It’s an exciting – and challenging – time to be living and working on the North Shore. The amount of change we see around us is extraordinary, and long-standing centres and communities have been significantly changed  by what has happened in the last 20 years.

As part of the shift of senior management from Palmerston North as Massey University sought to establish its Albany campus a quarter of a century ago, it has been part of my work to understand and record these changes.

One of my first projects was to look at a new development in New Zealand, what I called an “edge city”. In the mid-1990s, the Albany retail centre and some of the housing developments that surrounded it had just been built and were quite isolated from the rest of the Shore. This development was right on the urban fringe of the old Auckland and we were interested in what this did to communities and identity. This “edge” development drew business and shoppers away from some of the established centres – and was car-dependent. This dynamic still continues but many of the shopping centres, from Takapuna north, have remade themselves so that a new relationship has been established.

We surveyed communities around the Shore to see how they saw their connections and identity. In the days before the formation of the Auckland “supercity”, views were often diverse and not all were happy with these new proposals and developments .

When we reported our findings on what people on the North Shore had told us, reactions were strong and emotional. I’m not sure we had anticipated how powerful the feelings – for and against various developments – were, and how our research would become a catalyst and a target for these views.

It probably did not help that we were critical of some developments – the lack of planning and provision for pedestrians and cyclists around the Albany basin; that many of the new housing developments lacked basic community facilities (playgrounds or playing fields for example, or even a dairy); or the lack of investment in building community identity, especially on  ‘greenfields’ sites.

Two decades on, who could have anticipated how fast further growth would occur? Housing developments from Long Bay through Okura to Silverdale and beyond are some of the most extensive housing and community developments that New Zealand has ever seen. Auckland, and the North Shore, with annual growth rates of over 2%, are among the fastest growing in Australasia. Of course, there are major strains – housing availability and affordability, the strains on transport systems, the need to shift from low density housing to new styles of urban development, the need to expand education and health services to meet demands.

The North Shore has always been a destination for immigrants. Our maps show major concentrations of British immigrants in Devonport, in the East Coast Bays and Orewa. South Africans are concentrated in the Bays. But since the 1990s, we have seen the arrival of two equally large immigrant groups – from Korea and China. Think of the Korean ethnic precinct around Bush Road or Browns Bay, the Chinese in Northcote. In many of our schools, 35-40% of students are now Asian.

This has had implications for our food choices, as well as the  local churches as they change to meet the spiritual needs of these new arrivals. We are likely to hear a range of languages on the streets.

I am part of an international research project looking at superdiversity in several cities globally, including Auckland. We have developed some interesting visual, interactive tools that allow us to understand Auckland – the fourth most diverse city in the world according to the World Migration Report. What we have done recently is to look at the nature of these social, cultural and economic changes in New Zealand – and in Auckland. We are keen to understand what has happened and why – and what we will look like in 2038.

It has been exciting to be part of these changes, both in a personal sense and professionally. I have loved living on the Shore for the last quarter of century. And it has been great to see Massey University growing along with its catchment and local communities. We are keen to contribute to debates and an understanding of what has happened – and the possibilities. Accordingly, we have an annual lecture series – Our Changing World – and I invite you to come along, listen, ask questions and share your views.

Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley is Pro Vice-Chancellor for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University, and a leading sociologist and researcher on population, immigration, race relations, employment and regional development.