From the ‘Recla­ma­tion of Welling­ton Har­bour’ Wikipedia arti­cle, here’s an ani­ma­tion by Matt Lane that shows the var­i­ous stages of the city’s expan­sion sea­wards over the last cen­tu­ry and a half.

reclamation of wellington harbour animation

The recla­ma­tion of Welling­ton Har­bour was a phased approach (start­ing in the 1850s) of land recla­ma­tion from the Welling­ton Har­bour. The orig­i­nal goal of the recla­ma­tion was to increase the amount of usable flat land for Welling­ton City. The moti­va­tion of lat­ter recla­ma­tions in the 1960s and 1970s was as a response to con­tain­er ship­ping (con­tainer­i­sa­tion) and new car­go han­dling meth­ods. Today, recla­ma­tion has added more than 155 hectares to the Welling­ton

[Via Mira­mar Mike]