Along the southern edge of the Waitematā Harbour and adjacent to Auckland’s central business district is an area of reclaimed coastal land. This 168-hectare area stretches 6.3 kilometres from the Harbour Bridge in the west to TEAL Park in the east, and extends up to one kilometre out from the original 1840 shoreline.

In New Zealand’s largest city, a pioneering project is underway to reconnect a community with its local park. The initiative, known as the Blake Road Reserve project, is part of Auckland Council’s ‘Adopt a Park’ programme. It explores how to connect the recreation industry with the community through the re-creation of a public space.

How can we integrate better with our environment on an urban level? We fill awkward spaces that cannot be used for housing, or a section of grass with trees per head of population.  This is often how a lot of our parks came into being, a very human activity-driven allocation process.

More than three hundred years ago, tupuna of the Taranaki iwi of Aotearoa New Zealand carved marks to put mauri, an intangible spiritual essence, into free-standing stones or living rock. Lines drawn between these taonga created an eco-philosophical container, acknowledging tribal responsibility and authority, or mana whenua, for the area bounded within.

Many find discussions about landscape, and the intensity with which people react to changes proposed, hard to understand. They do not appreciate that landscape is a concept which people hold dearly, as part of who they are, where they were borne and now live.