“Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries
In the wise words of Mr. Payne, my time spent in New Zealand has been an adventure in fitting in, in sticking out, and exploring who I am all in the context of various cities. I find I fit in pretty well with the Upper Hutt City Council team. They are young, they are passionate about cities and making them holistically great, and they work hard. Even if I have to ask them to repeat themselves (and them to me) as we overcome accent barriers, I feel comfortable in the office. They even gave me my own desk! Without a doubt, I feel like there may not be many other offices I would enjoy working in more, especially abroad. Globalinks really came through for me. One funny side note, for two weeks now I’ve heard almost daily about the famous Pavlova cake. I finally tried some, didn’t really like it, and they threatened to deport me. Fortunately they were just joking.
Upper Hutt is a cool town to be in. I read a lot about it before hand and got the feeling that it was very much a family-oriented suburb of Wellington. Although many locals vie to support the independence of Upper Hutt in the region, when 50% of the population leave every day to work elsewhere it’s hard to justify that “independence”. On the other hand, Upper Hutt has a perfect slogan speaking to its identity: “A great place to live.” Like I mentioned it is a very family oriented, bedroom community. There are pretty great parks (like the one below) and trails that weave through the town connecting it with Lower Hutt and even Petone near Wellington. There’s a pretty consistent bus system that can take you reliably around the town that I’ve made good use of several times a week. There’s also a fairly inexpensive commuter rail that takes those other 50% to Wellington for their jobs or people like me to Wellington for nights out and long-distance transportation stops. And better yet for all the auto enthusiasts in town, I’ve identified at least several dozen car mechanics in across town. I just hope that over time that Upper Hutt become not just a great place to live, but a great place to live and work and recreate and dine and celebrate and be for all hours of the day.
Speaking of which, my workdays have been spent deeply engrained in Excel and ArcMap 10.1 as I sort and enter data for over 300 properties across the city zoned “Business Industrial.” I am hoping to identify, with the help of Matt a full-time planner and Steve my manager, key properties to be developed in the short term as the team rewrites the Upper Hutt Urban Growth Strategy. The work reminds me of some research I did last October on vacant industrial brownfield buildings in Memphis which keeps me excited about the results that may soon come. So far, there’s not a lot out there aside from a couple of huge swatches of vacant land near Alexander Road and Park Street. As I get more results in, I’ll be sure to put up another blog next week.
Stay tuned also for a thrilling post during the weekend about my travels to Rotorua, the adventure capital of the North Island!
Reflections of an Urbanist 