Reclaiming Wellington from the motorway

I went to an interesting talk after work this evening at the City Gallery by architectural historian Ben Schrader (author of the award-winning The Big Smoke, a history of New Zealand urbanism), on the role of the Wellington urban motorway and its opponents in shaping the design of the central city. The title of the talk was 'Four lanes to the planes: Yeah, right', flipping 2016 mayoral candidate Jo Coughlan's slogan.

Schrader is a strong advocate for urban heritage and people-centred design, as opposed to car-centric. But the history of the motorway blasting its way through Thorndon in the '60s & '70s and Te Aro in the 2000s until its comeuppance from the Save The Basin campaign in 2014 has me wondering if the current ceasefire of the motorway builders will endure. The next time there's a right-wing mayor and/or council and a National government, will they be trying again to concrete over the central city to allow more traffic through? Unless their transport thinking changes, probably.

All the discussion of CBAs (or BCRs, if you prefer) reminded me that the next time a congestion-driven motorway expansion is planned, Wellingtonians should look to San Francisco and other cities that have successfully removed highways to revitalise their inner cities. If you've visited the Embarcadero in San Francisco you'll know what was once a brutally ugly double-decker highway cordoning off the city from its waterfront is now a tourist Mecca teeming with social & economic life. So my question would be, what if we ripped up the Thorndon and Te Aro motorway and replaced it with, y'know, neighbourhoods for people to live in and shops for them to purchase things in? Stranger things have happened.

Civic Square, after the Schrader talk