Dunedin, Ōtepoti in Maori, is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, with about 113.600 residents and the principal city of the region of Otago. It is New Zealand's fifth largest city in population, the largest in size of council boundary area, and the hub of the sixth-largest urban area. For historical and cultural reasons and its location, Dunedin is considered one of the country's four main centres, although Hamilton has overtaken it in urban-area population and Tauranga has a slightly larger urban-area population.
The city stands on the hills and valleys surrounding the head of Otago Harbour. The harbour and hills are the remnants of an extinct volcano. It is the home of the University of Otago.

Dunedin City has a land area of 3,314.8 square kilometres (1,279.9 sq mi), slightly larger than the American state of Rhode Island or the English county of Cambridgeshire, and a little smaller than Cornwall. It is the largest city in land area in New Zealand. The Dunedin City Council boundaries since 1989 have extended to Middlemarch in the west, Waikouaiti in the north, the Pacific Ocean in the east and south-east, and the Waipori/Taieri River and the township of Henley in the south-west.
Dunedin is the most remote city in the world from London at 19,100 km (11,870 mi) (90 km (56 mi) more than Invercargill, and 100 km (62 mi) more than Christchurch), and from Berlin at 18,200 km (11,310 mi). Its antipodes are some 300 km (190 mi) north of the Spanish city of La Coruña, in the Bay of Biscay.

History

Māori settlements

Modern archaeology favours a date round AD 1100 for the first human (Māori) occupation of New Zealand with population concentrated along the south east coast.  A camp site at Kaikai's Beach, near Otago Heads, has been dated from about that time. There are numerous Archaic (moa hunter) sites in what is now Dunedin, several of them large and permanently occupied, particularly in the fourteenth century. Population contracted but expanded again with the evolution of the Classic culture which saw the building of several pa, fortified settlements, notably Pukekura at (Taiaroa Head), about 1650. There was a settlement in what is now central Dunedin (Ōtepoti) occupied as late as about 1785 but abandoned by 1826.
Maori tradition tells first of people called Kahui Tipua living in the area, then Te Rapuwai, semi-legendary but considered to be historical. The next arrivals were Waitaha followed by Kati Mamoe late in the sixteenth century and then Kai Tahu (Ngai Tahu in modern standard Māori) who arrived in the mid seventeenth century. These migration waves have often been represented as 'invasions' in European accounts but modern scholarship has cast doubt on that. They were probably migrations like those of the European which incidentally resulted in bloodshed.

The sealer John Boultbee recorded in the 1820s that the 'Kaika Otargo' (settlements around and near Otago Harbour) were the oldest and largest in the south.

European settlement

Captain James Cook stood off what is now the coast of Dunedin between February 25 and March 5, 1770, naming Cape Saunders on the Otago Peninsula and Saddle Hill. He reported penguins and seals in the vicinity, which led sealers to visit from the beginning of the 19th century. The early years of sealing saw a feud between sealers and local Maori, from 1810-1823,'The Sealers' War' sparked by an incident on Otago Harbour, but William Tucker became the first European to settle in the area in 1815. Permanent European occupation dates from 1831 when the Weller brothers founded their whaling station at Otago, modern Otakou on the Otago Harbour. Epidemics reduced the Maori population. By the late 1830s the harbour was an international whaling port. Johnny Jones established a farming settlement and a mission station, the South Island's first, at Waikouaiti in 1840.

The Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland founded Dunedin at the head of Otago Harbour in 1848 as the principal town of its Scottish settlement. The name comes from Dùn Èideann, the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the Scottish capital. Charles Kettle the city's surveyor, instructed to emulate the characteristics of Edinburgh, produced a striking, 'Romantic' design. The result was both grand and quirky streets as the builders struggled and sometimes failed to construct his bold vision across the challenging landscape. Captain William Cargill, a veteran of the war against Napoleon, was the secular leader. The Reverend Thomas Burns, a nephew of the poet Robert Burns, was the spiritual guide.

List of suburbs

Inner suburbs
(clockwise from the city centre, starting at due north)
Woodhaugh; Glenleith; Ross Creek; Dalmore; Pine Hill; Mt Cargill; Normanby; Mt Mera; North East Valley; Opoho; Dunedin North; Ravensbourne; Highcliff; Shiel Hill; Waverley; Vauxhall; Ocean Grove (Tomahawk); Tainui; Andersons Bay; Musselburgh; South Dunedin; St Kilda; St Clair; Corstorphine; Kew; Forbury; Caversham; Concord; Maryhill; Mornington; Kaikorai Valley; Belleknowes; Roslyn; Kaikorai; Wakari; Maori Hill; Anderson's Bay; Halfway Bush; Fernhill; Kenmure.

  

Outer suburbs
(clockwise from the city centre, starting at due north)
Burkes; St. Leonards; Broad Bay; Company Bay; Macandrew Bay; Burnside; Green Island; Waldronville; Saddle Hill; Sunnyvale; Fairfield; Abbotsford; Bradford; Glenross; Brockville; Halfway Bush; Helensburgh.

Towns within city limits

(clockwise from the city centre, starting at due north)
Waitati; Waikouaiti; Karitane; Seacliff; Warrington; Purakanui; Long Beach; Aramoana; Deborah Bay; Carey's Bay; Port Chalmers; Sawyers Bay; Roseneath; Otakou; Portobello; Brighton; Taieri Mouth; Henley; Allanton; East Taieri; Momona; Outram; Mosgiel; West Taieri; Waipori; Middlemarch; Hyde.

Technically, since local council reorganisation in the late 1980s, these are suburbs, but it is rare for Dunedinites to describe these places as suburbs. They are usually regarded locally as towns or townships, and none has the usual qualities associated with suburbs. All are separated by a considerable distance of open countryside from the central Dunedin urban area.