St Peter’s Anglican church in central Wellington, New Zealand, will during the next five years become surrounded by apartments which will house nearly 2000 people. The church is in Te Aro, which was a major residential area in the 19th century before the motor car enabled the growth of suburbs and council zoning discouraged inner city living. Since the 1990s, Te Aro has become Wellington’s fastest growing ‘suburb’, with nearly 20,000 people having already chosen a city lifestyle.
This paper will be a place based innovation story of a community in a particular place, not ‘abstract ideas about governments, markets or civil society’ (Hambleton, 2015: xii). The term ‘parish’ is particularly relevant to the theme of place based leadership, because post reformation, in the English tradition, parishes became the main form of social support after the abolition of monastic orders. The term ‘parochial’ is an opposite of globalisation but can also be seen as ‘narrow in outlook or scope’[1]
Hambleton (2015: 79) argues that place should play a much more prominent role in public policy because central governments are ‘disabled by departmentalism’ and ‘construct polices around functional domains such as the economy, education, health, social care, transport, agriculture, policing, energy and so on.’
The author is a member of decision making groups of St Peter’s church which have negotiated for a property developer to build two twelve storey apartment blocks alongside a church which was built in 1879 on a site owned since 1847. Two further blocks are already planned for a nearby site and nearby office buildings for conversion to residential.
The development will create a small park, provide the church with ground and first floors in the new building, and create a diversified endowment fund.
In October 2017 the church employed three experienced clergy, who will work the equivalent of two full time paid roles. With the election of a Labour Party led coalition government in October 2017, central and local government agencies are seeking to be active in tackling the following issues:
Housing – how can Wellington avoid the inflation which has resulted in property in Auckland becoming priced at ten times average salaries, when three times is estimated to be an affordable purchase price?
Community and social development – how can the church and new park help create a community which can reduce social isolation common with high rise living? How can the neighbourhood avoid becoming gentrified to the exclusion of those dependent on support from the nearby Ministry of Social Development office?
Environment – how can this neighbourhood provide an example of sustainable inner city living which includes use of electric cars, public transport and shared green spaces?
How can the church operate like a social enterprise to use its facilities fully to become financially self-supporting, and less reliant on its endowment fund?
References:
Hambleton, Robin (2015) Leading the Inclusive City. Place-based innovation for a bounded planet. Bristol: Policy Press.
[1] https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/parochial
IRSPM_2018_A_19th_century_church_and_parish_as_a_catalyst_for_a_high_rise_community.pdf 