But former mayor Sir Dove-Myer Robinson was well ahead of his time, and what Auckland Mayor Len Brown is now proposing would all be old hat to Sir Dove-Myer, who fought those battles 40 or 50 years ago.
John Edgar has produced a fascinating book on Sir Dove-Myer called Urban Legend, which will be an invaluable addition to the history of our largest city.
One of my late friends worked as a newspaper council roundsman in Auckland when Sir Dove-Myer was at the peak of his powers. He could always be relied upon to provide a pithy quote or two on a quiet Sunday afternoon when news lists were looking thin.
In November 1968, after a stunning comeback from political and personal misfortune three years earlier,Sir Dove-Myer was re-elected mayor of Auckland. When his fourth marriage ended messily and publicly, and after he had lost the 1965 election, most pundits saw him as a spent force politically, Edgar wrote.
But with his remarkable reversal of fortune, he returned to the mayoralty like a man possessed. He was soon barrelling through an official 12-city tour of North America - undertaken, in typical Robinson style, in a mere 18 days.
By 1968, he was on a crusade to develop a rapid rail system in Auckland, which was the purpose of his North American fact-finding mission.
Mayor Len Brown is on the same crusade in 2012.
Even as far back as 1952, Sir Dove-Myer was thinking about the environment by establishing the Auckland-based Organic Manures, which took various wastes, including much of Mt Roskill Borough's rubbish, and sold the compost through outlets in Te Papapa and Onehunga.
He was also a foundation member and advisory director of a private operation, Compost Dunedin Ltd, which ran up against stern resistance from local citizens. Sir Dove-Myer came to the conclusion Dunedin was simply too conservative.
"Getting custom in Dunedin was like tying to extract gold from an Aberdonian pavement," he wrote.
Later, he was involved in his most famous environmental battle - the crusade against plans to dump enormous volumes of raw sewage into Auckland's Waitemata Harbour.
As a politician, Sir Dove-Myer was in a league of his own. He faced down prime ministers and cabinet ministers totally opposed to his causes. He suffered prejudice because of his Jewish background and when he made enemies, they left nothing to chance in their campaigns to unseat him.
As a man, Sir Dove-Myer was less than admirable. His parenting skills were close to zero, except strangely later in life. His love life was tangled, to say the least.
However, this riveting account of one of New Zealand's famous characters is a must read.
- Dene Mackenzie is the political editor of the Otago Daily Times.
