All eyes are likely to be trained on the fight for Auckland’s Supercity later this year. But in Wellington a mayoral race involving dragon, property developer and former parliamentary candidate Sir Robert Jones is taking shape. His party – Vibrant Wellington – is campaigning on a ticket of banning all vehicles from inner city streets Lambton Quay and Courtenay Place: Wellington’s ‘Golden Mile’.

Jones envisions turning the space into a pedestrian haven, a little corner of Europe in New Zealand, with free bicycles, street markets, cafes, and fountains. It’s would-be European chic, antipodean style. Jones is not standing for mayor; instead he’s assembling a team to contest the Wellington mayoralty and council.

Opinion is divided as to the practicality of pedestrianising Wellington’s CBD. But it’s a vitally important issue for retail and other central city businesses. In Auckland, a two-year project to upgrade Queen Street was completed in 2008, under the banner of “reclaiming the city for the people”. Urban design manager at Auckland City Council, Ludo Campbell- Reid, says personally that is what he interprets as the ultimate aim of the Jones proposal.

Campbell-Reid says Queen Street was typical of New Zealand’s city high streets: dominated by the requirements of vehicles. The upgrade meant widening footpaths, more pedestrian crossings at more intuitive places, decreased waiting times at lights, decreased car turning circles, more planting, street furniture and art, better lighting, and raised median strips.

Campbell-Reid says pedestrian traffic has increased by 27 per cent on weekends and 32 per cent during the week.

Exact figures are difficult to calculate, but indications are that retail revenues are increasing. In a recession, Campbell-Reid says, this is something of a feat. High-end retailers Louis Vuitton and Gucci have moved into retail space previously occupied by a $2 shop. Campbell-Reid says limited pedestrianisation is a future option for Queen Street.

“I would love to pedestrianise parts of Queen Street. I don’t think the whole street needs to be pedestrianised,” he says.

But the idea should not be thought of as one-size-fits-all. “Anything that starts to reclaim the city for people is an exciting thing,” he says. “There are many, many ways of doing it and there are many, many success stories around the world where it has worked.”

He says Wellington’s council has taken significant steps on behalf of Wellingtonians. “It is definitely seen as a more human city than Auckland. It is more compact, there are a lot more people living more closely to the city, to their place of work. Wellington has certainly led the way with the public realm and the money that it has put into the streets.”

But Auckland has no intention of being left behind: “We now feel we are taking on a bit of leadership in that area,” he says. Campbell-Reid says there are situations in urban design where boldness is called for, and also times where an incremental step by step approach is best.

“To come in and just pedestrianise something – that is quite a dramatic approach to take.”

Christchurch City Council Principal Advisor for Urban Design Hugh Nicholson worked at Wellington City Council for 10 years. He explains the street-level relationship between people and vehicles is a continuum with motorways at one end and full pedestrian malls at the other, “but actually most streets need to be somewhere in between that”.

“It is seldom that you need to go to the extreme of total pedestrianisation. They are only the very special streets, so often the answer is somewhere in between,” he says. One such special street is Strøget in the Danish capital, Copenhagen, which was pedestrianised in 1962.

“If you go to Copenhagen and to the main street there, which is pedestrianised, while the retailers opposed very strongly when it was pedestrianised, now if you tried to put cars back through there would have a riot,” Nicholson says. “So if it works, it is really good for business. If it doesn’t work, of course, it is disastrous.” Nicholson says personally he applauds Jones for the intent of his proposal.

“The idea of putting people at the centre of the city, it’s the core of urban design thinking around the world.”

He says a lot of the work already done in Wellington has used similar thinking, but Jones’ proposal is taking it a step further.

“Actually his step is a lot further, but they are not diametrically opposed. He is putting people back into the centre of the city in a more radical way. I think, absolutely fantastic idea: the concepts, the intention behind it. I think the mechanism he proposes is perhaps gloriously simplistic.”

A major risk of the proposal lies in losing the strength of the Wellington public transport system, which Nicholson says is among the most effective in New Zealand.

“Wellington’s public transport network is the envy of the rest of the country. Really it is very strong,” he says. “The risk with Bob’s proposal is that you cut the public transport network off at the knees; you are shooting yourself in the foot. On the other hand he has got a real point: there comes a stage when the number of buses along the Golden Mile becomes a negative factor. And while I am a tremendous supporter of public transport, at the end of the day I do think the cities are for people – and even buses, when they start to take over the people space, that becomes a negative thing.”

With a problem identified, it is just a matter of employing some creativity to fix it, he says. “I think it is really just a matter of finding a little bit more subtlety to create the spaces for people rather than just chucking everyone else out.”

Wellington City councillor and urban development spokesman Andy Foster says Jones’ proposal poses more opportunity for disruption than it is worth.

“There are elements of Bob Jones’ idea that are already being thought about, like more activity and more people space, but others which would be highly disruptive and likely to damage the city rather than benefit it,” he says.

Foster is under the impression Jones’ proposal is responding to a perceived need that isn’t there. “At present we think the balance of pedestrians, public transport and private vehicles in Lambton Quay is about right and that an incremental approach to change is the most prudent approach in this instance. That is: change is made in response to a need for it.”

Foster cites Australian examples such as Church Street in Parramatta, Sydney and Hunter Street in Newcastle where vehicles have eventually been reintroduced to under-performing pedestrian malls. A proposal to allow buses back into Wellington pedestrian zone Manners Mall is currently before the Environment Court, the end game in a two-year public battle to save the space.

He says the Vibrant Wellington team should be under no illusions that even “relatively modest” changes like Manners Mall are subject to huge and lengthy public debate and “that would inevitably be dwarfed by the debate over pedestrianising the Golden Mile”.

Mayoral candidate Jack Yan says a mayoralty should be based on more than just one proposal. He questions the ethics of an unelected businessman bankrolling a city plan in the capital.

“It’s not about one road and that is what Bob is about. He’s about one road,” he says.

Yan is worried about the success of such a large pedestrianised space during Wellington’s colder, windier, and wetter months. “I don’t know if it is going to look that romantic and nice and warm and lovely and quaint year round,” he says.

Jones is a clever man, Yan says: “He knows how to pull the strings of some people. He knows people will say ‘hey, I look back on the last sunny day I had in Wellington, wasn’t it great’.

“People aren’t going to look back on that day that it was wet and four degrees and effing freezing walking around town.”