The enthusiasm might have been a bit much. \u201cNot Melbourne, not Sydney, not London, not New York. Twizel,\u201d wrote one acerbic commenter alongside a picture of the Twizel Four Square<\/a>. It\u2019s hard not to get carried away about Te Komititanga though. Just a few years ago, a large crowd gathering outside Britomart would have been run over almost instantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n The space that\u2019s now Te Komititanga was a four-lane road occupied by taxi stands and the city\u2019s main bus interchange until 2016. In 2017, it was closed and spent three years under construction before reopening in its pedestrianised form in December 2020.<\/p>\n The square was paid for out of the $5.5 billion city rail link budget, and there\u2019s a case it\u2019s our best public investment since the northern busway. It\u2019s quickly burrowed its way into the heart of Auckland\u2019s cultural fabric. The giant Christmas tree lighting last week was a big event, but the square plays host to an array of smaller ones every day. Street performers juggle and breathe fire on its central pavers. Buskers play Led Zeppelin outside H&M. Children scurry through the gaps between huge Christmas baubles in another. Tides of commuters flow in and out of Waitemat\u0101 station and Commercial Bay. Every so often protesters flood in from Queen St.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ng\u0101ti Wh\u0101tua \u014cr\u0101kei gifted Te Komititanga its moniker, which means to mix or merge, while the architect Tessa Harris<\/a> (Ng\u0101i Tai Ki T\u0101maki) arranged the tiles outside Waitemat\u0101 station to resemble a woven welcome mat, or wh\u0101riki<\/a>. The square\u2019s name and design suit it perfectly. Te Komititanga has become Auckland\u2019s primary meeting place, its hub, and the numbers bear that out. Pedestrian counts have risen steadily in the area since crashing during Covid, but have leaped 61% at the square\u2019s intersection with Queen St in the last year, from 445,686 in November 2024 to 719,341 last month. Another 438,000 pedestrians were recorded at its Quay St end. A space that was a bus thoroughfare five years ago is now Auckland\u2019s real town square.<\/p>\n Auckland Council\u2019s priority location director Simon Oddie says it\u2019s no surprise Te Komititanga is well-used given its location outside the city\u2019s most frequented train station. But its popularity is underpinned by council staff who organise regular events and light installations while ensuring the square is configured in ways that encourage people to linger. \u201cThe fact that it\u2019s a drawcard as a destination, not just a pass through point, I think that\u2019s through hard work,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The square\u2019s success is more stark when you take into account the economic struggles that still persist in the rest of the city centre. Pedestrian counts near the city\u2019s other large public space just up the road, Aotea Square, hover at around 40% of Te Komititanga\u2019s numbers and have dropped year on year. Midtown in general has been the subject of an array of negative headlines about rising homelessness, empty shops and alleged increases in criminal offending.<\/p>\n Every so often people will point to these issues and point the finger at big Woke. The Herald\u2019s columnist Matthew Hooton once blamed the city\u2019s crime problem<\/a> on the council being suckered in by the \u201curbanist, public-transport, cycling and social-housing lobbies\u201d. On Facebook, people will often post photos of Queen St from the 1960s, when the footpaths were packed with pedestrians, and the comments will fill with people saying we need to restore its four car lanes.<\/p>\n Te Komititanga\u2019s popularity shows, if anything, the opposite is true. Pedestrians haven\u2019t ditched Queen St and midtown because they\u2019re yearning for the sweet scent of exhaust. They\u2019ve migrated to the parts of the city centre where there are no cars at all. They\u2019re hanging out on the benches at Te Komititanga eating a sandwich and watching an elaborately dressed man roll around inside a hula hoop. They\u2019re having a beer at Wynyard Quarter, doing a manu into Browny\u2019s pool or taking a Lime scooter down Quay St to one of Britomart\u2019s restaurants.<\/p>\n Where the people have gone, the money has followed. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested into Britomart and Commercial Bay. Precinct Properties is looking to build a massive commercial and residential complex on the site of the Downtown carpark<\/a>. Oddie says Te Komititanga is part of a wider shift in the city\u2019s \u201ccentre of gravity\u201d toward the waterfront.\u00a0<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not all doom and gloom for midtown. Hope is on the horizon. The city rail link is set to open in the second half of next year, and when it does, the train station next to Aotea Square, Te Waihorotiu, is projected to become the busiest in the country. The St James Theatre may one day reopen. The bizarro futurist paradise Sky World<\/a> could still be restored or redeveloped<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n For now, Te Komititanga holds the crown as Auckland\u2019s town square, but Aotea may yet get it back. If it does, it won\u2019t be because we returned car traffic to the area. It\u2019ll be because we welcomed more people and gave them reasons to stay, just like we did a kilometre south, at the much-loved meeting place that was once a four lane road.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a case the square outside Waitemat\u0101 station is the city\u2019s best public investment since the northern busway.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[109243,16148,111,43,139,69,135,2935,109244,109245],"class_list":{"0":"post-167940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-auckland-city-centre","9":"tag-crl","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-society","16":"tag-te-komititanga","17":"tag-tessa-harris"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Te Komititanga in 2016. (Image: Greater Auckland)<\/p>\n
The wh\u0101riki pattern on Te Komititanga\u2019s pavers.<\/p>\n
Te Komititanga under construction in 2017.<\/p>\n
Te Komititanga on a typical day. (Image: Auckland Council group)<\/p>\n