Have you read the Hikurangi Placemaking Plan?

If you haven’t taken a look at the Hikurangi Placemaking Plan, it’s a great snapshot of how our community saw the future of our village when the plan was created back in 2020. Hikurangi was one of the first communities in the district to go through this placemaking process. We were essentially the early testers, and the approach has been refined and strengthened since then, but our plan still captures the priorities our community identified at the time.

he plan sets out a 10‑year blueprint for how Hikurangi can grow, connect and develop. It’s designed to sit underneath Council’s Long Term Plan, which is updated every three years, so our community’s priorities can continue to feed into those cycles over time.

Alongside the community plan, there is also a separate Hapū Placemaking Plan for Hikurangi. This ensures cultural values, history and aspirations are captured in their own dedicated document. While some cultural context is reflected in the community plan, the deeper cultural narrative sits within the hapū‑led plan, which stands alongside it.

Some of the priorities identified back then still ring true today: improving footpaths and streetscapes, creating a safe walking and cycling link to Lake Waro, celebrating our heritage, strengthening the Sports Hub, and making the SH1 gateway safer and more welcoming. These ideas came directly from the people who live here.

Even though the placemaking process has evolved since those early days, the Hikurangi plan continues to guide thinking around local projects, funding applications and community‑led initiatives. It gives us a shared reference point and a sense of direction as we look ahead.

You can read the full Hikurangi Placemaking Plan here:  

Read Hikurangi Placemaking Plan

What’s coming next

In the next article in this series, we’ll look at Hikurangi’s community response to the placemaking plan, how we’ve taken the development of this plan to heart, how local groups have built on it, and how we’re continuing to engage with Council and feed into planning processes on an ongoing basis to ensure our community thrives and grows.