Click photo to enlarge
The main street of South Dunedin. Photo by Gregor
Richardson.
Like an often-repeated New Year's resolution, plans to
revitalise the South Dunedin shopping district are back on the
agenda. Chris Morris reports in the first of a new Otago
Daily Times series, Suburban Issues.
A stroll through the streets of South Dunedin can, for some,
reveal a tale of two cities.
On one side of the fence are the small independent stores,
musty second-hand dealers, small restaurants and takeaway
shops.
The streets are a mishmash of faded and dilapidated signs and
facades, and customers meander through the stores, pausing
for a rummage and a chat, before wandering off along the
street.
Around the road is a collection of monolithic stores - the
Warehouse, Pak' n Save and Mitre 10 Mega - with their
brightly coloured, yawning entrances swallowing hordes of
eager shoppers and their trolleys, day and night.
These customers come with a purpose - they drive in, shop,
and leave, often as quickly as possible.
The result can be two quite different takes on the tale of
this suburb - one that sees the shopping district as a quaint
throwback to an older sort of New Zealand, and another that
sees nothing but a slum.
And, if statistics tell a story, the tale of South Dunedin is
a sorry one indeed.
The short version goes something like this - residents are
slowly drifting away, and, of those who stay, more are older,
unemployed, less educated, and earning less than the average
for other centres across Otago, according to 2006 census
figures.
It gets worse the more detailed the scrutiny - unemployment,
at 9.8%, was double the 4.5% average across Otago, while
44.4% of people aged over 15 years boasted no formal
qualifications whatsoever, compared with 23.7% across Otago.
So bad are the 2006 Census figures, the Ministry of Health
last year named South Dunedin as one of the three poorest
areas in the South Island in its Atlas of Socioeconomic
Deprivation in New Zealand.
And it's a story that's been told before, all too often
followed by the familiar refrain of: "Something must be
done".
But now, it seems, something just might be.
There is talk of rebirth, of bringing in new businesses,
galleries and art studios, of plans for the Carisbrook site -
should the new stadium ever be built, and the old one sold -
and of the need for paint . . . lots of paint.
Dunedin city councillor John Bezett, of the South Dunedin
ward, is one who supports the talk, albeit with a note of
caution.
"South Dunedin, I think, does need some special attention,"
he told the Otago Daily Times.
The council had been lobbied to do more for the suburb, most
recently by South Dunedin resident - and former Dunedin
mayoral candidate - Tracey Crampton Smith at a public forum
in December.
As a result, a special forum on South Dunedin was planned for
later this year to discuss regeneration initiatives, which
could lead to a host of projects being pursued by the council
and the community, Cr Bezett confirmed.
However, Cr Bezett conceded it was not a new idea -
previously, "quite comprehensive" forums had been staged
about six years ago - and any talk of redevelopment in South
Dunedin had to be handled sensitively, or risk alienating
sections of the community.
"Some of the businesses get quite concerned when people are
saying `the run-down state of South Dunedin' . . .
