The Karangahape Road Identity Project applies a community led approach to a range of research and engagement activities. It is intended to perform an archival role, collating cultural artifacts that address ideas of identity for the Karangahape Road area. As a whole, it captures the essence of Karangahape Road through a range of perspectives.
Much of the thinking behind this project, and the approach it has employed, stems from discussions that began in 2015 that was initiated when KBA members were shown the pipeline for public infrastructure development, private renewal and a general surge in investment in the area.
The discussion was captured in documents provisionally titled The Karangahape Resilience Project and focused on ‘Preparing For Change’. It was acknowledged that the upcoming investments brought both great opportunities and great challenges. The Karangahape Road community is a rich ecology of groups with dynamic and evolving relationships. Within the area there are communities more exposed to the change and disruption than others, ones that have real vulnerability to the development process now underway in the precinct. There may be a improved environments for trade once all the works have been completed, but is that good for the businesses, NGO’s and cultural organisations that don’t survive the transition?
About Cultural Mapping
Cultural Mapping is a process used by organisations such as UNESCO to map intangible or qualitative cultural assets which produces an informed perspective of the current cultural climate. This in turn helps planning for the future. There are two key steps involved in the process of cultural mapping:
Step 1: Engaging with individuals and groups to identify aspects of their culture and that are important to them.
Step 2: Facilitating an expression or representation of those identified aspects.
Cultural mapping is an innovative process for strengthening and connecting communities by celebrating cultural identity through engaging, participatory activities, applied to gather qualitative information about our culture that may otherwise be lost. It is a way to support art forms and other cultural traditions by creating visibility for and documentation of them by the people who practice them. It is also a way to create visibility of the diversity of cultural contribution within a certain area, in this instance, the K’ Rd area.
The Context
The Karangahape Rd precinct and it’s network of communities, users, residents, business’ and other groups are facing a period of significant change. Change that is fundamentally based on investment in the K’ Rd area; investment in public infrastructure, the quality of the built environment, and in intensified housing. It is being led by a schedule of public works alongside renewed private development by existing K’ Rd property owners and organisations new to the precinct.
This change will have it’s undoubted benefits. A rejuvenated, prosperous K’ Rd will be widely beneficial but the process by which we arrive there is not without its challenges and risks.
Historically and prior to the motorway development that saw it physically annexed, K’ Rd was one of the prime retail destinations in Auckland. It has a history as a business centre with a business association established in 1924 and the upcoming investment can be seen as an opportunity to re-align with its former status.
There is an undercurrent of anxiety running through a number of K’ Rd communities based on the high profile sale of iconic buildings and businesses. The term ‘gentrification’ is being used in a manner loaded with layers of negative connotations that could prove a barrier to positive and productive interactions between those who have been in the K’ Rd precinct for some time, those who are newly arrived and those who are still yet to come.
It may also impact on many of the opportunities that present themselves through this period of regeneration and different communities’ abilities to respond and take advantage of them.
“K’ Road is a place of socialisation, of social-cultural inclusiveness and engagement, of creative meeting spaces, places and energies. It is a place for young and old, the unconventional, unexpected, and the challenging, and minorities, activists, thinkers, creators, makers, entrepreneurs - those who want to explore a new edge in the world.”
Key Considerations
Key considerations informing The Karangahape Road Identity Project.
The concern stemming from the changes taking place on Karangahape Road are essentially based around the loss of K’ Road’s identity. This identity has been acknowledged in many different ways and in many different places. Despite this there remains questions about how well the precincts identity been captured, articulated, fleshed out, unpicked and understood?
We can collectively agree that the identity of Karangahape Road is indeed valuable, worth investing in, and worth celebrating. But do we actually know what we mean when we refer to the “identity” of Karangahape Road?
It is widely recognised anecdotally and officially that Karangahape Road holds special value as a distinct precinct in Auckland. The Karangahape Road Plan does this and the Auckland Central City Advisory Board also acknowledges it as a “treasure and an asset”. It is therefore important we understand the nature of its value, how it is valuable and to whom.
The Karangahape Road community widely hold that the value exists in its tradition of alternative and creative culture, its diversity and acceptance of people not so welcome in other parts of the city, its built heritage and social heritage. It is a complex ecology of many different parts that operate together. These characteristics give rise to the commonly used adjectives such as ‘gritty’, ‘edgy’, ‘colourful’, ‘character’ and ‘quirky’.
“Karangahape Road is the last space of belonging for people who don’t belong.”
KEY Challenges
Articulating the identity of an area like Karangahape Road is no simple undertaking. K’ Road hosts a complex ecology with a rich history and many of its people hold a close affinity with K’ Road and care passionately about it’s well-being.
In attempting to capture the identity of Karangahape Road it is acknowledged:
There is a lack of evidence around how the K’ Rd ecology operates, who the people and parties that contribute to it are, and what environmental conditions have enabled it to become what it is.
We can’t talk to everyone. It is important that The Karangahape Identity Project hears as many voices as possible but there are practical limitations we must accept and account for.
We don’t understand enough about the ecology, and the impact on the precinct through the loss of any elements that inform its identity is hard to gauge. There is concern that one of Auckland’s and New Zealand’s most iconic areas is at risk of losing the very stuff that makes it distinct. This in turn may impact on K’ Rd as a destination for living, working, socialising, shopping and simply visiting.