Having only arrived in Dunedin in April last year after moving here from the United Kingdom, I have never seen George St in anything other than a state of disrepair.
However, to my mind, its revamping strikes me as a missed opportunity.
Rather than full-fledged pedestrianisation, the lion’s share of space, it seems, has been retained by cars. The central thoroughfare is a road and there is significant (short-term) car-parking space all along the edge.
To be sure, the curbs have gone, the speed of traffic has been significantly reduced and there are a few extra places to sit — just a few feet from passing cars — but pedestrians have, once again, lost out in the battle for spatial supremacy.
Like most New Zealand cites, efforts to turn Dunedin into a more walkable city are not blessed with an especially auspicious starting point.
Much of Dunedin’s urban growth occurred at a time when the automobile was becoming the preferred mode of transport. In European cities, the existence of older, denser urban forms meant the laying down of highways and carparks to service cars was a more laborious prospect, requiring the displacement of communities who resisted those impositions.
By contrast, Dunedin’s earlier urban forms were characterised by ample empty space into which the city could expand. To this day, the city’s density remains very low at only 420 per sq km in the urban area.
Of course, this is not to say that Europe has been free from attempts to drastically change cities in ways that favour cars. The only narrowly defeated proposed ring-road in London is a case in point. Many of Europe’s younger cities, especially those that grew in the post-war period, have been shaped by the dominance of the car.
Nevertheless, there are also examples of these cities moving beyond this dominance. For example, during the 1970s the Finnish city of Lahti experienced significant industrialisation, urbanisation, and expansion. Just as in New Zealand, the preferred mode of transport at that time was the car and the city was, just like Dunedin, built around that preference.
However, fast forward to 2021 and Lahti is the recipient of Europe’s Green Capital award. Alongside reducing reliance on coal and the cleaning up of its lake, a major plank of its renewal was the creation of pedestrian and cycling-only routes, coupled with extensive pedestrianisation of the city centre and investments in public transport.
But in truth we do not need to look as far afield as Finland to realise what a carless city centre will do for Dunedinites. One of the nicer places to have a wander in Dunedin city centre is the university, precisely because cars have been blocked out. In addition, and for the same reason, the harbour cycleway is a superb initiative to create a safe corridor for cyclists and commuters.
Unfortunately, within New Zealand I have observed significant resistance to any movement to create a society and a culture where driving (and parking) is made more difficult, unpleasant and expensive.
Indeed, the sentiment expressed by Margaret Thatcher — "if a man finds himself a passenger on a bus having attained the age of 26, he can count himself a failure in life" — seems alive and well in Dunedin. Moreover, in a democracy, there is an obvious need to respond to the needs and wants of the people as those people perceive them.
However, given that transport emissions are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 70% of our transport emissions are from cars, SUVs, utes, vans and light trucks, such preferences are the very definition of an "expensive taste".
One possible reply to this particular expensive taste is to invest in the technology we need to fashion a world where more or less everything stays the same, except that our cars will be electric and sustainable.
However, in reality, as economic anthropologist Jason Hickel has reported, to "transition the current global fleet of 2billion vehicles to electric will require extracting 24million tonnes of lithium" which will have "catastrophic ecological consequences".
Electric cars offer only a partial solution. We also need to produce fewer cars and figure out how to move around — both within and between our cities — without them. This involves design concepts like 15-minute cities, investment in public transport both inter and intra-city, and restrictions on car use.
George St seems like a compromise between those who love their cars and those who prefer cities where people can get around without them. The compromise, I am sure, has also occurred within one and the same person. In a democracy, when other people persist with preferences — like driving everywhere — that one just knows should not be honoured, it is hard to know how to proceed. I am aware that that is condescending, but it makes me no less certain.
Of course, with the place of honour in George St still reserved for cars, the opportunity to do something with the physical design of that space has gone.
Nevertheless, one possibility is to introduce pedestrian-only weekends — which occur in Brussels, for example — which can, perhaps, be supported by cost-free buses to give people a taste of what a carless city centre might like look.
Whatever we do to make the city more walkable, I am sure even those most committed to driving will learn to love it.
— David Jenkins is an Otago politics lecturer who researches the interactions between urban design, sociability, and politics.
