does yours stack up?

(Image: Archi Banal)
(Image: Archi Banal)

A study of 42 areas nationwide has revealed where amenities are most easily accessible on foot, and where urban design is forcing people into cars, whether they like it or not.

Explore the 10 Minute City project here

If you live in a city or town, you have a mental map of the places you travel to most. But how accessible are those places, and how long does it take you to get there? Most of all, could you do everything you need to do without a car?

These are the kinds of questions advocates for more liveable urban areas are asking now with greater urgency. Climate change, rising fuel costs and social connectedness are driving the move towards “15-minute cities” – although the actual number of minutes can vary depending on a city’s ambition.

Copenhagen, for instance, is aiming to be a five-minute city, while Melbourne is opting for 10. New Zealand cities are also getting on board, with Christchurch and Wellington wanting to be 15-minute cities, and Hamilton a 20-minute city.

Christchurch has set itself a goal of becoming a ’15-minute city’ (Photo: Marty Melville/AFP via Getty Images)

The idea is not that you can get across an entire city in that time, rather that your own neighbourhood has everything you need within reach by foot, bike or public transport. For simplicity, we just call it the “x-minute neighbourhood”.

Our recently published research evaluates all of New Zealand’s urban areas and compares them with the largest 500 cities in the US for residents’ proximity to daily needs. So, how do they currently stack up and what are some of the key challenges?

How we measured accessibility

New Zealand’s emission reduction plan requires a 20% decrease in urban vehicle travel by 2035. This shift towards sustainable transport modes will also require changes to the form of our urban areas.

New transport strategies are beginning to reflect this. But how do cities evaluate urban change, measure the impact of proposed development, or effectively retrofit existing neighbourhoods?

By evaluating New Zealand’s 42 urban areas and the largest 500 US cities, our goal was to propose a consistent and transparent approach for reporting. We also wanted to help cities make the transition to sustainable urban design effectively and efficiently.

We developed a dashboard to show the proximity of neighbourhood blocks (the smallest geographical unit in the New Zealand census) to their nearest amenities. If you live in one of these urban areas you can check out your neighbourhood’s accessibility using our interactive guide.

The dashboard enables councils to understand accessibility (and lack of it) in their towns and the neighbourhoods within them. Our ongoing research aims to identify the locations with the best accessibility, which should help with incentives and guidance for new development.



Mixed messages

So how do New Zealand cities rate? Wellington is the most accessible, with 61% of residents living within 15 minutes’ walk of the amenities we studied. But this pales next to New York (88%) and San Francisco (73%).

Auckland has only 43% of residents within 15 minutes of core amenities. Hamilton (with the goal of becoming a 20-minute city) scored 39%. And Christchurch (with an unofficial target of 15 minutes) also came in at 39%.

Notably, it is access to the supermarket that is most detrimental to a city’s score. Accessible grocery stores are a key part of walkable neighbourhoods, and without them we’ll never achieve transport emission goals.

It’s disappointing, then, that this important factor was overlooked in the Commerce Commission’s review of the supermarket sector. This failure to factor in climate change to industry and competition policy was underscored by the prime ministerial visit to US bulk retailer Costco on its arrival in New Zealand.

This type of car-dependent development is the antithesis of walkable, sustainable neighbourhoods, and of the government’s emissions reduction plan.

Wellington is NZ’s most accessible city: 61% of residents live within 15 minutes’ walk of the amenities we studied. (Photo Getty Images)

The benefits of accessible neighbourhoods

The primary motivation for better urban design is to encourage active transport modes and reduce reliance on cars. But the benefits far exceed transport emissions alone.

Increased social cohesion is one co-benefit. In Paris, they call this form of urbanism “neighbourhoods of proximities” because they’re increasing proximity between people and places, but also between people themselves. This improves social connection and has mental health benefits.

Public health is another benefit. Studies have shown Barcelona’s approach (which also prioritises active transportation through urban design) has avoided around 700 premature deaths a year due to reductions in air pollution, noise and heat, and increases in physical activity.

There are also huge benefits for young, older and lower income families who become less reliant on cars. There are flow-on benefits in the form of economic vibrancy and urban safety, too.

Getting out of our cars

Finally, we also need to ask whether 20-minute and 15-minute neighbourhoods can achieve the benefits they seek. In reality, how likely are people to walk 20 minutes carrying groceries? Studies from overseas suggest much shorter distances between homes and amenities might be needed.

This will vary depending on the person, their age and fitness. But it will also depend on the amenities themselves. We might be happy to bike or walk further to school, for example, than we would be to walk home from the grocery store.

So while the concept of the 15-minute or 20-minute city might be useful to communicate a broad vision and bring people together, it shouldn’t be taken too literally.

The greater aim should be to improve accessibility as much as possible to reduce our dependence on cars and reclaim our neighbourhoods for people. This will benefit our health, sustainability and communities.

Tom Logan is a lecturer of civil systems engineering at the University of Canterbury

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Keep going!
Hospi has cheered a generation of kids at Wellington hospital (Image: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Hospi has cheered a generation of kids at Wellington hospital (Image: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

SocietySeptember 5, 2022

Hospi the lion sees his Wellington Hospital role restructured

Hospi has cheered a generation of kids at Wellington hospital (Image: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
Hospi has cheered a generation of kids at Wellington hospital (Image: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

As a symbol he’s dated and easily outclassed by the Kaitiaki Whānau, a new cast of cartoon characters designed to lend support to tamariki at Wellington Hospital’s new children’s health service Te Wao Nui. But Hospi the lion has put in the years, and won’t be easily dismissed.

When my daughter is admitted, everything about the hospital fills me with dread, boredom and fear. I’ve even developed a secondary disgust for the incongruous items I’ve encountered in hospitals. I remember a faded, strung-out Pink Panther toy slouching in a blood clinic; a Donald Duck print on a white wall made sinister by its proximity to a disposable glove dispenser; a plaster of Paris guard dog exemplifying not protection and fortitude but imperfection and misfortune.

Inherently disturbing to me are the Royal Doulton tiles depicting fairy tale scenes still on display at the Wellington Children’s Hospital. Not only do they carry the eerie tones of the morality tales themselves, but they imply that nothing has changed in this hospital, that whatever was good enough for children a hundred years ago will do well enough for them now.

I have always found the juxtaposition of sterile healthcare apparatus and jolly children’s entertainment deeply unsettling. Healthcare is serious business. It is acute, extreme. We are in hospital during our worst moments. Why force levity onto this?

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— Deputy editor

So I should really hate Hospi, a cheery lion who has been a cheeky presence at the Wellington Hospital in various forms for a generation of children. But to me, he is a psychic complication: an extra prick of anxiety on already fraught Friday night. I don’t want to be here. I’m worried. I’m automatically suspicious of him. I’m not here for me, though, I’m here for my daughter. And she falls for him, hard.

Hospi. His name is a contraction of the word “hospital”. He is not even attempting to hide his association with the place. He exists only in relation to the sickness and pain. This should make him doubly repellent to me. But, as I’ve learned from many other examples of great 21st century art and culture, he’s not FOR me. Hospi is for the children.

Hospi is an uncomplicated hero. He is a lion and lions are brave. He can do an ollie and ride an elephant. He has no sidekick, and he has no voice. His paw prints guide visitors around the hospital. Here he is, presented in bright clear wall decals, popping his head up Kilroy-style above a set of double doors. Look! There he is again, in a racing car, a hot air balloon… pulling the night sky down outside an operating theatre. Check out this one where he’s struggling to carry a urine sample! See him here, pulling off a rad kick flip above your daughter’s bed in the children’s A&E.

The lion character was developed in soft toy form in 2008, with the wall design debuting in 2012. He is available for purchase from the gift shop, and is often given to children who have been, or need to be, especially brave.

“After her first few visits we started refusing the soft toys,” says the parent of one child who is a frequent visitor to the hospital, “But once she was old enough to be aware of everything we started accepting them again. They’re a way of marking her journey. Now she has a whole pride of them.”

As well as the toys and the wall decals, there is also a Hospi mascot who shows up to offer mute support and representation at public events, and whose design splits the difference between the familiar figure on the walls and the more generic-looking toy version. There is a visual disconnect here, but it never dips into the uncanny valley the way that, say, the early versions of Disney or Simpsons characters can. Three subtly different versions of the figure exist side by side by side in a hospital, and kids love them.

Hospi clutching a urine sample. (Photo: Jonny Potts)

The character on the walls was designed in a week or so by someone at Weta Workshop who knew what they were doing. This is this version of Hospi that children are most likely to encounter first: a series of pictures inside a building where they don’t want to be. He lacks backstory and his character is literally two dimensional. His universe does not expand. Hospi may only have been around in this form for ten years – not even the full span of a single childhood – but he has proven himself to be consistently calming, encouraging and fun. And he has just been saved from retirement.

The new regional children’s hospital for Wellington, Te Wao Nui, is introducing a new gang of characters to help children with their time in hospital: the Kaitiaki Whānau. The “little guardians are here to help tamariki and rangatahi… to a healthy future”.​ There are nine of them: a true galaxy of guardians.

The kaitiaki are modelled after the flowers, sprouts and blossoms of native plants, and each has a specific area of responsibility. One of them, Kaha, appears poised to challenge Hospi for the bravery portfolio. Piko will be in charge of “wayfinding” and may render Hospi’s guiding pawprints obsolete. Tiaki, a cute little pōhutakawa blossom, is already making themselves known around the hospital, stepping up to become the comforting, welcoming face of the Te Wao Nui.

The Kaitiaki Whānau, nine “little guardians” of the tamariki who visit Te Wao Nui. (Image: Wellington Hospitals Foundation)

The introduction of characters specific to Aotearoa seems right, and the overhaul of the regional facility provides apposite timing. Come to think of it, was a lion ever the right creature to fill such a role? Sure, it does make a lot of sense on the surface: as well as the cross-cultural “bravery” shorthand, the lion is associated, by some, with Wellington. That association, though, comes via England, which has about as many lions in the wild as Newtown does. The lion’s majesty and nobility has been co-opted, and now symbolises those very traits in the heraldry of the empire that colonised this country.

Maybe these concerns were in the air earlier this year, when word around the wards was that Hospi was to be “retired”. It appeared there was no way to have the native botanical guardians and the imported apex predator share the same spaces. Hospi was old, and he was outnumbered. The stage was set for a full scale changing of the guardians.

I’m happy to report that, according to the Wellington Hospitals Foundation, Hospi will be “working with his new friends Tiaki, Kowhai, Piko and all the other kaitiaki/guardians of the new Te Wao Nui Child Health Service”. Things are changing at the hospital, but Hospi is not being left behind.

It is unclear exactly what Hospi’s new role will look like, but it appears he has built up so much goodwill among children, caregivers and staff that he will live on in some form when Te Wao Nui opens in October. He has worked hard, and he deserves to take it a little easier. Hospi will no longer be expected to carry the burden of care for the capital’s children on his own. No longer does this lion, the King of Symbols, have to mean everything to every child. Hospi will have a whole new whānau to help him. I’m glad that they are already friends.

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