The Loft, upstairs at the Horse & Trap tavern, is buzzing on a midweek night. A diverse group of Uptown stakeholders have, it seems, plenty say to each other. It's a community meeting, but it's really not like most community meetings.

The gathering is the latest stage in the Uptown Business Association's "community visioning" process and it's intended to draw out ideas from local residents, workers and business owners and foster the idea of Uptown as a distinct community of interest. Members of both the local boards that take in Uptown are here too, listening and talking.

Everyone here seems to understand that Uptown is at a crossroads. The area is experiencing all the disruption of the construction of a huge new railway station where the City Rail Link meets the Western Line at the site of the old Mt Eden station. The plan for the rail nexus is well in swing – but the plan for what happens next? That's yet to be written. And with around 100,000 square metres of land to be freed up on completion of the CRL in late 2024, that matters a lot.

Formalities are kept to a minimum. The association's manager, Brent Kennedy, and chair, Emma Sparks, speak briefly then hand over to Uptown's partner in the process, The Urban Advisory, who have set up a number of informal consulting exercises around the room. What do you love most in Uptown, they ask, and what changes do you want to see?

It's evident that everyone here is on board with the basics of the new vision for Uptown: a planned mix of social and private housing, the maintenance of the area's creative character and grit – and the kind of urban environment where families can flourish.

"It's a nice opportunity and one you don't get often," says music journalist Marty Duda, who has lived in two different only-in-Uptown spaces on Symonds Street over the past decade. "We'll see if anybody listens to us, obviously."

He likes the fact that Uptown "feels like home. I know everybody – I can just walk outside and everybody knows everybody, we all say hi to each other. So it's that kind of place."

Brenda Lawrence-Mason has lived in the area and operated her graphic design business D1 Creative for 21 years. She has ideas on how to fill in the "blank canvas" created by change.

"More people in the area would be great, and mixed-use, open spaces. A European-style city. Lots of people who live in the area have travelled or are from overseas. They're used to high-density. They don't mind apartments."

DJ and event promoter Keegan Fepuleai confesses to being surprised by the diversity of Uptown after moving into St Benedicts Street. He's keen on the idea of establishing a local radio station as a community focus point.

"There are thousands of opportunities here. Everyone looks at K Rd and says it's edgy. But the destiny of K Rd was summed up 30 years ago. In Uptown there's actually an opportunity to make something different."

Another local music industry veteran agrees. Former Juice TV boss Dan Wrightson lives and operates his current business, The Stream Shop, near the tavern.

"It's a small catchment area, but it's building a community where a lot of people can live, work and play," he says. "If that's part of what we're shaping as a community, we're ticking so many boxes. Hopefully it's a blueprint for others."

With him is Jason Te Puhi, who owns the Horse & Trap and is bearing the brunt of the CRL disruption. It's tough right now, he admits, but he's enthusiastic about being part of the developing Uptown vision.

"Everything's positive," he affirms. "We're ready to rock'n'roll."

The feedback gathered on the night by The Urban Advisory will take a little time to process, but the following morning Brent is feeling good about this latest step in the visioning process.

"We're the connectors, aren't we?" he says. "As we build, you get people in the room who've been just a few hundred metres away from each other in their businesses, and yet never talk to each other. We wanted to socialise the idea that change is coming and we all should be part of it. People don't know about the 100,000 square metres around the station. They know the station's coming, but there's much less awareness that there will be development around that as well."

He shares an anecdote about a conversation with a city councillor that serves to underline the importance of the Uptown community's role in shaping the future of the area: "I asked him what was going on the site after completion. And he said 'buildings'. I did have to restrain myself a bit.

"There will be housing, but what kind of housing? We don't want the stuff that's in the middle of town, we want community housing, co-housing, all those opportunities."

He outlines another idea, one that springs from Uptown's existing culture. The area is home to a variety of NGOs, including Forest & Bird and the Mental Health Foundation, who were attracted in the first place by cheap rents.

"Are they going to disappear in the future? What if you got off at the station and there was an oratorium area and a shared space for community groups? NGO town, basically. You get on the train at Britomart, you come up the hill and that's where those people hang out."

There are more workaday gaps to fill, of course; the area needs a supermarket, for example. But the principle that connects it all is clear: Uptown's community has a vision for its own future – and it will have a voice in how that future unfolds.