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

Urban Farm DB summary

A paper examines Wellington, the capital of Aotearoa New Zealand, and its Town Belt, a green belt paradigmatic of 19th-century planning ideals that has shaped the city's urban form. It argues that this enduring ring of public green space can mask significant gaps in equitable, everyday access to green space within the compact urban area it encircles, with steep terrain and peripheral location limiting everyday use for residents who are less affluent or mobile. It also notes that the city's colonial history has obscured Māori sites of significance, including historic streams — such as Waimapihi — that once flowed from the area now known as the Town Belt but have since been piped and diverted underground. The paper discusses the Town Belt's colonial legacies and Waimapihi to illustrate the limits of protection at the margins and of symbolic recognition within the core, and considers two emerging responses at public housing sites — an Indigenous-led community garden and the planned Frederick Street Park — as responses to the need to retrofit existing spaces in densifying centres and improve accessibility, quality and everyday use. It situates Wellington within debates on shifting from green belts to connected green and blue infrastructure networks, arguing that edge protection must be complemented by sustained, equitable and culturally informed investment integrating natural and built environments to support accessibility, resilience and quality of urban living.