State of the City Update
It’s three months since Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Auckland and Transport Minister Hon Simeon Brown unveiled the 2024 State of the City international benchmarking report, which found Auckland retains its distinct natural environment advantages, has improving resilience to respond to crises and maintains an overall liveability appeal. However, the report highlighted Auckland’s persistent transport infrastructure deficits, housing affordability problems and the impact of a slower than average economic recovery.
The Committee has prioritised two of the lowest ten pillars for action. In the innovation area, Auckland struggles with underinvestment in research, fragmented support for startups, and limited collaboration across sectors. In the knowledge/skills area, the city faces challenges in attracting and retaining skilled talent, aligning education with industry needs, and fostering effective knowledge transfer.
The Committee convened a panel of business, economic development and university leaders during TechWeek, to prioritise the actions required to strengthen Auckland’s innovation ecosystem. Some of these were: much better storytelling of the innovation Auckland has underway; greater support for early entrepreneurship and improving the start-up pathways; initiating new Auckland and New Zealand innovation strategies to update those done in 2012; strengthen global connections as both Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Mayor Wayne Brown are doing with the trade missions they are leading and build greater bipartisan support to boosting R&D investment.
Innovation and Technology Minister Judith Collins spoke at a Committee event on enhancing Auckland’s role as an innovation bub, strengthening the science and technology ecosystems and a commitment to working on innovation barriers such as skills shortages and regulatory hurdles.
We also took Committee members on a tour of the University of Auckland’s impressive Newmarket Innovation Precinct (refer attached story).
You will see State of the City references increasing as the report becomes an essential reference to promotion on the important assets Auckland has and action on the significant challenges it has that are currently holding it back.
