There is a popular view, one which has gone largely unchallenged in both historical and scholarly narratives to date, that Captain William Mein Smith arrived in Port Nicholson in 1839 armed with a map for Wellington designed by a Mr Samuel Cobham of London who had been commissioned by the New Zealand Company to draft...

In local history accounts of the founding of settlements and the establishment of towns, cities and regions there is a tendency for the physical environment to retreat as an actor or active force over time. It is as if the establishment of a city must lead ultimately to some kind of plateau or stable state...