South Dunedin is a major inner city suburb of the New Zealand city of Dunedin. It is located, as its name suggests, 2.5 kilometres (1.6 mi) to the south of the city centre, on part of a large plain known simply as "The Flat". The suburb is a mix of industrial, retail, and predominantly lower-quality residential properties. The term South Dunedin is often used in a more general sense to refer to any or all of the various suburbs occupying The Flat, including St Kilda, Forbury, Kensington, Musselburgh, and Tahuna.
Geography The flat land which makes up much of Dunedin's heart is enclosed to the south and east by Otago Harbour and to the north and west by a ridge of hills. At the southern end of central Dunedin, these hills form a ridge that (prior to reclamation) came close to the line of the harbour. To the south of this lies a broad plain, initially swampy but now drained and expanded by reclamation. This plain is the site of South Dunedin. The boundaries of South Dunedin are vaguely defined. Though the area was a separate borough briefly in the late nineteenth century, the borders which delimited that borough are no longer widely used as descriptors for South Dunedin. One major exception is South Dunedin's boundary with St Kilda, which was a separate borough until far more recently. The line of Bay View Road is still seen as a border between South Dunedin and St Kilda. This notion is enhanced by the change of name of one of the suburbs' main arterial roads at this boundary, with King Edward Street becoming Prince Albert Road as it passes into St Kilda. To the east, South Dunedin's natural limit is Otago Harbour, and to the north a ridge of hills also forms a topographical boundary. At the foot of this ridge, however, lies the small suburb of Kensington and parts of the much larger borough of Caversham. Caversham also marks a limit at the western edge of South Dunedin, though in both cases the exact boundaries are not well-defined.
Southern Endowment
Much of eastern South Dunedin is land reclaimed from Otago Harbour. This area, which lies immediately to the west of the harbour's head, is known as the Southern Endowment, and covers an area of close to 100 hectares (250 acres). The Southern Endowment was begun with rock removed during the cutting of Bell Hill in the central city during the nineteenth century. This largely extended the area around the wharves close to the heart of the city, but did not extend any further south until 1912, when a causeway was built along the head of the harbour. As part of an Otago Harbour Board scheme to reclaim land for industrial use, dredges started to pump tailings into the area behind the causeway in the 1940s. Reclamation continued for many years, and was not officially completed until the opening of Portsmouth Drive, which runs along the route of the 1912 causeway at the harbour edge, in 1978. Most of the area of the southern endowment is industrial and storage, though it does contain a small park close to the wharf area and the major sports complex of The Edgar Centre close to its southern edge.
Flooding issues Much of South Dunedin was built at a time when groundwater was up to 17cm lower than it is now. A 2016 report by Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment Jan Wright identified South Dunedin as the single biggest community in New Zealand exposed to sea level rise, with 2700 houses identified as within 25cm of the mean high tide mark, some of which are already below sea level. Currently, more than half of buildings in South Dunedin are at risk of surface flooding, and this is expected to increase to almost 70 percent by the year 2100. While residents have expressed concern that the flooding is caused by malfunctioning pipes and pumping stations, the Dunedin City Council have attributed the issue to high groundwater levels.
Cargill's Corner South Dunedin contains the city's second most important retail district, centred on Cargill's Corner, named for Otago provincial founder Captain William Cargill (Hillside Road—at one time called Cargill Road—is named for his house, "Hillside", which lay some 0.5 kilometres (0.31 mi) to the north). At this junction, two main suburban arterial routes—King Edward Street and Hillside Road—cross. A small shopping mall, South City, is located at Cargill's Corner. Cargill's Corner had, for many years, Dunedin's only "Barnes Dance" pedestrian crossing. Its use was stopped during the 1980s. In 2011, Dunedin City Council considered reintroducing Barnes Dance control at Cargill's Corner as part of other improvements, but the work has since been completed without the change in traffic control. King Edward Street is aligned roughly north-south, linking with the southern end of Princes Street and the centre city in the north with the densely populated coastal suburb of St Kilda. Hillside Road links Andersons Bay Road, a further major suburban arterial, in the east with the suburbs of Caversham, Corstorphine and Saint Clair in the west and southwest.
Main roads
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