Results show more people out and about in the city centre

The number of people walking in Auckland’s city centre continues to grow, with our pedestrian count figures from the last quarter of 2017 showing 4.8% more walking trips than the same time the year before.

A closer look at the results shows that more people are spending more time in the city outside of the working week, with Saturdays seeing a 6% increase in pedestrians between October and December. 

The growth in pedestrians is likely due to a range of factors:

• The residential population of the city is increasing rapidly, with 13% growth last year bringing the total people living here to 44,880¹
• There are more and more workers in the city centre every year. As of 2016 there were 114,264 jobs filled here, an increase of 3.8% on the previous year ¹
• International visitor numbers to Auckland are growing steadily, with an 8% increase to 3.69 million visitors last year²
• The city centre is becoming more people friendly, with better walking routes, public transport and public spaces. The Auckland City Centre Masterplan identifies all of these as priorities for the future of the city centre. See the projects that are underway and planned to make the city more people friendly on the Auckland Council website.

A more walkable city is good news for productivity and more people in the streets are likely to result in more transactions being made with city centre businesses.

Update: Spending in the city was up 5.3% over the Christmas period and 5.6% over the December quarter. 

1. _Infometrics
2. _{Statistics NZ via. MBIE}