A Worldwide Consolidation of Cities Has an Ambitious New Chapter in New Zealand
Simplifying Local Government, a proposal from the New Zealand government, 2025-26
Do you want your very own “Super City”?
That’s the question being posed to New Zealanders by their government.
Officially, the government proposal is called “Simplifying Local Government,” but it’s better understood as one of the world’s most ambitious efforts to consolidate small local governments into larger, higher-capacity “Super Cities.”
The idea is not new. In 2010, various local governments in the Auckland area merged into a Super City. Around the world, the 21st century has seen an enormous rise in consolidations of cities into larger metro regions. In the past two decades, some 5,000 municipalities across 15 European countries were eliminated in mergers.
Canada and Japan have seen similar waves, but China is the champion, with dozens of cities and counties merging to create larger regions—most notably the Greater Bay Area, which includes Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao
New Zealand has only 5.3 million, compared to the 87 million of the Chinese Greater Bay Area, but its plans are structurally even more ambitious.
Here is how the proposal defines the problem.
Most places in New Zealand have two separate councils – a regional council, and a city or district council (sometimes called ‘territorial authorities’). Each have a separate set of elected councillors who look after separate (but often similar) things.
There are 11 regional councils that govern services such as environmental management, regional transport planning, and civil defence. There are 67 city or district councils that govern services such as roads, water infrastructure, rubbish collection, libraries, parks, and land use planning. There are 6 ‘unitary authorities’ that combine the two roles.
Then there’s the solution. Essentially, New Zealand is asking its people to support removing the entire middle tier of government—the 132 Regional Councils that sit behind the national and the local level.
Replacing the regional councils would be new bodies, Combined Territories Boards, to handle regional functions including water, transportation and the environment. The CTBs would be networks of the mayors of the cities and district councils with that region. Each CTB would get two years to form an draft a Regional Reorganization Plan for its future.
Why the change?
•To strip out duplication of services between the regional councils. In one region, various councils and the national government all employ park rangers to do similar jobs.
• To add capacity by effective replacing individual regional councils with the combined CTBS, which would be Super Cities
The minister for local government, Simon Watts, argues these Regional Reorganization Plans are at the heart of the shift. He has written:
Every region will be required to develop a plan that sets out how councils can work together to deliver services more effectively and efficiently. These plans will reflect local needs, include public input, and meet clear national standards. They’ll look at everything from shared services to structural reform, and they’ll be the basis for future decisions about how local government is organised.
This is not a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a framework for regions to design what works best for them, with a clear expectation that the outcome must be better than what exists today.
The government has just concluded a public consultation, and critics have emerged. One argument is that the new CTBS don’t actually elect their leaders, since the mayors that run them are elected locally. Others say the local mayors have enough on their plates at home, and won’t have the time to run the Super Cities. Another objection is that eliminating the regional councils, which were a check on local mayors, means a loss of local accountability
But there is real momentum behind this reform. Look for more Super Cities in New Zealand—and in your own region or country.
