Park(ing) Day 2015

The atti­tude around Park(ing) Day has changed dra­mat­ic­ally since I first got involved a few years ago. Where I was strug­gling with by-laws to work around not get­ting per­mis­sion to set up my space, WCC has now brought it into Parks Week and the Wel­ling­ton Sculp­ture Trust does the logist­ic­al man­age­ment. On March 11, a total […]

Park(ing) for People

Park(ing) Day is com­ing around again and this time there’s some offi­cial sup­port. Wel­ling­ton Sculp­ture Trust is call­ing for expres­sions of interest to join them on the day. The clos­ing date is August 12th (sorry for the late post­ing on this), so get those idea machines cook­ing. There are a total of 20 loc­a­tions that will be […]

Bond Street needs us

So I’ve been think­ing about Bond Street for a while. I’ll cred­it Coun­cil­lor Ian McKin­non for show­ing me what’s wrong with it. I happened to be speak­ing to him at a morn­ing tea break after giv­ing an oral present­a­tion to a coun­cil sub-com­mit­tee. He showed me a series of pho­tos that had been giv­en to […]

Wellington Night Markets

Before head­ing out on vaca­tion, I star­ted plan­ning for a nice photo-post of the Wel­ling­ton Night Mar­kets. I was dead keen to get it pho­to­graphed and writ­ten before head­ing home, but in my des­per­a­tion, I failed to string words togeth­er. So, this time I’m skip­ping the words and get­ting on with it. Bet­ter late than […]

Wellington Bus Review

This has been cross-pos­ted to Sus­tain­able Wel­ling­ton Trans­port. Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil is cur­rently con­sult­ing on the Wel­ling­ton City Bus Review. This is man­dated by the Region­al Pub­lic Trans­port Plan, which requires a review of trans­port ser­vices at least once every five years. The cur­rent shape of the net­work has exis­ted for dec­ades and the city […]

Public Transport Spine survey, last days

Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil and Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil have partnered with NZTA to invest­ig­ate the pub­lic trans­port cor­ridor that runs through the Wel­ling­ton CBD, between the rail­way sta­tion and the region­al hos­pit­al in New­town. The study is reas­on­ably com­pre­hens­ive: instead of look­ing at quick fixes, it’s ask­ing what we should be doing in the long […]

Parking Day update

After get­ting in touch with appro­pri­ate people from Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil to dis­cuss plans and get per­mis­sion, it has become obvi­ous that par­ti­cip­at­ing in Park(ing) Day is going to be dif­fi­cult. Bylaws gov­ern the use of vehicles in park­ing spaces with­in Wel­ling­ton. How­ever, I can­not find the spe­cif­ic bylaw implied by the officer I con­tac­ted: You […]

Sharing spaces

Fol­low­ing Auck­land’s lead, Wel­ling­ton has opened Lower Cuba Street as a shared space. There was­n’t much cel­eb­ra­tion or fan­fare bey­ond an art­icle in the Domin­ion Post about let­ting cars back in. Tech­nic­ally, I’m not sure if the “shared space” has been offi­cially opened, and I’m not really in the mood for cel­eb­rat­ing. The idea of […]

Exquisite Corpse

Perched upon the top of Cuba St, Thistle Hall is known for provid­ing Wel­ling­to­ni­ans with short bursts of visu­al arts. Exhib­its pack in and out again at a fren­et­ic pace, and if plan­ning and serendip­ity con­spire, treas­ures can be eas­ily missed. Take some time this week and get up to the cur­rent exhib­it. Exquis­ite Corpse draws its name from […]