Where the vision came from
Over the last few years, we have heard from many parts of our community that we need a vision for Tauranga.
In 2021 we asked our communities about their values and hopes for the future through the My Tauranga Vibe campaign. Through this process, we now better understand what people value for themselves, their whanau, their communities, and the city they live in.
Prior to My Tauranga Vibe we involved a diverse range of community sectors including iwi and hapū, social services, tourism, community, and businesses and gathered additional insight from what our community told us through the Long Term Plan process and Vital Updates
Collectively, this work has enabled us to hear the many aspirations, priorities, and challenges for our city.
During 2022 we used all this input from our communities to develop a vision for Tauranga. On 13 June 2022, Council adopted the new vision for Tauranga City Council, and also endorsed it as a shared Vision for Tauranga that we hope others in our city will pick up and use as their own.
We hope that our new vision for Tauranga will be meaningful for our communities and all those working to make our city better. Most importantly, we hope it resonates with our rangatahi – our young people who will be the leaders of Tauranga, tomorrow.
The concept of the vision
Tauranga, together we can is founded in the concept of Hoki whakamuri, haere whakamua (Walking backwards into the future). This acknowledges our past through the values of our kaumatua and focuses on the future through the hearts and minds of our rangatahi, as it is their voices that will shape the city they are set to inherit.
This vision for Tauranga aims to:
- acknowledge where we have come from and the challenges of today
- create a foundation of shared identity for everyone in the city
- bring our communities together and inspire meaningful change.
We have been listening to our communities and have heard from over 10,000 people through various methods. Three key themes were clearly expressed by our communities as being important for a future Tauranga – environment, community and inclusivity, and vibrancy. As such, they form the basis of the vision statement:
- Environment – prioritising nature
- Community and inclusivity – lifting each other up
- Vibrancy – fuelling possibility
A call to action to individuals, communities, and organisations to both individually and collectively work towards creating the change our city needs. We hope that community groups, organisations and businesses will support the vision for Tauranga and consider how they can best take action to work towards the three key pillars of the vision – Because Tauranga, together we can.
A vision for the City
The vision was created by the city for the city, and we hope everyone connects with it and wants to get behind it. To help share the vision, we are developing a city brand that captures the vision and what Tauranga means to all of us. This brand is still under development, and is due to be completed in May 2023. At that point, there will be a toolkit made available so that others can utilise the brand to promote the vision and all it stands for.