Clean and green, out of reach: The beauty and contradiction of Wellington’s Town Belt

Abstract

The capital city of Aotearoa New Zealand, Wellington, features a green belt paradigmatic of 19th-century planning ideals, which offers an enduring ring of public green space that has shaped the city’s urban form. Yet its presence can mask significant gaps in equitable, everyday access to green space within the compact urban area it encircles. For many residents — particularly those less affluent or mobile — everyday constraints limit the ability to benefit from the belt’s steep terrain and peripheral location. Further, the city’s colonial history has obscured Māori sites of significance, including historic streams that once flowed from the area now known as the Town Belt but have since been piped and diverted underground. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the Town Belt’s colonial legacies and discusses Waimapihi (a historic stream) to illustrate the limits of protection at the margins and symbolic recognition within the core. Two emerging responses at public housing sites — an Indigenous-led community garden and the planned Frederick Street Park — are considered as valuable responses to the need for densifying centres to retrofit existing spaces, improve accessibility and quality, and plan for diverse everyday uses. The paper situates Wellington within wider debates on shifting from green belts to connected green (and blue) infrastructure networks, arguing that while edge protection remains important, it must be complemented by sustained investment in an equitable and culturally informed approach that integrates natural and built environments to support accessibility, resilience and high-quality urban living. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.