NZ | Urban Areas of NZ (new)

[spotila]

Evening lads
Something I've been working on for a while. To compare the exact sizes of contiguous urban areas in NZ, I've taken to google earth with the polygon tool and been as accurate as I can be. All images you see are from exactly 50km up.

I've been doing a lot of other cities around the world as well, some easier than others. I was considering making a thread in a more prominant forum, but last time I did it was closed down after 3 pages as "these types of threads are strongly discouraged". Ideas?

Anywho, enjoy! (thread is large!)

Whangarei


Wellington


Wanganui


Timaru


Tauranga


Taupo


Rotorua


Masterton


Napier/Hastings


Nelson


New Plymouth


Palmerston North/Feilding


Paraparaumu/Waikanae


Queenstown


Invercargill


Hamilton


Gisborne


Dunedin


Christchurch


Blenheim


North Shore/Whangaparoa


Auckland/South Auckland

[Mr_kiwi_fruit]

WOW! Lots of hard work there! Great way to highlight the differences. Pity the two Auckland maps cannot be joined into one.

[Richard7666]

I tried this once not long ago, never got it finished. This is what I had:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Richard7666]

Interesting to note Palmerston North isn't much bigger than Wanganui, despite having twice the population.

[KiwiGuy]

Nelson is surprisingly larger in terms of size than a few of the other cities posted. Strange.

[Richard7666]

Nelson is probably about the size of Napier or Invercargill if you chop it up and glue it together right. The images all need to be a uniform size I think, otherwise it tricks the eyes.

It's hard to do this type of thing without knowing the places too I guess; Invers and Queenstown are missing some fairly substantial suburbs in Spotila's and both have areas highlighted that aren't actually built-up, but I've likely messed parts of northern centres in mine.

[spotila]

And for a comparison, here is San Antonio, Texas. I did Detroit last night also, it's immense, like twice as big as this.

[Svartmetall]

It's amazing to see just how spread out our cities are when you colour them in like that.

[whizz_pat]

Great work bro.
I'd be very interested to see more overseas comparisons.

[spotila]

I have quite a large collection now - and it grows every day. The largest cities I've done thus far are Paris, Toronto and Detroit, and so many smaller ones I've lost count.

I'm still searching for a way to post these in a main forum without the thread getting closed cause people turn it into a pissing contest.

[Urbania]

It would be interesting to see how big Melbourne is...

[ItalicSiciliano]

Hello, I am an Italian and I love your country. Reading this thread that puts compared to urban areas of New Zealand with other cities in the world, I entered these areas that are located in Europe. What do you think?

Metropolitan area of Naples, Italy


Metropolitan area of Barcelona, Espana

[spotila]

Originally Posted by Richard7666

It's hard to do this type of thing without knowing the places too I guess; Invers and Queenstown are missing some fairly substantial suburbs in Spotila's and both have areas highlighted that aren't actually built-up, but I've likely messed parts of northern centres in mine.

yea it can be tricky - I've never been to Invers and there is substantial cloud cover on the map. Been to Qtown once but that was 7 or 8 years ago

[Richard7666]

Nah it's an area west of the river in Invers that's missing. With Queenstown there are alot of new subdivisions (Arthurs Point to the north, Lake Hayes Estate to the east etc) but on second thought they're not actually fully contiguous. They are getting very close though!

[spotila]

contiguousness is important

[Richard7666]

Well Kelvin Heights and arguably Frankton aren't connected to Queenstown either in that case really. I think the areas I mentioned before though are a fair bit further out. Arthurs Point is definately out.

[KaneD]

Rather difficult to judge really - I don't think there can ever be a fully conclusive rule on what areas constitute part of the same urban area and what don't.

In the case of Queenstown, clearly Frankton is included as the built up area is contiguous. Kelvin Heights is indeed contiguous as well, though it is a *very* narrow band of development along the coast. The only real break in the development is of course at the Kawerau River bridge.

Whether Arthur's point is included or not could be debated. Looking at Google, there is definitely a distinct break in development of about 3km, though it could be argued that this is because the road between the two is separated by a very narrow valley which makes development between the two difficult.

For want of a comparison - The distance between Lower Hutt and Wainuiomata is also 3km yet most people would consider Wainuiomata to be essentially part of the Wellington Urban area. This is because the hilly terrain between the two which makes development uneconomic.

Even Wellington is separate from Lower Hutt by 5km of highway with no development along it and yet few people will argue it is a separate urban area. In this case, the 5km road is an expressway that prohibits access to adjacent land anyway, but the expressway itself (and railway) takes up all the land anyway.

On that basis, because Arthur's point is socially as much a part of Queenstown as other suburbs such as Frankton and Kelvin Heights, it would be likely that it would be included in Stats NZ urban statistics. The same would also probably apply to The Frankton Industrial Area at the opposite end of the airport and the Lower Shotover Subdivision.

In Invercargill, the large 'lifestyle block' suburb of Otatara on the west bank of the Oreti River is also probably considered part of the Invercargill Urban Area. It is adjacent to Invercargill apart from the river.

But these very spread out lifestyle blocks start making things difficult... Look at any of NZ's larger centres and also some of the smaller centres and it's clear that the vast tracts of land that have been carved up for these semi-urban areas would significantly increase the size of urban areas.

[spotila]

thanks for that - info is always useful. In the time since I've done many more cities - most noteably the Washington-Baltimore metropolis, Toronto-Hamilton, Paris, and many other smaller cites (Fresno, Colorado Springs, Belfast, Portsmouth, Reno, the list goes on)

[jarden]

Queenstown has got lots of satelite suburbs that I would still include as part of the Urban area most of the Lakes District population is around Queenstown except Wanaka.
These are Kelvin Heights, Arthur's Point, Lake Hayes Estate, Gibbston, Arrowtown, Queenstown Hill, Kawarau Falls, Dalefield, Jack's Point, Wye Creek and Glenorchy.

[KIWIKAAS]

I think that's stretching it a bit far. Certainly if youre looking at the urban area in a physical context.