"Townlets"

Recently we showed you a little of downtown Auckland. It was a really enjoyable day and we covered almost every bit of the Central Business District. We love looking at old buildings, no matter where we are. Downtown Auckland is just about a fifteen minute drive from our flat. Auckland city is on the south side of the harbor, and we live just on the north shore of the harbor. In fact, we live in North Shore City. NZ doesn’t have counties, but instead districts, and North Shore is a district.

Because there’s such a big population in the areas surrounding Auckland, the people identify themselves not with the city, but with their little neighborhoods. I wouldn’t call them villages or hamlets, because that gives you an idea that they’re separate and identifiable and rural, and these aren’t. There really isn’t a beginning and an end to each place name. They all run together, but yet people identify with one particular place. It all just looks like suburban sprawl to the uninitiated. So we finally decided to call them “townlets”. Each little "townlet" has a definite “downtown”, a little main street of a block or two max of tiny little shops, such as a bakery, take-aways (fish and chips, Chinese food, etc), dress shops, hair dressers, realtors, travel agencies, superettes (very little grocery stores) or dairies (tiny convenience stores), and a “post shop”. I love these little downtowns. They’re usually very narrow and packed in as well. I counted the other morning when I was out walking in downtown Takapuna, and the frontage of the average “shop” is six strides. Their street exposure is very minimal, but the building is deep, just like the housing lots. These little “townlets” are usually spaced no more than a couple miles apart, and just blend into each other. Dad runs through two of them on his morning runs. Takapuna is on the south side of Lake Pupuke, and Milford is around the north side of the lake. If we go the other direction from our flat, Northcote is about two miles, and beyond that Glenfield is another two miles or so. Just north of Northcote is Hillcrest, where we’ve found our little green grocery. We can easily walk through a half dozen little places while we’re out walking. People very much identify with their very own little "townlet". I guess to bring it down to U.S. thinking, it’s kind of like our subdivisions. In Lewisville, it’s The Valley, or “the wood streets”, or in Houston, like Westador or Ponderosa or even a specific area like Greenspoint or Bear Creek.

We actually live in Takapuna, but it’s within the North Shore district, yet is still considered Auckland. Mail addressed to any of the three will eventually get to us. (Greater) Auckland has about four million people, which is half the population of New Zealand. So it’s obviously pretty packed in through Auckland and the surrounding suburbs. Outside of that, NZ is pretty rural. So it’s not like there’s really any shortage of land, but for some reason, when they started settling, they really packed the people in. Probably because they came here from industrial England and Europe, where people lived on top of each other. Businesses, homes, everything was built right out on the street. I remember in Boston seeing Paul Revere’s home built right out on the edge of the street. I guess I’m Western enough that that’s not acceptable to me! I want my space.

Downtown Takapuna

The little downtown streets are narrow, this one is even paved with brick pavers. The taller building on the left is an office building, and the real tall one is condos.

At any rate, that same crowded mentality exists here. We’ve noticed from the beginning how packed in people live, but getting a Google satellite view is very telling! The houses have almost no green space at all around them. They’re built close to the street, usually with a fence between them and the street, as you saw in an older blog of mine. And then there’s a single-lane drive going back to what sometimes looks like a whole other little settlement!

This is actually two little lanes, side by side, going back to multiple houses. It's not uncommon to have the lanes be two strips of concrete for the car tires, with grass growing between them like here. Notice all the mailboxes behind the telephone pole.

Or some lanes are just plain grass, like here.

There might be one or two mailboxes, or a dozen or more out at the front of the driveway, indicating that a whole bunch more people live down that little lane.

Another double lane, with multiple mailboxes in a couple groupings.

The houses sometimes are single dwellings, or frequently are what they call “brick and tiles”, a very popular style here. Most government housing is brick and tile. They’re connected duplexes, triplexes, whatever, built out of bricks, with a tile roof. They refer to brick and tiles like we would say “ranch style” or “cape cod” or “rambler” to define a building style. These little brick and tiles are very small, but sufficient for two or three people. It seems to me that the majority of households here are very small. Anyway, the houses are built right on top of each other, sometimes actually attached to the house next to it. There is no standard building style or code, just whatever. They frequently build the houses end to end, rather than facing the street. Notice the car parked on the grass. They make absolutely no attempt to provide parking. We've seen small colleges built with no parking available. As long as there's land enough to build a building on, they do. However, parking is absolutely at a premium almost anywhere.

These little brick and tiles are typical. The opaque walls you see are kind of a windscreen at the front doors. On the porch of two of these is a clothes drying rack. Very few people own dryers - they prefer their wooden drying racks, and you'll see them on porches, balconies, in windows, anywhere, even in high-rise condominiums. Hmm, an expensive condo, yet still no dryer??? Uh-uh!

You'll notice these brick and tiles have glass garage doors underneath the main house.

Garages are not the norm. If anything, they will have a teeny tiny single garage. However, I’ve seen several houses with glass doors on the garages, like above. It always strikes me how there doesn’t seem to be a concern for security here. How long would it take in Houston for someone to break into a glass garage door?? But that isn’t a problem here. In fact, security just isn’t an issue anywhere. When we’re out early in the morning or late at night walking, there are always dozens of others out too. It's a very outdoor society.

Telephone poles are not something you want to mess with here. They're STURDY - made of concrete, and with a bundle of insulated wires bound to them and a sign that says, "Live Wires".

They've come up with some other unique uses for concrete. These peculiar packing lot pavers make for a solid bed that can't sink or rut.

This kind especially caught my attention. The blocks are hollow in the middle, allowing grass to grow through them, but still creating a solid parking space. That way, they can safely have their grass and park on it too!

We love being outdoors and seeing all the different things that make New Zealand unique. One of the things that is abundantly obvious is how clean everything is!! It's almost impossible to find discarded beer cans or candy wrappers or trash of any kind. The parks don't even have waste containers. The mentality here is that you take your "rubbish" with you. Pack it out. And they do. It's so refreshing to see sidewalks, gutters, lawns, streets - everything free of trash. That's part of what makes this such a beautiful place!