Hard times ahead for small towns
New Zealand’s population is tipped to keep growing but many regions are going to decline in the next 30 years, a report predicts.
A Maxim Institute report says 44 out of New Zealand’s 67 authorities would have populations that are stagnating. Eleven areas are already seeing this kind of decline.
Large cities and popular areas will continue to grow, albeit with ageing populations.
Auckland, Hamilton, Nelson, Wellington, and Queenstown are set to expand, while the populations of Rotorua, Taupo, Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, Kaipara, Southland and the West Coast are expected to shrink.
Grey District mayor Tony Kokshoorn said he has been dealing with population decline his whole career and it was ‘‘bloody difficult’’.
‘‘I dream of cities around that just keep growing and with the growth, house prices go up, it creates wealth for everyone.’’
Greymouth has faced population decline since the 1960s, and is the only town in the country where house prices have fallen .
The Buller District rating revaluations for 2016 showed residential values across the region fell 18 per cent since 2013.
Kokshoorn said he hoped that new opportunities in ultra-fast broadband would turn the Greymouth’s fortunes around.
Innovation and opportunities created through ultra-fast broadband would provide opportunities for young people, he said.
‘‘There are big opportunities around that, you could live in Greymouth, but work in New York or London.
‘‘So we have to capture that lifestyle around the West Coast and we’ve got to invent jobs around the technology.’’ Maxim Institute researcher Julian Wood said population and growth differences opened the door to broader divisions.
‘‘We’re seeing a two-speed economy emerging where people in major urban areas are getting ahead … that’s where the higher education opportunities are, where the jobs are, and we’re seeing the opposite happen in smaller areas,’’ he said.
More opportunities should remain wherever possible for those who live away from our urban centres, and central
"We're seeing a twospeed economy emerging." Julian Wood, Maxim Institute
government should redistribute some of its infrastructure to the provincial regions.
Chief executive of regional development agency Northland Inc David Wilson said the Maxim report was guilty of ‘‘demographic determinism’’.
‘‘Just because you’ve got a trend doesn’t mean it’s going to be so, and you can reverse those trends with the right interventions.’’
Regional development could be the ‘‘meat in the sandwich’’ when it came to helping towns grow different industries, Wilson said.
‘‘While I would tend to agree with [the Maxim report] saying small towns and communities have limited options, in our experience it’s usually a town that is based off a single industry that struggles.’’