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Old Posted Feb 22, 2021, 1:46 PM
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The Last City of the 20th Century

The Last City of the 20th Century
The rebuild from a devastating earthquake was Christchurch, New Zealand’s chance to reimagine what a city could be. What went wrong?
By James Dann

Quote:
On a recent summer evening, the South Frame, a newly built pedestrianized corridor near the center of Christchurch, New Zealand, was eerily quiet. The only two living souls I saw were a couple of vulnerably housed people, using the park benches for quiet kip. Unlike much of the rest of the world, these streets weren’t empty due to lockdowns or stay-at-home advisories. After a strict national lockdown in March and April of 2020, New Zealand’s South Island—where Christchurch is the largest city—hasn’t had a case of community COVID transmission for close to a year. Downtown Christchurch isn’t empty because of COVID. It’s empty because of twin catastrophes: Ten years ago an earthquake leveled much of the city—and then the local and national government botched the rebuild, squandering a golden opportunity to transform Christchurch. How did it happen, and what can other cities trying to rethink or rebuild learn from our mistakes?

***

But when the government did eventually get building, these human-scale activities were pushed to the side. Aiming to create the Blueprint’s more compact central city, the government bought up a number of city blocks. Restricting land supply did prevent a collapse in property prices, but those artificially high land values, combined with strict new building codes, restricted private development to a handful of rich developers. The result: overpriced housing and projects that spanned entire city blocks, instead of ground-up development reflecting the needs of the community.

***

Plenty of the central city still consists of empty lots, used now as car parks with hardly any cars parked on them. In some parts of the city, there are still buildings waiting for either the repairer’s scaffold or the wrecker’s ball. In the historic center of the city, the crumbled Anglican church that gives Cathedral Square its name still sits with its west face open to the elements, the world’s most ornate and controversial pigeon coop.

***

A 2019 survey of 30,000 Christchurch residents found that just 29 percent of them thought that the city was better than it was before the quake. I lived in central Christchurch for about a decade, both before and after the quake, and I have to agree with the majority. Rebuilding this city was an opportunity to make something great; instead, 10 years on, we’re still talking about Christchurch’s potential. What lessons can other cities, rebuilding from disaster or redesigning in anticipation of change, learn from Christchurch?

Firstly, don’t take too long. With the central city closed down and cordoned off for years, Christchurch residents learned to live without it. The suburban malls got even bigger, gorging on custom from a city devoid of a retail core. The boundaries of the city spread farther and farther out across the plains. When those thousands of families displaced by liquefaction needed places to live, there was no affordable housing in the CBD. So they went elsewhere. By the time the city started to reopen, the fundamentals had shifted even further in favor of the suburbs.

Plan, but don’t dictate. At times, the rebuild authority seemed to get bogged down by its own rules. The first building that was built in the CBD post-earthquake was pulled down a year later, as it didn’t fit within the Blueprint plan. It was leveled so a road could be widened by a few meters. The site still sits empty to this day. The Blueprint also tried to force similar types of activity to cluster together in “precincts.” Perhaps the most egregious example of this was the much-mocked “innovation precinct,” where visionaries and entrepreneurs and dreamers were expected to come together in a two-block area arbitrarily set down by government decree. The result is that Christchurch now has the dystopian-sounding Justice and Emergency Services Precinct and the truly inspirational International Rental Car Precinct, while the Performing Arts Precinct and Ngai Tahu Cultural Precinct have been quietly shelved.

These precincts are a perfect example of the greatest failure of the rebuild. They fundamentally misunderstood the organic, spontaneous nature of cities. Places evolve because of the people who live and work in them. You can influence a number of factors—economic, environmental, planning—but you can’t force people to do things that ultimately don’t make sense to them. The Blueprint looked to serve property, developers, and a few other vested interests. The result: a rigid plan that privileged out-of-town businesses and big-ticket projects but priced average people out of the city. The CBD now has twice as much space in buildings given to car parking as to residential living space. What kind of 21st century city is that?
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  #2  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2021, 4:53 PM
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That's sad. I hope they get it together.

So much of good city-building is about cramming new buildings into small and difficult sites, and into neighborhoods built over generations. That's how you get variety, efficiency, and a fine-grained sense of place. At minimum it can't be too prescribed...let a mix of uses happen and they'll happen. Some of that is the simple fact that some years are good for flats and others are better for offices or hotels, so over time you get a layer cake.

It would be interesting to hear Christchurch's challenges from the standpoint of development economics. Are those vacant lots unfilled mostly because planned precinct-specific buildings haven't happened yet, or mostly because infill is made too difficult?
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  #3  
Old Posted Feb 22, 2021, 5:26 PM
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I actually quite like the new development, it looks very walkable and fairly dense. It seems they're doing the best they can.

https://www.google.com/maps/@-43.532...7i16384!8i8192

Artificially withholding land is really stupid though, so what if prices go down? That would be good for most people.

Quote:
restricted private development to a handful of rich developers. The result: overpriced housing and projects that spanned entire city blocks, instead of ground-up development reflecting the needs of the community.
This seems like it would be a problem even if the earthquake didn't happen, this is an issue all over the US. Western countries treat housing like a commodity rather than a necessity. And their hands are even more tied because they need earthquake building codes so the city doesn't get destroyed again. I also feel like Christchurch is a brutal look into the future of the PNW whenever the big earthquake hits as it is the most comparable situation.
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Old Posted Feb 22, 2021, 5:40 PM
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I've been to CHC twice, once in 2016 and once in 2019. It definitely got a lot better between 2016 and 2019. Progress is slow, but New Zealand is a small country with fewer than 5 million people. (I also haven't been to any other part of NZ other than the Auckland airport, so don't have much to compare it to).
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Old Posted Feb 22, 2021, 6:23 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The North One View Post
I actually quite like the new development, it looks very walkable and fairly dense. It seems they're doing the best they can.

https://www.google.com/maps/@-43.532...7i16384!8i8192
Of possible interest...if you spin around the other direction on the street view, you can see the 'Cardboard Cathedral"...a church built in 2013 mostly made out of cardboard tubes and shipping containers.


From Architect Magazine
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Old Posted Feb 27, 2021, 12:43 PM
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Christchurch, struck by twin earthquakes one year after another, lost all of its beautiful, historic buildings, many torn down due to their danger

Density before:


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/73/90...82bd7a19ef.jpg



After:














During the last earthquake the entire city 'bounced'





Loss of all the older, denser stock




Even the damaged RC cathedral will be demolished

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  #7  
Old Posted Mar 2, 2021, 1:08 AM
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Heartbreaking photos and damage. I had no idea it was leveled that badly.
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