The Welling­ton City Coun­cil is seek­ing pub­lic input on how to guide the future growth and change of the Ade­laide Rd area. This is a vital­ly impor­tant part of town (espe­cial­ly now that the Welling­ton­ista seems to be turn­ing into the New­town­ista), and I invite you all to have a look at the detailed draft frame­work and imag­ine for your­self what this cur­rent­ly some­what neglect­ed dis­trict could become.

adelaide rd

But first, let’s clear up a few of the mis­con­cep­tions which could have been gleaned from the brief arti­cles in the press:

  • The “Ade­laide Rd” area does­n’t cov­er all of that road, just the stretch from the Basin Reserve to about John Street.
  • On the oth­er hand, it also expands to include the side streets, from Wal­lace St to Gov­ern­ment House grounds, so that the issue of how to blend between a large arte­r­i­al road and small­er-scale his­toric res­i­den­tial streets can be addressed.
  • Don’t take the artists’ impres­sions too lit­er­al­ly: they are just rough ideas of the scale and type of growth antic­i­pat­ed over sev­er­al decades, rather than actu­al designs.
  • It’s not just about wider roads! Yes, it sug­gests that Ade­laide Road will be widened in parts, main­ly to accom­mo­date bus/cycle lanes and a plant­ed medi­an, and with an eye to poten­tial light rail lines in the future. But there’s also been a huge amount of inves­ti­ga­tion and com­mu­ni­ty con­sul­ta­tion to inves­ti­gate all the aspects that make up a city: her­itage; ecol­o­gy; pub­lic spaces; bal­anc­ing res­i­den­tial, com­mer­i­cal and retail uses; walk­ing and cycling con­nec­tions; com­mu­ni­ty facil­i­ties. These maps show just some of that think­ing.

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You have just under a month to get involved, as sub­mis­sions close on the 10th of Octo­ber. Even if you don’t live there, com­mute through it or hang out at The Ade­laide or Space Thing, it’s worth tak­ing some time think­ing about how this dis­trict could live up to its full poten­tial.