Mike's Minute: The ideology for our cities will never be reality

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

Is it possible one of the great mistakes of the modern era has been made around our cities?

There are increasing areas of life in which the theory, the promise, or the dream is not only not coming to pass, but it's possible it never will

The EV industry globally is in a major state of flux. Any number of large producers have not only promised to stop selling engines by 2030-ish, they’ve now realised that’s not real so have had to back track. But they've also realised that all the money they didn’t spend on the next generation of engines has been lost and they now have to fill the gap.

Renewables are in a similar place. Larry Ellison this week told investors AI is so crazy when it comes to power consumption that they are building a data centre that will be run by three small nuclear reactors.

The world largely doesn’t have such reactors right now and it certainly doesn’t have the renewable capability to run data centres.

Then to downtown New Zealand. Reform of city centres was predicated on several theories; essentially, we wanted to save the planet while living like Europe.

What we have ended up with is downtown Auckland, downtown Tauranga, and downtown Wellington all, if not destroyed, certainly in a state no one is proud of.

As the bike lanes, bus lanes, and lack of parking has taken its toll, the businesses have closed, people have gone home to never come back, the malls have popped up in suburbia, and the CBD is shot to pieces.

We weren't Europe, aren't Europe, and never will be Europe.

Do we live in an age where the concept of the illusion, of what could be, is driven by the bandwagon of the day? Something the ideologues leap on board, with no real insight as to what might actually be required for it to come to pass?

It's driven by good intention but appalling planning, urged on by NGO's and the like who need a buzz phrase or agenda to keep pushing to maintain relevance and, often, funding. People who want to be on the perceived right side of the hot new trend, and it all comes at a huge cost.

These so-called downtown areas of tomorrow. Just when is tomorrow? When is Wellington going to be the pedestrian magnet, the cobbled hub?

When does Auckland wear itself out with all the new outlets opening in Queen Street?

When does Tauranga cut its umpteenth ribbon on the mecca that is the revitalised CBD, drawing fans from near and far?

Or was it simply a good picture on a whiteboard that will never in fact happen?

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