ABSTRACT
IT is doubtful whether Wellington is entitled to a place in a book which deals with the world's great cities. The claim could not be based on its population-in terms of population New Zealand itself, with just over two million inhabitants, presents a problem in local government. Nor could it be based on the size of the urban area; for geographical reasons Wellington will never form part of a conurbation. Indeed, this fact perhaps constitutes its main claim to inclusion. In a volume devoted to the great wens of the world there should be at least one example to illustrate the physiology rather than the pathology of local government. This should be taken to imply not that Wellington poses no problems -some of them will be developed in this chapter-but merely that those problems are, at least in theory, capable of solution. They may yet be sufficiently similar, in kind if not in degree, to those of Megalopolis to be of interest to students of municipal inturgescence.
