This week on City Counselling, Oscar Perress talks to Cr Richard Hills, the Councillor for the North Shore Ward + the chair of the environment and climate change committee. Together they talked about the restructure of council and his roles in response to Covid 19, Waste management and Shovel ready infrastructure. A huge thank you to the team at Auckland council, namely Conor Lavery and Richard Hills, and to Louis Laws for all his technical support.
Although the crisis of Covid-19 is front and centre for Tāmaki Makaurau, we are also in the midst of another crisis in the form of a water shortage. This week on City Counselling, Lillian Hanly spoke to Councillor Richard Hills about what this means as well as the resumption of recycling of Tāmaki Makaurau.
Continuing last week’s talk with Councillor Richard Hills, Lillian rounded out the conversation with a brief discussion of active transport and its short and long term potential for transforming Tāmaki Makaurau. You can catch the rest of that conversation, where they discussed recycling and our very real water crisis, here:
Bronwyn spoke to Shane Henderson around the theme of 'transport'. They spoke about e-scooters, free hop cards and an inner-city congestion toll. Councillor Henderson also showed his support for Bike Auckland's “Liberate the Lane” Harbour Bridge event happening Sunday May 30th. You can hear a previous interview with Bike Auckland about the event here.
Today, Ilena talked to Cr. Shane Henderson about the new IPCC report and how the findings translate into Auckland's climate change mitigation and adaptations strategies. He also outlined what's been happening of late in Henderson with the joint Council, Auckland Transport and NZ Transport Agency 'Henderson Streets For People' project.
This week, Ilena spoke with Councillor Shane Henderson about what he calls the ‘week from hell’ for West Auckland. The week started with extensive flooding and ended with a terror attack at the LynnMall Countdown, all while the region was in level 4 lockdown. He gives some updates on where flooding emergency and support efforts are at now, and how West Aucklanders are coping.
On another note, Ilena and Shane also talked about bin tags and how a proposal to streamline Auckland’s rubbish service might look like.
Today, Pippa and Ilena talked about how Auckland Council will be helping local businesses move down through alert levels- in particular, how the Council can help the hospitality industry with licensing requirements so that they can do trading on the footpaths and allow more space between customers.
They also talked about Vision Zero, an ethics-based transport safety approach that was developed in Sweden and is now being implemented in Auckland. The vision states that there will be no deaths or serious injuries on our roads by 2050. Ilena asked Pippa about how realistic this goal is, what concrete steps have already been taken to make our roads safer and what future plans are in place.
This morning, Ilena had her regular catch up with Pippa Coom. They talked about the Super Saturday national vaccination drive that is happening tomorrow, and how those who are unvaccinated or need another dose can take advantage of the day with its greater accessibility and added incentives. They talked about how those who have had two shots can encourage whānau and friends to be a part of the day.
Pippa also touched on what Auckland’s targeted rates are and how successful they’ve been. Lastly, she spoke about the upcoming, little known, but greatly important Entrust elections and why they matter.
Ilena had her regular catch up with Shane Henderson, who this week talked about how water restrictions in Auckland will ease from tomorrow. Auckland has been under varying forms of restriction since May last year after a long period of drought, but recent rainfall events have had a positive impact on Auckland’s water stores.
Shane also talked about the new bipartisan Labour and National announcement which aims to make it easier to build houses and intensify close to city centres.
Virtual reality has been around for quite a while now. It was created in the late 1960’s and became commercially available in the 1990s. However, Virtual Reality is still a very new technology that is continuing to be explored in many different avenues. One of those avenues, for example, is in treating mental health conditions. According to a new study led by Computer Science Senior Lecturer, Dr. Nilufar Baghaei, and co-authored by PhD student Vibhav Chitale, VR has been found to be an effective treatment method for anxiety and depression. This study examined the ways VR interventions and exposure can affect a person’s mental health, and how effective they have been as a treatment method.
Zazi spoke with the lead researcher in this study, Dr. Nilufar Baghei. She is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science and the Director of Games and Extended Reality Lab at Massey University. Her research interests include Game-based Learning, XR, and AI in Education and Persuasive Technology. Zazi spoke with her to hear more about this research surrounding Virtual Reality and mental health, to see what this new research could mean for the future of mental health treatments.
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