Auckland's Clay Foundation

Crumbling under the weight of its own demise

By Alexander,

Co-founder of Zealandia First & Social Media Liaison for the ZHF.

I am an Aucklander born and raised for 30 years, of which I have developed a refined love-hate relationship with the city I call my home. Auckland is a sprawling city with its CBD on a natural harbour surrounded by dormant volcanoes. Miles upon miles of brick and tile suburbia meeting lush hills and farmland on the outskirts of the city. On paper, it would seem that Auckland could be considered one of the more sought-after cities to live in in the West, but I can say with certainty that this is not the case after the sobering experience as I have watched it decline from the early 2000s.

As someone fortunate enough to have lived in the same house for nearly three decades, a property passed on by my previous generation, this street that I have called my home has let me experience a microcosm of everything that is wrong with this city, and the greater country as a whole.

My childhood memories are that of a small community that looking back now, we were lucky to have at the time. There were multiple White families of Anglo-Celtic descent, and the rare Afrikaaner who were very grateful to have immigrated here. You could count on one hand the properties owned by Asian immigrants. Neighbours knew each other, children played together in the street and on occasion the street would come together for a street barbeque.  This brings us to our first problem with Auckland, something that is now widespread throughout populated areas in New Zealand - rampant legal immigration.

With a state seemingly hellbent on replacing its people, today 3 out of 4 of my direct neighbours are ethnically Han Chinese. While I have had no issues with them as they are polite and tidy, no New Zealander should hold the opinion that this situation is preferable to what we had in the past. I had a wake-up call during COVID, when a local busybody decided to restart the community watch, and they formed a list of all occupants and their details throughout the whole street. Seeing the majority of the properties owned by those with Hindu or Han Chinese surnames confirmed what I had known all along - the community that I once knew is now non-existent.

Second, I have been able to experience first-hand the completely irresponsible handling of my city’s housing and infrastructure. Our house was purchased in the late 1990s at around market value, and during the selling frenzy of 2021-22 we were able to get a rough estimate of its current market value. While I live on a property that by today's standards would be considered completely outrageous and a waste of space (a backyard in Auckland!), it’s absurd that this property has increased in value over five-fold in 3 decades.

While immigration is our leading cause for concern in New Zealand, housing is a close second. Although housing issues are largely driven by rampant legal immigration, it would be considered a miracle if 20% of the necessary housing was built in a year. Watching family and friends struggle to afford homes, and those lucky enough to become a first-home buyer in the current market being completely ripped off is a reason why so many young people in this country are disheartened today about their future in this country. Auckland is filled with grown children living with their parents, perpetual renters, million-dollar mortgagors and the homeless.

Next comes Auckland's infrastructure, or lack thereof. I would consider Auckland one of the most poorly planned cities in the West. As an example, our second most prominent landmark on our city skyline is the Auckland Harbour Bridge, built in 1959 and still New Zealand's largest passenger vehicle bridge.  In a perfect show of the lack of Kiwi forethought, it was found to be too small before it had finished completion.  With the help of Japanese engineering, four more lanes were added post-construction.  New bridges and tunnels have been discussed as a solution to Auckland's growing traffic issues but this brings more problems as we would have to put our trust again in Auckland council’s inept planning and budgeting capabilities. 

I’m not even going to go into Auckland's almost non-existent public transport system, which we are lucky if it shows up on time, if at all.  The tens of millions wasted on planning and consultation for potential infrastructure projects in Auckland also deserves an article of its own.

All these issues have culminated in a mad scramble to fix this situation before it becomes untenable. Some may find the drive into the CBD through sprawling suburbia from the farmlands of Whitford and Clevedon quite charming. In reality, you have a dying inner-city, filled with perpetual roadworks, and heritage buildings surrounded by ageing and poorly-made brutalist architecture. The suburbs are filled with leaking homes, or recently built multi-unit housing whose occupants would consider it a bonus if they managed to have windows on three sides of their home.  Not to mention the public housing spreading through the city as the state tries to “desegregate” with new state housing capable of tanking your property values as a meth addict and his girlfriend who has had three children taken away get given a house because they’re incapable of participating in society.

The final sign of our city’s decline has been the ever-increasing rate of crime, particularly crime involving violence and theft. New Zealand was, not too long ago, a high-trust society.  Even in Auckland, it was unnecessary to lock your home when you left, and turning on the burglar alarm if you planned to come home that evening wasn’t something you had to do. If your alarm was triggered, it was by the lonely spider who had built his web in the corner by your sensor.  

Nowadays, someone not locking their car when they pop into the corner dairy would be considered irresponsible.  In all my years as a child, I could barely remember any mention of gun crime, and while this may be because my parents sheltered me from such things, to think that I would wake up one day a few years ago to find out that the local jewellery store up the road from me would be robbed at gunpoint in the middle of the day in a crowded mall would never have crossed my mind even ten years ago. Car theft and joyriding have gained in popularity, and the sale and production of methamphetamine have not slowed down either despite efforts to curtail it from the state. 

The production of Methamphetamine, a staple of New Zealand’s drug economy, got a second wind once the Chinese realised how much money they could make importing materials into our country alongside the help of our national gangs who now outnumber uniformed police officers. Now if there is a murder, rape or robbery in Auckland it may barely last a week in a news cycle, but the only thing that still seems to capture people's attention is when a poor child is beaten to death by their own family, of which there are far too many.

What has happened to Auckland, shows the symptoms of a disease that is now spreading throughout the rest of New Zealand after decades of ineffectual governing on both sides of the aisle.  What has fallen upon Auckland will become the fate of Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Hamilton, and sadly they all seem to be catching up at an increasing rate. When a foreigner asks a Kiwi, “what's the best-kept secret in New Zealand”, they may expect to hear about some quaint spot not found in tourist guides, or a local restaurant. The best-kept secret in New Zealand is that Auckland is one of the world’s worst first-world cities to live in at the current time.

Whether through complete ineptitude, or malicious intent that has gotten us to where we are today, there needs to be a serious change in policy at a local and national level before this city collapses in on itself.

Alexander is the co-founder of Zealandia First and the Social Media Liaison for the Zealandia Heritage Foundation.