Pukekohe
Pukekohe sits on volcanic soil at the southern edge of Auckland, producing roughly a third of New Zealand's vegetables — onions, potatoes, capsicums, tomatoes, carrots — from an area smaller than most international airports. The fertility is geological: basalt weathering over millennia created deep, nutrient-rich loam that requires less fertiliser and retains moisture longer than surrounding clay soils. This is niche construction by geology rather than by organism — the volcanic substrate engineered the conditions for intensive horticulture the way a coral reef creates habitat for fish. The Pukekohe Longkeeper onion became an internationally traded variety precisely because the soil produces storage-quality bulbs that competitors on lesser ground cannot match.
The town's identity as New Zealand's food basket is now under competitive exclusion from Auckland's southward urban expansion. Auckland Council has designated Pukekohe as a satellite town targeting 50,000 residents, with significant tracts of land rezoned from agricultural to residential use. The same volcanic soil that makes the land invaluable for growing vegetables makes it attractive for housing: flat, well-drained, close to motorway access. Two uses compete for the same substrate, and only one can occupy it at a time. Every hectare converted to houses is a hectare that stops producing food, but housing generates higher per-square-metre revenue for developers and higher rates revenue for council. The competitive exclusion principle predicts which use wins when the resource is finite.
Pukekohe's motorsport identity reinforces the path-dependence. Pukekohe Park Raceway hosted the New Zealand Grand Prix 29 times between 1963 and 2000 and ran V8 Supercars into the 2010s before ceasing car racing in 2023. The raceway preceded the residential boom by decades, and its closure marks the point where the town's identity shifted permanently from rural service centre with a racetrack to Auckland commuter suburb with a vegetable heritage. The agricultural output that built the town's reputation is being consumed by the urban growth that the reputation attracted.