Best Suburbs for Retirees in New Zealand

There's a point where the commute stops mattering and the neighbourhood starts mattering twice as much. You're no longer choosing a suburb for its motorway on-ramp. You're choosing it for the streets themselves, because you'll actually be in them on a Tuesday morning, which is more than most working New Zealanders can say about where they live.

The weighting here favours quiet streets, low crime, and the practical things within easy reach: shops, services, a decent café for when the grandkids are brought around for inspection, and public transport close enough to make the SuperGold card earn its keep. We've left out the clichés about bowls clubs, partly because the data doesn't track them and partly because the retirees we hear from appear to be busier than the rest of us.

What the data does track is whether a suburb is calm, safe and convenient to actually live in, which is the real brief. The garden you've been promising yourself since 1987 is yours to arrange.