History of Auckland City

Chapter 5: The 1971 centenary (occasion and setting)

A century is no mean feat

The marking of the City Council's fiftieth jubilee in 1921 (also the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of the original, ill-fated City Council) had been very constrained, its most permanent, though unattributed, memorial being two solid tomes, The City of Auckland 1840-1920, and Municipal and Official Handbook of the City of Auckland, respectively written and edited by John Barr, then starting the second decade of his forty year tenure as Chief Librarian. Buoyed up by the prosperous sixties, the Council determined to celebrate its centenary in grand and sustained style. While the events focused on the `centennial fortnight', a resplendent diversity of occasions were spread over the entire year (1971). Furthermore, they projected out to all Aucklanders, not just the 25% for whom their local body was the Auckland City Council. The trajectory was apt, for a snap survey showed that six out of ten Aucklanders believed the celebrations were to commemorate the founding of the place of Auckland rather than its premier local body.

The many faces of celebration

The masses, special sectors, and the privileged were all remembered. There were a centennial cavalcade (an estimated 250,000 spectators), a mardi gras in Queen Street (30,000 revellers), a fireworks spectacular, and a `Super Auckland' festival. A fiction contest attracted 154 entries, one in seven of which were reckoned publishable, but the judges in a parallel poetry competition, sponsored by the mayor, Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, reported in obvious embarrassment that not one of the twenty poems submitted was prizeworthy. Another glitch was the belated cancellation of the laying of the foundation stone of the controversial Centennial Hall, although announcement of a competition for designing the Civic (later Aotea) Square was offered in lieu.

Celebratory functions confined to invitees included the (then) regulatory gala civic ball, civic dinner, civic church service, civic garden party, `Centennial Queen' contest, Women's Day reception, international sporting fixtures, and special racing meeting. With a graceful bow to history, the Council held a special commemorative meeting one hundred years to the day later and on the exact spot where the foundation councillors gathered for their first formal meeting in May 1871. An indefatigable protagonist for Auckland, the mayor found time to prepare and deliver a series of public lectures revolving around the development and future of Auckland.

Things that last

A statue and a book were more enduring products of the centenary. Earlier in his career, Captain William Hobson, the colony's first governor, had been helped by George Eden, Lord Auckland, First Lord of the Admiralty, and in 1840 gratefully bestowed the name of Auckland on his chosen capital. Subsequently, as Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland was the subject for various statues, one of which was eventually donated by the Bengal Government to the City Council. It was officially unveiled by the then Lord Auckland as a centennial centrepiece. Also `unveiled' was a 637-page commissioned history, Decently and in Order, written by Graham Bush, a local government specialist in the University of Auckland's Political Studies Department.

The city and the wider metropolis

Rather extravagantly, the centennial history described the City of Auckland as a 'plastic polychromatic mosaic'. For others, its destinies were more prosaically linked to commerce, culture, tourism, or its strategic location as the bridge between New Zealand its immediate world. Because its boundaries were essentially artificial, distinguishing Auckland City from the wider metropolis of Auckland was only of limited value. To be sure, Auckland City's population of 150,000 was essentially static whereas the region's was bounding ahead by 3% per annum, and the City Council faced unique challenges of urban renewal, traffic congestion and the implications of mounting housing density and ethnic concentration, but its and the region's economic fortunes were closely bound together. Apart from the retail water supply, no major utilities remained under the City Council's control and the overall management of rampant growth -- current forecasts were for Auckland reaching 1.25 million people by 1991 -- lay with the oft-troubled Auckland Regional Authority.

Yet the City Council neither could have nor should have 'ring-fenced' its territory against the forces and trends impacting on the Auckland region. To some it was particularly vulnerable, but then it also had the greatest contribution to make in their amelioration. It was strategically located astride the isthmus, and within its boundaries were the country's leading port, a fading but still dominant central business district, the principal cultural and educational facilities, and the nexus of motorways and most public transport. And it was not stagnant economically: much heavy industry had departed, but property valuations doubled during the 1960s and by 1971 only isolated minor patches of the 18,500 acres within the City Council's boundaries were still undeveloped.

Fortunes and future hitched together

The Auckland City Council's motto - 'Advance!' - was both stark and unequivocal. For the guardians of its interests as it confidently embarked on its second century, the paramount question was whether the thrusting expansion and sprawl of metropolitan Auckland would necessarily result in the City of Auckland advancing. While realising that virtually uncontrollable social and economic forces were shaping Auckland and that `where Auckland goes, so does Auckland City', Robinson, for one, was riven by doubt. With more than one in four New Zealanders living in Auckland and the relentless sharpening of social and economic stratification, it added up to racial tension, resentment of Auckland, and an ominous storehouse of trouble. A City Council alive to the real needs of its citizens would therefore exert itself as much on trying to benignly influence the development of greater Auckland as on effectively servicing its own citizens' needs.

G.W.A. Bush 5.8.98