While Dunedin's current official city limits extend north to Waikouaiti, inland to Middlemarch and south to the Taieri River mouth, this articles focus is the history of the Dunedin urban area, only mentioning Mosgiel, the Otago Peninsula, Port Chalmers and inland Otago for context.

Archaeological evidence shows the first Māori occupation of the wider Dunedin area occurred within decades of their arrival in New Zealand (1280–1320).

Both Ōtepoti and Puketai were abandoned by 1826 reflecting the massive loss of life from measles, population displacements from the Musket Wars and the new economic opportunities provided by Europeans.

[9] The current location of Dunedin's central city sits on either side of a ridge of land (Nga-Moana-e-rua)[10] between the Toitu Stream and Water of Leith.

[10] It has been speculated that the silting up of this harbour entrance lead to the abandonment (late 1700s) of the village of Ōtepoti (central Dunedin) and its associated Pā site above Andersons Bay.

[3] Villages were made up of wharerau (semi permanent houses) which could be left out of season and easy repaired when the group returned.

He charted the area and reported penguins and seals in the vicinity which led sealers to visit, their first recorded landings being late in the first decade of the 19th century.

This along with the introduction of the potato and pigs (possibly from Captain Cooks release in the 1770s[11]) allowed Māori from the Otago Peninsula to no long need seasonal migrations to follow foods sources.

[9] Therefore, directly or indirectly sealing and whaling was the primary employer in the Otago Harbour form the earliest 19th Century till the founding of Dunedin.

However, the lack of flat land on the Otago Peninsula and its proximity to Māori settlements lead to the upper harbour being settled as the site.

The arrival at St Clair of William Henry Valpy (1793–1852) in 1849 led to the first development of permanent roading in the area; Valpy, reputedly the wealthiest man in New Zealand,[12] had a branch dray road built from Dunedin's central settlement to his St. Clair farm which ran along the edge of what is now South Dunedin.

The town quickly gained a reputation for mud and a line of branches were put down on the main street from 1848 to 1850 to make transport bearable.

In the central city the branches that held back the mud on the street were replaced with limestone blocks and a sewerage system started construction in 1863 finishing in 1908.

[23] The exhibition had displays from western Europe and the South Pacific and was seen as a way to prolong Dunedin's importance beyond the gold rush which had started to slow.

[25] Chinese settlers were notable among early residents in the St Clair area, and largely through their effort the swampy land inland from the beach was drained and converted into market gardens.

[30] The original course of the Leith was, in fact, a meandering track through what is now the central city, emptying into the upper harbour where Cumberland and Stuart Streets now meet.

After ten years of gold rushes the economy slowed, this coincided with the long depression, however, Julius Vogel's immigration and development scheme brought thousands more especially to Dunedin and Otago before recession set in during the 1880s.

[37] During this time the prisoners were used for labour in the construction of many building projects around Dunedin and to a lesser extent on the Otago Peninsula, This has been traditionally linked with a series of tunnels in the Anderson's Bay region.

Henry Fish, the MP for South Dunedin, represented liquor interests in Parliament, and was an opponent of Women's suffrage in 1890–1893 on their behalf.

[19][18] More companies and institutions were founded in these years, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1884, the Otago Settlers Museum in 1898 and the Hocken Collections in 1910, all first of their types in New Zealand.

In another act of demographic defiance the 1925 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition was staged at Logan Park to coincide with the five yearly census.

In this time too people started to notice Dunedin's mellowing, the aging of its grand old buildings, with writers like E.H. McCormick pointing out its atmospheric charm.

(Toss) Woollaston, Doris Lusk, Anne Hamblett, Colin McCahon and Patrick Hayman forming the first cell of indigenous Modernism.

The Second World War saw the dispersal of these painters, but not before McCahon had met a very youthful poet, James K. Baxter, in a central city studio.

Several bridges were washed out along the Water of Leith, and much of the city was flooded, with over 500 houses damaged from North East Valley to Caversham.

In the aftermath of the storm, flood prevention work was installed along much of the lower reach of the Leith, including weirs and concrete channels.

[49] Started with four regional stations in 1969 they were networked, Dunedin and Wellington one channel and Auckland & Christchurch the other in 1980 became one system Between 1976 and 1981 the city went into absolute decline.

this study has continued to the current day, following these babies to adulthood and giving insight into the city of Dunedin and New Zealand culture and health in general.

Population decline steadied and by 1990 Dunedin had re-invented itself as the 'heritage city' with its main streets refurbished in Victorian style and R.A Lawson's Municipal Chambers in the Octagon restored.

[58] The city continued to refurbish itself, rehousing the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in the Octagon in 1996 and buying and restoring the Railway Station, a new stadium and recently completed a large development of the Otago Settlers Museum.