Our City Tomorrow (OCT)
The issues facing Wellington as we moved into the future, such as the projected population growth, sustainability, resilience, transport and infrastructure requirements, are by no means small, so you could say Our City Tomorrow has a mammoth task ahead of it. This is just the start and we’ll do our best to keep you up to date.
We know as interested and engaged Wellingtonians you’ll likely be keen to see the feedback from the discussions held so far - check out the OCT website for this.
Our concerns
The focus of OCT so far has been on the Central City, linked to what it means for the rest of Wellington. The starting point for the discussion has been that 40% of the projected 50,000 - 80,000 population growth to 2043 will be in the central city. A key question expected to be informed through these workshops (and other forums) was 'Is it right to have the proposed level of population growth for the central city, given the challenges of seismic activity and climate change?' However, the workshop discussions we attended did not really address this question. A workshop exercise on where population growth could occur across Wellington City is not in the Workshop 3 report. When we questioned when the wider city focus would occur, the response was 'we are focusing on the central city' at this time'. ICW participants are concerned that this risks decisions being made based on a partial discussion of the wider issue.
Where to next for Our City Tomorrow?
We have been advised by WCC that the information gathered at and since the workshops will provide context for key decisions that need to be taken in the Long Term Plan (LTP). The LTP is about the priorities for the next 3 years and how funds are allocated. We have been told that the LTP process will include:
key principles and where to from here for the central city work
context of what population growth, seismic risk and climate change challenges mean for the City (being the wider city)
ICW (and we assume other workshop participants) has not been involved in the development of the key principles or the ‘where to here’ for the central city but understand that no early decisions have been made off the engagement to date. So, in the meantime we’ll wait to see what the LTP process brings.
Our City Tomorrow Inclusive Wellington Report
Our City Tomorrow Workshop 1 report