Vot­ing in the Fourth Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Awards is open from Decem­ber 1–15. Then come find out the results at our Awards Night at Mighty Mighty on Decem­ber 17!

To vote, vis­it this page.

Welling­ton is awe­some, no doubt about it, but we still have ideas about what would make it even more awe­somer. We use this cat­e­go­ry to gauge pub­lic opin­ion about what’s most impor­tant. 

A liquor store that deliv­ers at night: The par­ty is rockin’ and reel­in’ in Welling­ton, New Zealand (RIP Lux Inte­ri­or) and you realise the sup­ply of hooch is dan­ger­ous­ly low. Instead of find­ing out where the sober dri­ver has gone to (mak­ing-out upstairs) you speed-dial the Deliv­ery Liquor Out­let and the par­ty is saved! Sad­ly this is all a fic­tion because in real­i­ty there is no liquor store that deliv­ers (and you don’t actu­al­ly have any friends).

Bet­ter pub­lic trans­port: There’s one theme that emerged in many guis­es in our read­er’s sug­ges­tions, and that’s pub­lic trans­port. Trains and bus­es need to be inte­grat­ed, reli­able, fast, con­ve­nient and — not to put too fine a point on it — not falling to bits.

Bike lanes: The oth­er trans­port theme that came out of the nom­i­na­tions was cycling, and in par­tic­u­lar the need for more ded­i­cat­ed bike lanes. Welling­to­ni­ans are great walk­ers, and put up with the short­com­ings of pub­lic trans­port, but apart from a few ded­i­cat­ed souls, few of us bike. Per­haps a good net­work of safe, con­ve­nient bike paths will be what it takes to get to crit­i­cal mass.

More peo­ple: We are going to go out on a limb here and nom­i­nate “more peo­ple in the inner city” for the most need­ed cat­e­go­ry. Our read­ers have nom­i­nat­ed peo­ple-watch­ing var­i­ous kinds of drunk­en idio­cy under the “best reg­u­lar enter­tain­ment” cat­e­go­ry, wit­ness:

  • Drunk­en bridge and tun­nel bogans on Courte­nay Place
  • Watch­ing new­com­ers’ reac­tions to Blan­ket Man
  • Watch­ing the emo kids rolling around the ground on Man­ners Mall (soon to be no more)
  • Green teens get­ting boozed on Courte­nay.

Hill­l­lar­i­ous! While drink­ing is arguably an inescapable part of inner city cul­ture, what we are envi­sion­ing is a well-planned, flour­ish­ing peo­ple-friend­ly city, com­fort­ably crammed with peo­ple. What we have now but more so. While we will nev­er be Tokyo or New York (in spite of what those New­town T‑shirts say), we could aspire to be a small but per­fect­ly formed city that attracts more poten­tial “Welling­to­ni­ans of the Year”. More peo­ple would also be a boon for those of us who feel, from time to time, that Welling­ton is too much of a vil­lage.

A wet house: Con­grat­u­la­tions, NIM­BYs of Island Bay. You suc­ceed­ed in block­ing a safe place for incur­able home­less alco­holics to live in. Here’s hop­ing an alter­na­tive loca­tion can be found.