"I stopped living here in 1997. Surprisingly not a lot has changed since then, urban-design wise. There have been small-scale upgrades to some of the main streets, little tweaks around the Octagon."
Ms Duncan (37) grew up in Dunedin before becoming a Fulbright scholar, moving to the United States, and spending seven years working as a senior urban designer at the New York City department of city planning.
Since 2014 she has been the director of the Global Designing Cities Initiative which compiled the best urban design practices from around the world into the Global Street Design Guide.
She will leave Dunedin this week after a visit in which she has been advising the city council, which organised a public talk she gave last Monday night.
Auckland was the first New Zealand city to endorse the street guide in May and Ms Duncan is confident Dunedin will be the second.A lesson to be learned from the latest rejected five-star hotel bid was for the city to understand what it wanted to be and proactively attract development, she said.
"When investment comes, what’s happened recently is that it’s been quite reactionary. The council needs to go out and tell investors what kind of things would be permissible, in terms of scale and design, so they don’t feel they will always get rejected."
The most exciting changes were happening in Dunedin’s warehouse district, she said.
"With the revitalisation and changing of the street scape, parts of Jetty St becoming pedestrian-only, it’s very exciting."
The best thing to do when considering new pedestrian-only or pedestrian-priority streets was to trial them.
"Sometimes we think a space might work as pedestrian-only and it doesn’t, but we can shut it down for a while and see if it does. It’s amazing what just some art and a few plants can do to bring people to a space.
"It’s controversial, but we need to make it harder for people to drive personal cars, but at the same time it’s very important to invest in sustainable mobility."
There were great opportunities in e-bike share, which could help people tackle Dunedin’s hills, and buses which worked like light rail to connect parts of the city.
Many of Dunedin’s streets were 3.5m to 4m wide, which was too much, she said.
"We’re using science based on highways for urban streets. It encourages cars to go too fast."
While it was great to see more bike lanes in the city, it was crucial new projects included physical barriers to protect cyclists, she said.
"Unless there’s something stopping a driver from veering over a white line, cyclists aren’t going to feel safe."
The continued revitalisation of Dunedin’s industrial areas and waterfront was inevitable, she said.
It would follow the trends of cities around the world where a rough industrial waterfront feel was maintained, but mixed with hotels, restaurants and mixed office spaces.
"I feel like we’re at a tipping point in Dunedin."
