The eastern end of St Andrews Street forms the beginning of SH 88.

A park, Queen's Gardens, marks an approximate southern end of the central city.

Early Dunedin was centred on two distinct sites, one to the north of the Octagon, and another in The Exchange, around lower Princes Street.

The removal of the top of Bell Hill to allow for a thoroughfare between the two settlements was one of the young colony's biggest engineering feats (much of the rubble from Bell Hill would be used to reclaim areas of the upper harbour which became known as the Southern Endowment.

As a result of the influx of money, the city greew rapidly, and the wealth allowed commercial enterprises and private citizens to build big.

As a result, Dunedin has many of New Zealand's finest Victorian-era buildings, especially down Princes Street, which was the city's first central business district.

By the mid-20th century, business had drifted further north, and today the area around George Street is the city's commercial hub.