Te Aro

Story

Te Aro is an inner-city suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, 1 km from the centre. It comprises the southern part of the central business district including the majority of the city's entertainment district and covers the mostly flat area of city between The Terrace and Cambridge Terrace at the base of Mount Victoria.Te Aro is an alternative Māori language name for the Taranaki Pā that means "The facing", in reference to the site of the pā facing Mount Taranaki.DemographicsThe population of Te Aro roughly doubled between 1991 and 1996 and again between 1996 and 2001. The rapid growth rate of population in the area has become particularly evident in the last five years as apartment buildings have been erected (or converted out of former office buildings) all over the suburb. Particularly characteristic are new rooftop apartments on existing buildings. These can be attributed to the relaxation of city by-laws governing commercial building-zones in the early 1990s. As of 2016 there are many apartment blocks planned for the area, some of which are at least 15 floors high.Quick factsAt the 2001 census: there were 3,024 people usually resident in Te Aro. 16,281 people worked in Te Aro, the fourth-largest for any suburb in New Zealand, after Auckland Central, Wellington Central and Christchurch Central a quarter of the population were professionals 15% of the businesses in Wellington City were in Te Aro, 0.9% of all the businesses in New Zealand about one in 20 Te Aro residents had no qualifications 62% of Te Aro residents walked or jogged to work of the languages spoken by residents, 98.3% spoke English, 4.6% spoke French, 4.1% spoke Māori, 3.1% spoke German. Other languages were all spoken by less than 2% of the population. (Caution: statistical areas do not always coincide with the local council's definitions of suburbs.)