Abstract:
In November 2010 the new Auckland Council came into being, combining four cities, three District Councils and the overarching Auckland Regional Council (ARC) into a single governance unit. These different cities and districts, themselves only formally constituted in 1989, had very different populations, different visions of their ‘regions’, different strategic and operational plans, and different underlying political economies. The ARC had a set of region wide responsibilities and associated plans built on the assumption of a nonhierarchical relationship with the lower spatial order units. It took only 2 years from the time that this unification entered serious political consideration to the formal launch of the city. The new council governs a region with a population of 1.4 million, has a budget of NZ$3 billion, assets of NZ$29 billion, employs 8,000 staff and claims to be the largest local government authority in Australasia. The remaking of Auckland was/is by global standards a staggering experiment and has provided governance reformers, planners, and strategists enormous challenges....