Celia says come live in Wellington

Celia invites Aucklanders to Wellington in the Herald:

We freed up downtown Wellington from restrictive minimum carparking requirements in the 90s and now more than 40 per cent of our population growth is downtown – where you can walk home from a late night out at karaoke or the ballet.

Wellington's inner and outer Town Belts constrain urban sprawl and give us the bonus of great views, awesome mountain biking and a resurgence of birdlife spreading out from Zealandia so kaka regularly fly over Treasury, rather than biodiversity being confined to the outer edges of the city.

I've seen kaka in trees on our property several times. Zealandia has made a huge difference.

Getting into town for work is easy and it's even easier to get around on foot. You can knock off half a dozen meetings a day without needing a taxi.

Yep. The maximum walking time to get anywhere is 30 minutes within the CBD.

According to data from CoreLogic, the Auckland region saw an increase in average property prices of 17 per cent to $840,165, during the 12 months to June. Wellington is sitting at $459,366, up 1.5 per cent over the same period.

Apartment prices have been almost static for the past few years.

Here's an interesting question: What percentage of Wellington jobs are in the public sector? 30 per cent? 20? It's actually 15 per cent. With our rapidly expanding sector, Wellington is becoming more high-tech town than public sector.

The IT, , film and cultural sectors are all booming.

Wellington has the highest concentration of web-based and digital technology companies per capita in New Zealand with 7373 people working in the ICT sector and Wellingtonians are twice as likely to work in ICT as people in other regions

Didn't know it was twice as high here.

Wellington has more than 300 cafes, bars and restaurants, and claims more places to eat and drink per capita than New York.

And they range from the great curry and kebab shops to the top class restaurants such as Logan-Brown and Hippopotamus.  And it's nice to be able to easily get a drink at 2 am if you want to carry on the conversation.

Our events calendar is packed. This month we had Visa Wellington On a Plate, the country's largest culinary festival, teamed with Beervana, and LUX fusing light and kinetic art. September brings The World of WearableArt™ Awards Show, one of the world's biggest stage spectacles and a showcase of completely unbridled international design imagination. Coming up we have the 30th anniversary of the New Zealand Festival, the pre-Olympic Games Sevens Wellington and many other premium events provide a good excuse for you to check out what else the capital has to offer.

Almost too many at times. You bounce from film festival to comedy festival to foreign film festivals.

It's all so easy to get around. If you fancy a swim, kayak or paddleboard at lunchtime, you just wander down from your office. Or head into the Town Belt hills for a walk or a mountain bike. And back in time for that 1pm meeting.

One of the few cities in the world where you can mountain bike during your lunch break.

So Celia is right, Wellington is a great place to live and work. Just please, don't all come at once.

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