Urban Planning and the Christchurch Recovery

“To hell with resilience, more action, please.”

These words of a disgruntled, uncited local have restrained me from writing an anticipated article on Christchurch’s ‘urban resilience’. While resilience might well be urbanism’s most prevalent buzzword since ‘sustainability’ itself, I feel I must honour the above-quoted, unnamed radio personality who rhetorically asked: “can we please stop patronising people by gushing about their resilience?”

Indeed Cantabrians, being those who hail from the Canterbury region in which Christchurch City is located, dealt and are dealing with the earthquakes of 2010 to present remarkably well. But people are resilient. It’s what we do. Notwithstanding how fantastically adaptable humans are, this article instead considers the positive urban planning outcomes which have come out of Christchurch’s preliminary recovery.

Background

Christchurch was, and still is, New Zealand’s second city. In a country without states (or snakes), it is the unofficial capital of the South Island. Its economy is rooted in agriculture. Sitting somewhere between a ‘Wollongong’ and a ‘New Castle’ on the population scale, its populace of circa 400,000 people pales in comparison to a handful of Australian cities. Despite being often compared to Adelaide (and incorrectly assumed to have been planned by the same surveyor), with respect to the nation’s national city hierarchy, Christchurch is effectively New Zealand’s Melbourne.

In September 2010 Christchurch was stirred by a devastating earthquake which, despite causing up to $3.5 billion in damage, was significantly less heartbreaking than a second major earthquake which rolled through in February 2011.  The latter was among the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in an urban area, claiming 185 lives and a price tag estimated at $15 billion. Having grown up in the city and region, it is with interested detachment that I draw the following points on urban planning and the Christchurch recovery.

 

Any Publicity is Good Publicity

As far as publicity is concerned, the earthquakes haven’t been the worst thing for the profession’s profile. While before I found myself explaining what in fact an urban planner even did, post-quake I miraculously found my ‘civilian’ friends engaging me about the nature of city building. Their newfound expertise rendered my qualifications superfluous (if only I had known before wasting five years at university).

The actual need for real and immediate redevelopment saw an unprecedented interest in urban planning spawn in a population which, in accordance with the western curse of affluent nonchalance, had otherwise become politically self-interested cum disinterested at the local government level. Christchurch’s planners undertook, and were able to undertake, public engagement on a scale perhaps never seen before. People began to care when their city was quite literally taken away from them.

 

Share an Idea

An initiative called Share an Idea was launched which sought ideas from anyone who had an idea to offer. Approximately 100,000+ ideas were shared in total representing a response rate that most major Australasian cities could only dream of as they prepare metropolitan strategies to guide decades of future (re)development. While the old idiom “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” comes to mind here (and of course we could debate what constitutes broken), the Share an Idea campaign provides a new model for public engagement designed to replace a shared sense of powerlessness.

Against 48 other entries, Share an Idea was the unanimous overall winner of the 2011 International Co-creation Award – the first time the award has been won outside of Europe. It effectively empowered the people of Christchurch to collectively come up with a design wish-list for the city. Ultimately, as Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker stated, “[the] community's vision provided all of us with a vision.” This emphasis on public involvement raises the notion of empowerment through an opportunity to be heard, itself flirting with Lefebvre’s notion of a ‘right to the city’ and a right to ‘change ourselves by changing the city’ (see Harvey, 2008).

 

“No one can say it is their plan. It is our plan.”

Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery

A Suburban Chance

With a price tag of approximately $30 billion NZD, the Christchurch rebuild is one of the biggest construction projects in the western world.  When considered against the size of New Zealand’s population and economy, it has been loosely considered bigger than almost any construction program ever attempted. While this is a somewhat unquantified statement, it doesn’t take away from the fact this is a serious city and legacy building opportunity.

One post-quake land use response which I hope develops into a suburban legacy is the reversal of the central city’s monopoly on the after dark economy. While the CBD’s agglomeration of night spots may have reflected economic sense and contained adverse amenity potential, it did so to the detriment of suburban activity centres which remained little more than retail precincts. Moreover, throwing everyone into the city at one time created continuous conflicts (and confrontations) and failed to nurture individualised ‘scenes’.

When the central city was quite literally shut down and cordoned off so to was Christchurch’s entire night spot. Capitalising on the stresses associated with life in a city on its toes, suburban pubs, otherwise dives and or ‘family’ bistros, sought liquor licences to operate as late night destinations. Equally, condemned bars reopened in semi-permanent suburban spaces (with one example being a bar in a truck, quite literally a freight truck converted into a bar on the site of a former pub). This effectively breathed new life into suburban areas and allowed for the more specialised development of niche, dispersed night spots to support the development of scenes characteristic of bigger cities. I hope that, in the wake Christchurch’s central rebuild, this suburban legacy remains just that.

With respect to the central city itself, another legacy I would like to see is the reestablishment of the CBD as a retail destination. As with many similarly sized cities, Christchurch’s CBD had lost its status as a retail destination to a handful of autocentric, suburban malls in each compass point of the city (the malls are quite literally named Northlands, Eastgate, South City, and Westfield). The rebuild has the potential to restore the city as a preeminent day time destination over suburban retail centres to the benefit of CBD vitality generally. Alas, city-wide public transport initiatives, themselves not dramatically improved by the city’s plans, will perhaps be the biggest inhibitor towards true central city revitalisation.

Central Christchurch will be rebuilt. In addition to its certain and potential built form and land use legacies, I hope the city becomes the beneficiary of a sustained legacy of public interest in urbanism, city building, and local politics. Christchurch has set the bar for an engaged constituency which will in itself ensure that life goes on in the nation state’s second largest city. 

 

Ben Daly