In August 2011 I wrote that our city must seize the change to change and create a better city. As Rebecca Solnit would say, a paradise built in hell. I wrote:
We will fail future generations if we do not grasp the post-earthquake opportunity to build the best small city in the world and address the social and economic failures that existed before September 4, 2010.
The challenge before our political leaders at local and central government level isn’t enviable.
They must engage the community from the bottom up and reconcile the competing interests, ideas, values and visions into a consensus to take us forward.
To date that consensus has not emerged. The National Government has failed to take the population with it. Its Central City Blueprint superseded the Council’s own plan, rejecting the peoples’ vision that emerged from “Share an Idea”.
Two recent articles reinforce the importance for us to grasp this opportunity to create a better city. Both relate to designing cities for people with high quality public spaces that prioritise walking and cycling. Ironically, the kind of city that 100,000+ people asked for in the Council led “Share an Idea” consultation.
The first article was the secrets to the world’s happiest cities.
If one was to judge by sheer wealth, the last half-century should have been an ecstatically happy time for people in the US and other rich nations such as Canada, Japan and Great Britain. And yet the boom decades of the late 20th century were not accompanied by a boom in wellbeing. The British got richer by more than 40% between 1993 and 2012, but the rate of psychiatric disorders and neuroses grew.
The second article was about how the Mayor of Paris campaigned to shift Paris from a car dominated city into one that focussed on improving public spaces.
The terms of political debate permanently shifted during the administration of outgoing Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, and a remarkable consensus has emerged over environmental concerns. When Delanoë took office 13 years ago, he vowed that automobile interests would no longer dominate the city and he would focus on improving public spaces. And he made good on his promise.
Paris is now a radically different place. Less than half of Parisian households own a car and those who do use them far less than the inhabitants of other cities. People have become attached to the quality of life that urban spaces designed as places, and not as conduits for traffic, allow. To be perceived as intending to take that away would be electoral folly for an aspiring Mayor.
Ongoing debate about the kind of city and future we want is important. Democracy is not a one-off consultation or vote, but an ongoing engagement with people about the kind of things people want to do, what people are willing to pay to do, the kind of city people want to live in and the future they imagine for themselves and their children.
There was recently a public outcry when the Council announced it would delay cycle-lanes by three years. The outcry was intensified by the tragic death of Sharla Haerewa, a young woman with a promising future who was hit by a truck while cycling to work at Christchurch hospital.
But there is also deep unease that some of our leaders simply want to re-create the city we had before the earthquakes and not grasp the opportunity to be a better than we were.
I concluded my article by saying:
There is already a strong political faultline emerging between those who want to quickly restore our city and duplicate what we already had and those who want to build a different and, arguably, better city.
If we simply recreate what we had we will have failed to grasp the opportunity to be a beacon of hope for what New Zealand could be. To build an environmentally sustainable city that eliminates poverty and reduces inequality, the drivers of so much of our social and economic harm.
Good Post . You’re a Thinker so you’d better watch your back .
The Ch Ch City rebuild is the responsibility of the country as a whole . Money has to come from the greater population .
It’s a cost that cannot , and should not , be shouldered by Ch Ch alone .
Developers shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near funding the redevelopment either because they’ll just fuck it up while making millions then disappear .
Seriously , it’d pay to remember that developers are Money Makers . They’re not artists . They’re not brandishing sacks of empathy for the Great Unwashed . They could care less for a humanist city environment . Sure , they pay lip service to that approach but they’re just being callous and cruel so you think ‘ Aww , nice ‘ while they rip you off . They don’t mean one word of it . They are , in fact . Liars .
I’ve just watched ‘ Wolf of Wall Street . ‘ Right at the very end of the film , I was surprised when the last scene was devoted to Auckland New Zealand as ‘ The Wolf ‘ AKA Jordan Belfort was introduced to an audience of gaping innocents with the stench of greed in their nostrils . Auckland , NZ ? Really ? I see .
Sadly , unless there’s a political shift away from the neo liberalism that has us crushed under the absurdity of debt and usury interest rates Christchurch is doomed to be a flat town compromised of bleak sets of glass boxes who’s sole purpose is to reach into our pockets and relieve us of our money .
And I think most Thinkers now realise that , that process of de-humanisation is the prime ingredient to baking hate filled , angst ridden ghettos .
On a lighter note re Ch Ch .
I was up there recently and noticed one very promising thing .
Art was rising up out of the ground and taking over . Amazing wall art on those ugly edifices to greed sadly still standing , or office towers . I saw some great sculptures . I saw little enterprises springing up out of empty sections . I was truly heartened .
Perhaps the best that can happen for Christchurch is if the Big Money Makers just fucked right off . If the Ch Ch City Council simply allowed , indeed encouraged , people to build vibrant shanty towns and unregulated market areas we just might see a fabulous and culturally rich town evolve ? Ever been to the Russian Markets in Phnom Penh ? Of the vast markets in Bangkok ? Those guys have almost everything for sale . From snakes to pistols . You could buy almost anything except one thing that I never saw once . Not once . Can you guess what that was ?
The vile orange fluro vest . It’s the loudest and most vulgar statement for the requirement from us to be un yielding and compliant to The Authority Figures who’ve been bought by The Big Money Makers .
And I’m sure there are racists reading this that think modeling an imergent , Post Quake city on Asian markets is absurd . Well , go there and walk around . Now , come back home and remember walking around drafty , dull , bleak and at the wrong time of night , dangerous , Christchurch City . Notice the difference ?
And what is true for Christchurch is also true for the rest of New Zealand – daylight is burning – if we want a smart vibrant enlightened society we’re going to have to build it.
One of the big issues for Auckland at present is housing, and the great hot potato is foreign buying. No reliable statistics of the level of foreign purchasing exist, and in the absence of data, no-one wants to make a move that will be criticised as xenophobic by those profiting from the current lax regulatory environment. The obvious answer to the information void is a one year moratorium on foreign property purchases. As well as being electorally popular it will provide hard evidence of the level of foreign buying. If this is not problematic, the moratorium can expire without incident – but if it is then it provides an informed basis to design a balanced policy.
Personally I think residencey ought to be required to purchase property. Housing is a core human need, speculation ain’t.
We left Christchurch over a year ago. We were one of the lucky ones and managed to relocate but our property is still sitting there derelict and looking like something out of a Hollywood post-apocalyptic movie. It’s where we lived for 15 years and raised our children. Perhaps we should have stayed but it just wears you down, day after day.
I really think we’re not prepared for another event like this. It’s like the government hasn’t learnt a thing from 2010. In comparison, I read somewhere that it took only two years to rebuild Napier after the massive quake that wrecked that city.God help any other city hit by an earthquake.
@Country Boy, yes I hear the art has sprung up around the city, I can’t wait to come up and have a look.
John Key seems to have already made a ridiculous statement about Wellington being not cool or something I remember a while ago, so it seems he only has love for Auckland and F**K! The rest of the country, unless it is water for cows or gas and oil… So ChCh has to rise from the ashes and rub his nose in what will (I hope) could be the most awesome progressive artistic and green city in the world. Just while I am on here I have to say, why on earth hasn’t Hamilton city council just let the amazing vines grow over the revolting inner city buildings, it would/could look incredible. Tony Milne is right about Paris, the French are onto it, they love plants all over buildings and flower pots, big stork birds nesting on old buildings, they don’t have ‘issues’ with bull shit. N.Z has ‘issues’ with a few swan poos and has to call in the gun crazed macho men to round them up and shoot them out of the sky!!! Maybe a test needs to be devised which weeds out all anal retentive and the uncreative wankers from getting near the city rebuild plans. Let the artist and funky cool people with fresh ideas create the city, it sounds like they are already creating something I can’t wait to see. Wow it would be so exciting to see all the amazing ideas around the world come together in Christchurch right now, we really would be the envy of the world.
P.s one of the most moving and beautiful things I loved hearing about on the news or on radio N.Z which ChCh did every year until the cathedral and tower crashed. Was chiming the bells when the first amazing Godwits arrived from their unbelievable migration. I will miss this beautiful gesture of an epic journey achieved. I hope Chch rings many bells when it comes through enduring this journey.
Good luck with getting a consensus between people and businesses. Capitalism has been around for a while and nobody has achieved that concensus yet.
Chch will be rebuilt for the people or the businesses, not both. Labour need to pick a side, or should I say come back to the people?
I’m sick of hearing slogans such as ‘we need business for the people to return’…that’s bullshit. It’s just rich pricks trying to justify their greed. The top down rebuild in the city has been a joke, and I don’t see much else on offer regardless of whoever wins the election.
The people are sick of this save our heritage bullshit – only people with nice warm houses and economic security are preaching about stupid old buildings.
I don’t know a single person in Chch who wants a cathedral rebuilt, or money wasted on stupid old buildings – if your identity is defined by some shitty old bricks then you need to do something useful with your life, ffs. It pisses me off to see Labour talking about old buildings. Put it this way, Gerry Brownlee would love it if Labour was wasting their time trying to save useless old buildings because it means people’s needs continue to be neglected.
How about instead of a cathedral we build a homeless shelter in the square. I know Jesus would prefer that.
Still though, I’ll give you my electorate vote Tony, you might bring 20 people out of poverty…crack open the champagne
Yes, I grieve for my old home town of Christchurch – first the earthquakes and then Gerry Brownlee and his millionaire developer mates. Cycle lanes too hard; disability access too hard; flood mitigation too hard; but, hey, the GDP is up, so that’s alright then, isn’t it?
The redesign of Christchurch should have been thrown open to a world forum including architects etc. Too many people with knowledge of earthquake rebuilds were dismissed out of hand by Gerry Brownlee when he said words to the affect of We don’t take advise from tourists. Instead we can look forward to lots of zincalume and concrete everywhere topped off by a few old wharf posts and a generous smattering of Testacea – oh and lots of bad paling fences with banana shaped capping rails.
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