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]