A new report shows that the world’s best performing international cities have nothing to do with amalgamation.
Auckland, that place we were told would be saved by amalgamating into a supercity, is falling behind.
A NZ Herald story says a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report found Auckland has stagnated compared with 30 other international cities since 2012. This means that the Auckland ranking for various categories of performance, has on average dropped by two to three positions.
There’s two embarrassing factors here for proponents of amalgamation and supercities.
1) Auckland has performed WORSE since it became a supercity. So all that stuff about growing the economy, improving lifestyle, and getting big region-wide stuff done like rail etc – that hasn’t happened.
2) Most of the most successful international city competitors are NOT amalgamated. Stockholm, the seventh best performing city, and best performing in political factors, has only 900,000 people. It is ruled by 14 councils, where two thirds of all the rates are spent. The top performing city is London, many times bigger than Auckland and yet divided into 33 borough councils.
This is important and surprising stuff. Yet, central government, the local government commission, misguided zealots and VIP boot lickers on the cocktail circuit, willfully ignore the facts.
There will be no apologies. There will be no reconsideration of ideology.
It’s up to the the common sense of the public to hold off the political insanity.
