The Dunedin Amenities Society 
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The recent damage of the sea wall at St Clair Esplanade is a pertinent reminder of the power and ferocity of the ocean and the continuation of an issue that has been prominent in Dunedin since the beginnings of colonial settlement. The extension of physical occupation of coastal areas by people and the development of infrastructure around that occupation has been fraught with problems. Worse still has been the undermining of the important… Read More
The Society will hold its 124th Annual General Meeting on Tuesday 16th of April at the Botanic Gardens Centre (next to the Opoho Bowling Club) in Lovelock Avenue at 5.30pm. The guest speaker for the meeting will the City Council’s Heritage Policy Planner, Dr Glen Hazelton. The topic of Dr Hazelton’s address will be “Heritage Buildings and Seismic Implications.” With the advent of the Christchurch earthquakes and the government looking at changes… Read More
One of the most famous lines from “The Wizard of Oz” is when Dorothy says to her little dog “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” That particular line has become a cultural metaphor used when we visit places or see things that are not familiar to us and we relate them back to our own personal vision of the world. That same cultural metaphor may well apply to the proposals being… Read More
The drawn out debate over the use of John Wilson Drive has been centred around people’s rights to access, or more accurately their right to use that access by vehicle. The political debate disintegrated into a blatant popularity contest without any reasoned argument on what actually would provide the greatest benefit to the city. Councillors wanting the drive reopened to vehicles that spoke at the recent council meeting, only discussed their own embarrassment over the continuing issue. Not one councillor… Read More
There are parts of Dunedin that let our city down due to litter, vandalism, graffiti and general malaise. One area that has concerned the Society for some time is the abandoned Kaituna Tennis and Bowling club on the corner of Serpentine Avenue and Maori Road. The club vacated the premises quite some time ago and the building that was on site was set on fire by vandals. This has left a waste… Read More
Dunedin City has largely been shaped by its natural environment, with its steep hills and gullies running outwards to the harbour and the wide flat estuarine wetlands of south Dunedin known as Kaituna. The physical geography dominated early colonial development around the harbour due to the accessibility to the port for shipping transport and the narrowness of the available commercial land for the early city to be constructed upon. As Dunedin moved from a pioneering city… Read More
The recent Draft Economic Development Strategy undertaken by the Dunedin City Council was an opportunity for the Dunedin Amenities Society to put its views on the economic pathway outlined for the city. The development of such a strategy is an important step for the future of Dunedin, but it’s not the first time that the Society have advised the Council and its citizens that Dunedin has much to offer. In September 1888 Dunedin… Read More
The Dunedin Amenities Society first raised the issue of the alteration to Queens Drive in 2005-2006 after the City Council’s Transportation Planning Department unilaterally altered the road without public consultation in 2004-2005. Since then the Amenities Society have watched as the roadway has become a car park for both local school pupils and city commuters. What’s the issue with that people might ask, isn’t it a road? Isn’t that what the roads are for? Firstly, it isn’t… Read More
Image via Wikipedia The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote ” the surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony.“ If Nietzsche had been attending the Otago Regional Council Annual Plan hearings last week he would have seen how prophetic his words really were. The Society submitted that the Council’s failure to enforce the provisions of the… Read More
The Dunedin Amenities Society 