It’s been a very weird week in Wel­ling­ton where we’re think­ing actu­ally Chris Bish­op has done good for once with the Dis­trict Plan? Very strange pos­i­tion to be in. Obvi­ously, city coun­cilors who want a city for the liv­ing and future have pushed for this for a very long time, but I don’t think it would be an exag­ger­a­tion to say that The Spinoff’s War For Wel­ling­ton  and Joel Mac­Manus’s pas­sion­ate, in-depth and digest­ible writ­ing on the sub­ject played a large part in shap­ing pub­lic con­scious­ness around the issues involved. So how do we reward someone for a job well done? We ask them to explain them­selves, of course. Let’s find out more about Joel. 

Did you grow up in Wel­ling­ton? We’re not the Christ­ch­urchista so we won’t ask what school you went to, but we’d love to know more about your his­tory with this city.

Nope. I grew up in Nel­son and went to uni in Duned­in before mov­ing to Wel­ling­ton in 2018 to start a job with Stuff/The Post. To be hon­est, I didn’t have a super strong reas­on to move to Wel­ling­ton – it was mostly because my part­ner grew up here and I had a lot of friends here. It felt like home really quickly, though. Work­ing for the loc­al paper forces you to get to know a city really quickly. Wel­ling­ton has a great cul­ture for young pro­fes­sion­als; I’ve met so many smart and inter­est­ing people doing all kinds of weird things. Wel­ling­ton reminds me a lot of Nel­son, which is a com­par­is­on that might sur­prise some people giv­en the weath­er and topo­graph­ic­al dif­fer­ences. The two cit­ies were both settled by the New Zea­l­and Com­pany with­in a year of each oth­er, so if you look closely, they share a lot of the same his­tor­ic­al and urb­an design fun­da­ment­als, Wel­ling­ton is just big­ger and more developed.

We first really noticed you when the Spinoff launched the War for Wel­ling­ton. Where had you been work­ing before that?

I was pre­vi­ously at RNZ as a pro­du­cer for Morn­ing Report, before that I worked Stuff/The Post, mostly cov­er­ing coun­cil, trans­port, and infra­struc­ture issues in Wel­ling­ton. I got my start in journ­al­ism in Duned­in as part of Crit­ic Te Arohi (the best stu­dent magazine in the coun­try), includ­ing a year full time as Edit­or.

What are a couple of your pieces that you’re most proud of, and why?

The entire War for Wel­ling­ton series has obvi­ously been a huge high­light for me. It was incred­ible see­ing how many people became so pas­sion­ately inter­ested in zon­ing reform. I always felt there was an oppor­tun­ity to turn the Dis­trict Plan into a huge story, but we had to cov­er it dif­fer­ently, in a way only The Spinoff could. The story def­in­itely got a boost once the IHP reports were released though, I nev­er expec­ted them to be quite that weird!

This piece about the people build­ing Wellington’s cycle­way net­work is anoth­er I was quite proud of. Cycle­ways are often covered in a lazy, con­flict driv­en way, with pho­tos of angry loc­als with their arms crossed. But I felt there was a big­ger story here; Wel­ling­ton is tak­ing a genu­inely innov­at­ive approach and doing some really inter­est­ing things to change its trans­port net­work.

I also have to men­tion a pro­file I wrote for Stuff about Wel­ling­ton cli­mate sci­ent­ist Dave Lowe. He’s a rel­at­ively low-pro­file guy, but his research was truly ground­break­ing for humanity’s early under­stand­ing of cli­mate change. It was actu­ally quite haunt­ing talk­ing to him about it – he knew 50 years ago that human activ­it­ies were chan­ging the cli­mate, and he spent his life weighed down by this know­ledge while no one else listened.

For­get that shit about journ­al­ists sup­posed to be object­ive – what are three actu­ally pos­sible things that would really improve Wel­ling­ton?

Cit­ies grow from the centre out­wards, right? You can think of urb­an design like the sol­ar sys­tem. The CBD is the sun, the most power­ful grav­it­a­tion­al force that everything else centres itself around. The most bang-for-your-buck thing we can do to improve Wel­ling­ton is to improve the amen­ity of the city centre. That’s the area that the most people vis­it every day, and the area that gives the city its core eco­nom­ic value.

  1. We des­per­ately need to upgrade the Golden Mile, espe­cially Cour­tenay Place. The cur­rent pro­ject has been an abso­lute night­mare. To be hon­est, it’s embar­rass­ing that it has taken this long and we are still talk­ing about it. I think some of the debate about cars vs buses has been a dis­trac­tion. The most import­ant thing is that it needs a visu­al spruce-up that will make it a more appeal­ing place to spend time.
  2. Cuba Street is sim­il­ar. It’s a hugely valu­able and pop­u­lar piece of pub­lic space. It could use an refresh. I’d love to see the ped­es­tri­an­ised areas expan­ded to include upper and lower Cuba Street.
  3. Aro Park is anoth­er area I’ve writ­ten about that could be much bet­ter than it is. The wider foot­paths on Dix­on Street have helped, along with the safety efforts from the Poneke Prom­ise team. It’s gone from a net neg­at­ive to neut­ral, but the park has a long way to go before it reaches its true poten­tial.

Let’s start a fight: in your expert opin­ion, what’s the best sub­urb in Wel­ling­ton and why?

I love liv­ing in New­town. It’s vibrant, inter­est­ing, and mul­ti­cul­tur­al. It’s an example of a fif­teen minute city, where you can get almost everything you need for daily life with­in a quick walk.

Finally, who do you think we should pro­file on our site next?

Tait Burge

(Edit­or: we’ll slide into his DMs and see if we can make that hap­pen!)