The Open Space Plan

While the shape of this city is a curse for trans­porta­tion plan­ners, it is a bless­ing for any­one who even just occa­sion­al­ly wants to get out­side, because the city’s edges are close by and full of oppor­tu­ni­ty. We don’t all take advan­tage of this though. There’s lots of good and bad rea­sons why peo­ple don’t, […]

Save Kate – from who?

Walk­ing my daugh­ter to school on Tues­day morn­ing, I was hand­ed a fly­er on Lambton Quay – “Keep Kate!”. As kind of a fan of the Kate Shep­pard traf­fic lights, I took the fly­er – and saw that they “were under threat of removal” with a link to a peti­tion. I’d sign that! But turn­ing […]

The enlightened solution

(Guest cross-post from Gio­van­ni Tiso over at Bat, Bean, Beam. There’s also com­ments worth read­ing there in response too) In what you might choose to view as a coin­ci­dence, the cities of Auck­land and Welling­ton are both engaged in a fight to erad­i­cate street beg­ging. Not home­less­ness or pover­ty, mind you: just beg­ging. Auck­land will […]

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 […]

TAWA5 Best Contribution to the Internet from Wellington

Giv­en that Welling­ton is the web cap­i­tal of New Zealand, it makes sense that it’s full of peo­ple doing awe­some things with and for the web.

Think Big

The Welling­ton City Coun­cil is call­ing for new ideas for projects that could be fund­ed by the Plim­mer Bequest — a bequest for beau­ti­fy­ing Welling­ton’s bays, beach­es and reserves. The Ori­en­tal Bay Beach devel­op­ment was the last project to be fund­ed by the bequest. Projects that would be con­sid­ered include plant­i­ng trees, water fea­tures, scenic […]

Fix it!

Yes, just like Bob the Builder and Win­ston Peters, the Welling­ton City Coun­cil is ask­ing the ques­tion: Can we fix it? And appar­ent­ly, the answer is “yes we can”. The Coun­cil has recent­ly intro­duced a Fix It page to their (already excel­lent) web­site, where you can let the Coun­cil now of any prob­lems in your […]