But hovering over the heads of the nearly 14,000 people who live there and the 1000 or so businesses which operate from the area is the groundbreaking report just delivered which will help determine their future.
It’s a truism to say South Dunedin has always been flat. If the suburb were uninhabited and home for wetlands and native bird and plant species, that would not be such a drawback. But fill a swamp and introduce to the mix people, their possessions, and their hopes and dreams for the future, and it becomes highly problematic.
The most significant swathe of flat land in an overwhelmingly hilly city, South Dunedin is not only relatively smooth and even like a billiard table, but it lies uncomfortably close to sea level, and marginally below high-tide level in some pockets, which is a huge worry for residents and insurers alike.
Water is all around. Not only is South Dunedin highly vulnerable to flooding in heavy rain events, with sheets of water running off the nearby hills to pool on the flat land, but also it is at risk of inundation from seawater on the harbour and coast sides, and there are zones where the groundwater table is extremely shallow.
The situation would be concerning enough if the probability of significant rainstorms was going to remain about the same into the future as now.
However, that is no longer the case, with a warming climate likely to lead to more intense downpours, and possibly also more frequent ones, as the century progresses.
The outlook for South Dunedin, based on that knowledge, might appear rather grim. A major city like Dunedin cannot afford to have a sizeable chunk of its population living on such an emotional and financial tightrope, biting their nails every time a low-pressure system parks up off the Canterbury coast and moisture-laden easterly or southeasterly winds start blowing across the South.
Neither is it a tenable position for a city to allow residents to continue living in homes which insurers are not prepared to protect because the risk to them is too high.
It would simply not be fair for a city council to ignore the effects of that stress on its people.
The terrible flooding of June 2015 will never be far from the minds of locals of The Flat.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom. The South Dunedin Future programme, set up after that flood by the Dunedin City Council and the Otago Regional Council, has this week released a major report outlining seven options to deal with flooding by 2100, each of which would cost billions of dollars to implement.
The options range from doing nothing, the status quo, through efforts to keep the land dry by pipes and pumps and elevating land, to making space for the water with wetlands, to letting water in and either raising the land or accepting a large-scale managed retreat.
The business-as-usual alternative is, naturally, the cheapest, with a price tag of about $2 billion over the next 75 years, but of course it comes with few benefits for the community.
The most extreme, large-scale retreat, would cost about $5b and affect potentially up to 4000 properties.
The "fight or flight" spectrum, as programme leaders describe it, could end up being most palatable somewhere in the middle. If option four is taken, that would allow for water across The Flat, with a mixture of channels, pumps and wetland storage.
That is one of the cheaper possibilities, at $2.8b, affecting 600-700 properties.
The South Dunedin Future work will hopefully lead the way for similar studies necessary in other New Zealand cities to protect against climate change.
Laying out these options should at least assuage insurance companies that South Dunedin is worth insuring.
Early reaction from residents is positive and bolsters their view and ours that the area does indeed have a bright future.
Who will pay for this will no doubt be an argument for the future; for now the planners, scientists and council staff who have progressed things to this stage should be applauded for their efforts to deliver some solid, long-term solutions.
