Last Chairman’s report – Mike Lee’s farewell to the final ARC meeting.

Hard to say Ross. Perhaps it goes back to the very foundations of Auckland and Wellington and their cultures. Wellington was very much a planned, orderly settlement by the NZ Company with ample town greenbelts etc provided at the outset. Auckland was much more a free-wheeling, non-planned settlement. The ARC only tended to clash with its constituent TA’s when it acted as a brake on sprawling development. See my Bruce Jesson lecture ‘Strangers in the 21st Century’ and my presentation to the Melbourne UrbanRail conference ‘Sins of the Fathers – the fall and rise of rail transit in Auckland’. Both posted on this site. Admin.