New Zealand doesn’t really “do” public plazas very well, in the overall planning of our cities: we’ve tried, but they really haven’t worked. Each city has one: Dunedin has the Octagon, Christchurch has Cathedral Square, Auckland has Aotea Square, and Wellington has Civic Square. Continuing on from that, Palmerston North has The Square, Napier has Clive Square, and most of the rest of our towns have…
Leviathan
331 Articles
Levi has recently taken on some blogging duties following the disappearance of Maximus. Reluctantly.
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National Land Transport Programme – 2018 to 2021. We’ve had NLTP before, but this one is different. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that the NLTP has so openly included not just transport solutions for cars and trucks, but has also included funding for cycleways, footpaths, public transport, and most importantly: including trains. Yes, you read that right: funding for public transport including trains….
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Wellington has the highest proportion of Council-provided housing in the country, and a large chunk of that housing is situated on Arlington St. You’re probably all familiar with Arlington as it is on one of the main routes through the city – but a lot of it is looking fairly run down right now. Some of it has already been replaced, with the soon to open,…
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Morandi bridge a week on: the key thing, I believe, is a lack of structural redundancy. For the bridge to collapse as it did, something needed to give way – and it was unlikely to be a member in compression, so that rules the struts out. We know the tower remained standing after the roadway had gone, and then first one side of the giant pylon…
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Amidst the tragedy of the collapsed autostrada in Genoa, and despite the death and destruction beset upon that city, there are still some interesting things to observe from this horror story. I hope it is not too distasteful to write about this while they are still pulling bodies out of the wreckage, but really: does anyone else think it is strange that there is so little…
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There are several topics we’re keen to explore in the news right now, including that motorway bridge in Genoa, historic buildings in Whanganui, and more on the subject of buses etc in Wellington, but right now there is one pressing subject: what should Greytown do? They’ve had a proposal for a four storey apartment block to replace this ugly old warehouse on the main street. Should…
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Following on from Sea Monkey’s photos last week of a giant crane amidst a sea of abandoned prefab house parts at the Countdown supermarket near the Tawa off ramp, the Eye of the Fish has been looking a little closer. We went out to site and found to our consternation that the number of houses on site appeared to be getting less each day – where…
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Our fears of the Matrix homes abandoned at Tawa for an extended period of time do not seem to have become true, for a sharp-eyed regular (the one and only mysterious Sea Monkey) sent in these two pics, of a giant mobile crane moving houses around at Tawa yesterday in the balmy weather. It’s the big Daddy of all the Titan cranes so it means that…
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It is becoming increasingly clear that the new Wellington bus network is a bit of a disaster. Initially thought to be just teething problems on the introduction week, it is now fairly obvious that the Regional Council have made a massive cock-up of the transport re-plan. Which is a pity, as they have spent the last several years planning and preparing for it. Some of the…