Kapiti Urban Area

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kapiti Urban Area is a statistical area defined by Statistics New Zealand to cover a group of urban settlements on the Kapiti Coast.

Kapiti Urban Area is classified as a main urban area because its population exceeds 30,000, but unlike the other main urban areas it is not centred on a city. Instead, the urban area spans three "towns":

• Waikanae
• Paraparaumu (including Raumati and Otaihanga)
• Paekakariki

The largest of these is Paraparaumu. Raumati may be considered a suburb of Paraparaumu or a separate town in its own right. There are no legal definitions for towns in New Zealand.

Kapiti is better described as a commuter area of Wellington than an independent city. It may be more of an anomaly of classification that it is not treated as a zone within the Wellington Urban Area.