Category: Urban sprawl
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Browns Bay, Auckland
Today we took Dad to Browns Bay, a beach suburb on Auckland’s North Shore. Once upon a time it was a summer holiday destination for Aucklanders wanting to get away from the city, but as the city expanded geographically, it engulfed this pocket and turned it into another suburb of Auckland. Now it’s very popular […]
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Parking for five cars
There’s an article in the NZ Herald this week, Auckland house prices vs world’s, which compares the median house price in Auckland – a whopping $670,000 – with other similarly priced homes around the world. The house chosen for comparison in Auckland, is a $675,000 five-bedroom, three-bathroom house in the suburb of New Windsor. New […]
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Bicycle versus helicopter
Now that I no longer have a child under the age of three, I find myself re-engaging with popular culture after a six-year hiatus. So please forgive me for writing about an event from September, 2009. Back then, I was heavily pregnant and deeply buried in dirty nappies. Back in 2009, a challenge was presented […]
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Housing in Auckland
There is much talk in Auckland at the moment about how to provide affordable housing for a growing population. Should the city continue with the urban sprawl that it is notoriously renowned for? Or should it densify and become more compact? I’m sure everyone can guess my thoughts on the matter. Urban sprawl = depression, […]
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Auckland has a mother-in-law problem
Yesterday afternoon my fab husband babysat so that I could enjoy a could of hours skating at the ice rink. It was great exercise without feeling like exercise because it was fun and there was no risk of keeling over with heat stroke. This is how exercise should be. I could avoid the heat stroke […]
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How to save the world by bicycle
I have a solution for all of society’s ills. It involves getting fat arses out of cars and onto bicycles. If I were Prime Minister, I’d redirect our colossal spending on roads and motorways to spending on cycling infrastructure instead. When I say cycling infrastructure, I don’t mean painted lines on roads or share-and-care footpaths, […]
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More scenes from Auckland, frogs and play
More scenes from Auckland as viewed from inside our car (most of Auckland is viewed from within one’s car): I watched a great TED talk yesterday titled, Science is for everyone, kids included. It’s delivered by an adult, Beau Lotto, and a12-year-old girl, Amy O’Toole, who is the youngest published scientist in the world. There are […]
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The lurid shopping mall
I have been highly critical of the urban shopping mall of late and I thought it might be worthwhile exploring how this monstrosity came into existence. The very first shopping mall, Southdale Mall, was opened in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota as the creation of an Austrian-born architect name Victor Gruen. With a Jewish background, he […]
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The biggest public health problem of the developed world
Governments the world over are making leaps and bounds in the fight against smoking. Australia recently banned brand labelling on cigarette packets, the UK is running a campaign called Stoptober next month and there are increasingly fewer and fewer public spaces in which a smoker can light-up. But is smoking really the biggest public health […]
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What’s wrong with urban sprawl?
One of my complaints about Auckland is its urban sprawl. But Auckland is not alone in possessing this, there are many other cities in the world with this characteristic flaw, like my home town of Brisbane, and I am equally critical of those places. I disklike urban sprawl and in this blog post, I will […]
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Could Auckland be hell?
If hell is featureless suburbia, concrete motorways and soulless shopping malls, then Auckland is it.
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I want to ride my bike…..
I want to ride my bike with my two-year-old sitting in her seat on the back. She loves it. I love it. I want to ride my bike to save money on petrol. I want to ride my bike to reduce my greenhouse gas emissions. I want to ride my bike to help prevent depression […]
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Poo and morons at the helm
Elizabeth pooed on the back terrace the other day and she grabbed my arm and took me outside to see it. Then she pointed at her poo and said, “I did a dog-poo”. Ben’s Dad came to visit last weekend and he’s just left this afternoon for Christchurch. He’s off to see Christchurch as an […]
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