Albany, New Zealand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Suburb: | Albany |
| City: | North Shore |
| Island: | North Island |
| Surrounded by - to the north |
Albany Heights |
Albany is a northern suburb of North Shore, one of several cities in the Auckland metropolitan area in northern New Zealand. It is located to the north of the Waitemata Harbour, 15 kilometres northwest of the Auckland city centre.
One of the city's newest suburbs, it was until relatively recently a town in its own right, and still has a feeling of not being truly a part of the city, which lies predominantly to the southeast of it. Much of the land to the north of Albany is still semi-rural.
The Māori name for the area was Okahukura (literally, 'place of rainbows' or 'place of butterflies'). The town was originally known as Lucas Creek, but was renamed in 1890 after Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, a son of Queen Victoria. The pronounciation of the name is a shibboleth — outsiders often misprounce it as "Aulbany".
Albany contains the northern campus of Massey University; it also contains one of the Auckland Region's newest sports facilities, North Harbour Stadium. The area (the future 'Albany Town Centre') is fast-growing in terms of its population and the development of the built environment, following planning decisions and land sales made by central and local governments in the 1980s and 1990s. Through the 1990s industrial and retail areas were rapidly produced, predominatly owned and occupied by local and foreign corporate capital. A major, if somewhat generic, shopping centre was opened in the late 1990s and has since expanded.
Considerable housing development has also taken place since the early 1990s. Postmodern "McMansions", cheaply-built townhouses, as well as detached, single-family, standardised houses account for most of this growth, which has been facilitated by the extension of the Northern Motorway through the area. Ethnically, in keeping with the wider North Shore, Albany is predominantly Pakeha and Asian, and has a relatively high proportion of recent migrants from both elsewhere in New Zealand and overseas.
Although a busway station was opened in 2005, in common with most of Auckland beyond the CBD-fringe the suburb has a poor public transport network, with its planning premised on a population of car-owning familes.
Kell Park reserve next to the new Albany Village Library, is known for its free-range Bantam chicken population and pirate ship flying fox playground. A Council notice states: "It is prohibited to abandon chickens or to uplift them from this area." Also provided is a number for chicken "re-home" options.
In contrast to the suburb's relatively bourgeois orientation, New Zealand's main maximum security prison is located at Paremoremo, five kilometres to the west of Albany, although this locality is increasingly being gentrified. To the north-west also lies Coatesville, a predominantly residential locality favoured by members of Auckland's horse-riding, Range-Rover driving, National-voting upper-middle class.
[edit] References
- Reed, A. W. (2002). The Reed Dictionary of New Zealand Place Names. Auckland: Reed Books. ISBN 0-7900-0761-4.
