By SHONA McCAHON for Boffa Miskell
Small town New Zealand is reasserting itself after languishing in the wake of the big cities for too long. This is not the superficial makeover stuff of new street furniture but a more fundamental and wide-reaching approach that seeks to put the heart of a community back into a town, as exemplified in Picton and in Foxton. 
Historically, many small towns were bustling hubs of enterprise that sprang up to service rural hinterlands and to process primary products. Foxton for instance (pictured right and below) was the centre of a thriving flax industry based on the vast flax swamps that still covered much of the Manawatu plains during the ninetenth century.
Picton, at the head of the Queen Charlotte Sound in the Marlborough Sounds became a busy port linking the North and South Islands and handling large volumes of primary produce. In their heyday, such towns were the focus of community life, servicing the social as well as economic needs of the town dwellers and those who would ‘come to town’ from surrounding areas. 
Times change, however, and during the twentieth century many of New Zealand’s small towns experienced decline. Local primary-processing industries closed down or relocated to cities. Transport routes, intent on linking the main cities, bypassed or cut right through small town centres.
People became more mobile, too, and increasingly went to larger centres for their employment and shopping. Small towns seemed to be languishing by the wayside. Their role as the gathering place for local communities was much diminished; their townscapes were haunted by areas of disuse and often shaped by roading infrastructure with its inevitable parking lots and highway-oriented services.
The 21st century is heralding a renaissance, however. Small town communities like Picton and Foxton are looking for opportunities to reinvent themselves, while also wishing to revive their sense of community and redevelop their towns to reflect that.
Planning
Marc Baily, urban planner with Boffa Miskell, who has been assisting a number of small town communities translate their redevelopment dreams into reality, says that if proposals are to succeed they have to be well considered and practical while also being inspirational and visionary.
“It takes time - typically four to five years – to work through the strategic and urban planning stage and reach the point when things start to happen on the ground,” he says. “As a consultant, you can’t expect to really understand the place and how it works without spending considerable time observing the current environment and finding out from locals about the cultural and social context, as well as their issues and aspirations. Spending time at this stage pays off hugely when it comes to the inevitable debates about the physical changes that might be proposed in the town.”
Such timeframes can, of course, be frustrating for a community that is pressing for change, yet necessary to ensure that the different views within that community are properly canvassed. While there may be a general desire for change, there will be a range of views about what that might mean in practical terms, and there will be some who are simply suspicious of change.
“One of the outcomes of a town redevelopment project should be a strengthened sense of community and that won’t, of course, be achieved purely by reconfiguring the built form,” Marc says. “If the process is well managed and seen to be democratic, the visioning and debate during the planning phase can assist people within the town to get to know each other in new ways, to perhaps better understand their own history and to think about what kind of community they want to be part of.” 
(pictured left: The redeveloped London Quay waterfront in Picton)
Public space
When community revival is an objective, the future of public space in the town is a major focus because of its role in potentially bringing people together and enabling interaction, according to Boffa Miskell landscape architect Michael Hawes.
“The design of the public realm in cities has attracted a lot of attention but the principles apply just as much in small towns,” Michael says. “Ideally, public space should accommodate a lot of different types of interaction if it is to be truly public - that is, accessible and welcoming to all. These are the places where people can meet up with those they know but also encounter people from outside their own social group who are, nevertheless, part of the community. In a small town, that enables people to, at the very least, recognise who else lives in the community and perhaps get to know a little more about them. That, in turn, builds the sense of belonging, shared ownership and security.”
Enabling out-of-town visitors to also use the public space and intermingle comfortably with locals is another important consideration in many small towns, where attracting visitors is crucial to economic revival and survival. Community spaces need to be designed in such a way that seasonal or weekend influxes of visitors can be accommodated while also providing for more low-key local use in between times.
“There’s more to it than simply providing a public square or a promenade,” Michael says. “The public space needs to be part of the fabric of the town and that means integrating it with the way the town works both socially and economically. If we create places where people want to spend time, it will support local businesses through increased foot traffic and activity. Conversely, having businesses and services adjacent to and integrated with the public space can improve the success of the space by bringing people through it and improving passive surveillance. These factors are far more critical than fancy signage or town branding ”.
Picton’s London Quay
The integration of business and community activities has been a key component of Picton’s new London Quay town square and waterfront redevelopment, completed in October 2010. The redevelopment followed a four-year strategic planning, community consultation and master planning exercise led by Boffa Miskell on behalf of the Marlborough District Council.
London Quay had traditionally been Picton’s gathering place when it was the town’s main point of departure and arrival, but this changed. The main port was developed further away and the site became a ‘back door’ to the town centre, dominated by car parking and service functions.
The redevelopment incorporates tourist operations, fishing boat and boat servicing uses to ensure that both locals and tourists are drawn to the area. Moreover, new buildings designed by Warren and Mahoney to help define the new square, have been designed with ground floor public uses that will encourage cross-over of inside and outside activities.
Marc Baily says practical considerations and benefits have flowed through from involving the local businesses in planning the overall concept and developing specific facilities.
“Not only does their presence attract public use and contribute to the site’s waterfront character and vitality – the businesses have also contributed financially and enabled a level of funding for the project,” Marc says.
The redevelopment has created a series of interrelated spaces that provide flexibility for both peak season and off season activity. On New Year’s Eve, it accommodated a crowd of more than 9000. During weekends fish is sold directly off the fishing boats, bringing a flow of locals to the space and during quiet times lunch time workers and off-season travellers are able to find smaller-scale sheltered spaces that feel safe when there are fewer people around. The evenings see overnight visitors promenading between the marina and foreshore
“The design has reinstated the historic role of the London Quay site as a meeting place, but in a contemporary context,” Michael says. “Meeting places are focal points for communities and we’ve built upon that by drawing together the functional requirements with the aspirations of the local people, the commercial interests and the marine-related operators located on the waterfront – not to mention the needs of visitors. The aim has been to better integrate the wide range of commercial and public waterfront activities and link them strongly to the town centre.“
Foxton
Plans for revitalising the Foxton community came out of an urban planning project in which Boffa Miskell assisted the Horowhenua District Council to look at opportunities and best locations for growth and development over the whole of the Horowhenua district. Foxton was identified as having development potential, which happily aligned with various initiatives the council had already earmarked in consultation with the Foxton community.
Located on State Highway 1, Foxton is one of those small towns where the main road has been diverted away from the commercial area and main shopping street. Through-traffic problems in the town centre have been avoided but highway travellers have been diverted with a consequent loss of potential business.
Marc says the focus during the consultative strategic planning phase was very much upon understanding the town’s history – how it came about and how it works now. Out of that came an understanding of the issues and, importantly, the opportunities for the future.
Boffa Miskell led the formulation of the Foxton Town Plan, which was recently signed off by the community board. It provides the over-arching framework for enhancements, aimed at attracting people into the town; consolidating activities to better emphasise the sense of a town centre; and celebrating Foxton’s heritage. Two other overlapping plans bring together proposals for specific focus areas.
Under the Te Awahou Development Plan a regional multi-purpose culture and heritage centre will be developed in Foxton’s town centre. It will incorporate the site of the now long-gone Foxton port, which operated on a former bend in the Manawatu River before the river was straightened, and will tell the historic stories of the Horowhenua. The centre will be a focus for the local community and out-of-town visitors. It will incorporate a new library and council service centre, a Dutch museum, a Maori arts and craft gallery, tourism information and meeting spaces.
“The objective is not only to preserve the cultural, social and economic heritage of the district but to enable that heritage to be celebrated and extended in the contemporary activities of the local community,” Michael says.” In doing so, the public space created will build upon the Town Plan’s key concepts of consolidation and reconnecting Main Street with Foxton’s historically important riverfront.”.
Meanwhile the River Loop Plan is underway, aimed at restoring the physical and historic connections with the Manawatu River via the remnant ‘ox- bow’ that was once part of the river. It will involve restoring the degraded ox-bow environment and developing recreational opportunities for locals and visitors.
“Communities often push to get things done quickly, but our advice is to not be too ambitious,” Marc says. “Small things can turn big wheels and affect the wider picture in surprisingly effective ways.
“It’s also important to realise that urban places change over time and you can’t always plan for completion. Small towns are better to think of these plans as works in progress than to try to implement a single master plan all in one go. As the parts are progressively implemented, the community will notice changes and perhaps adapt and evolve their plan as they go along.”
(Marc Baily is a director and Michael Hawes a principal of Boffa Miskell Limited, a town planning and design consultancy. Shona McCahon is a freelance writer and oral historian.)