Opinion: Marc Baily reflects on Hawera's progress over ten years

Urban planner Marc Baily has a wealth of experience in helping small town centres effectively reinvent themselves and become revitalised, resilient and better-suited to the expectations of today's residents.

South Taranaki District Council is one of a number of Councils around Aotearoa taking action to refocus its main town in the face of multiple contemporary challenges and changes. 

We all know these challenges: increased mobility giving greater choices to where we go and spend our time (and buy our groceries and undies); seismic risks and unsustainable economic issues as legislative requirements burden our building owners with (in my view) out of kilter regulations related to actual relative risk; remote ‘everything’ and social disconnectedness (and individualistic attitudes); town centre footprints that exceed today’s needs (exhibit a: empty shops); and small rating bases to be able to deal with all the increasing demands put on them, (but they suck it up and just get on with it and do the best they can in my observation). 

Each town has its own version of these challenges and problems to solve, and others to boot. 

In Hawera, as the South Taranaki District’s largest town, Council chose to take a strategic approach to tackling these challenges. Its only one part of a puzzle, but in 2013 South Taranaki District Council engaged Boffa Miskell to help out. Through a lot of ‘discovery’, ‘testing’ and ‘confirming’ we stepped together over a year and came out with an adpoted Hawera Town Centre Strategy. 

Those of us who were down in the details always say that the document that comes out of these things is really only a narrative of what we all (that’s the business community, owners, partners – the whole shooting match) thought about, and how we organised our thoughts. It's a way for people to see how we came to form directions, and how we iterated back and forth to ‘tune’ the way forward. The process of getting there and all the people’s thinking is the main thing. 

Anyway, long story short, with a focussed set of just a few key moves, Councial had a plan that showed a way forward – and the recently opened Te Ramanui o Ruapūtahanga library is one of these moves (yip, it usually takes 10 years to go from plan to conception). 

The strategy deliberately looked to position this key anchor for public life in a central town position. It wasn’t the easiest site – it required a commitment to purchase a couple of earthquake-risk buildings – and in doing so amp up the movement of people to and around this civic place that is, of course, more than just a library; and reenergise the centre of town so benefiting businesses, owners and community public life. 

Why a library, you might ask, when we all have a world of information and entertainment in our back pockets? Well, it's more than a library -- though nowadays, that word 'library' is more likely to define an equitable place for all of us to be in, stay as long as we like, not have to buy anything. A place where its warm, fun, and safe to see what other people are up to. And yes, you might learn something or make something, or get a bite to eat; and hopefully you'll come back to and have new experiences next time. 

Good on you South Taranaki District Council, and all your partners in making this happen, and Boffa Miskell is proud to be among that group. We hope it serves your people well and shows anyone who is watching what Councils are great at – looking after the public interest so our town centres are where we go now to be part of public life, to build our social and economic connectedness, strengthen our culture (and maybe buy our groceries and undies while we are at it).