Christchurch: The Garden City rebuilds
It’s late summer in New Zealand. In Christchurch, leading designers are busy creating wearable flowers and “old world” summer gardens as part of the March Ellerslie International Flower Show. The focus this year is a City in a Garden competition. The chosen four designers are competing to reawaken the delights of garden concepts for this “garden city” severely damaged by major earthquakes over a year ago.
Aftershocks have continued to shake the city. This show and the current Festival of Flowers, however, are helping to inspire a positive spirit in people as the city gears for its rebuild.
It is doing so with a vision for the future. Last August the city council unveiled a draft central city recovery plan to re- envisage the look of the city; making it more low- rise, with a much smaller central business district and, in the words of its mayor, a more “safe, sustainable, green, hightech, low- rise city, in a garden — a place for people.” The rebuild is estimated at some $ 20 billion Cdn. The plan received 106,000 submissions from a Share An Idea forum. These showed there are rich seams of thinking in the community, by students, professionals and the business sector. This plan has 70 projects aimed for the next 10- 20 years, such as a green corridor through the central city linking parks to the Pacific coast, light rail and retaining Cathedral Square at the city’s heart.
The government- established Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority has as a key focus the “livability” of the future Christchurch, essential to attract investment and people, while the city remains a major gateway for tourism to the South Island. Prime Minister John Key has described this rebuild effort as “without doubt the biggest economic undertaking in New Zealand’s history.”
The vulnerability of countries around the Pacific Rim to major earthquakes is well known. New Zealand and Canada share best practice in emergency preparedness programs, but the fact remains that earthquake risks abound, especially on and near our shared Pacific coasts.
That Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city, was damaged in the way it was by severe and continuing seismic activity, tells us a great deal about the complexities that face urban centres after major earthquakes. These provide lessons for emergency situations that Vancouver could face.
In Christchurch 181 people died as a result of the Feb. 22, 2011, earthquake; about half of the housing stock of Greater Christchurch was damaged ( more than 100,000 homes); 60 per cent of businesses in the centre were displaced; water and sewer pipes were damaged; health services and churches were affected by damage to facilities; over 50 per cent of the residential road work has to be replaced or repaired; schools or parts of them had to be relocated; and performing arts venues and the city’s major sports venue remain out of action. Some parts of the city will no longer be suitable for building. There remain ongoing psychological, insurance, employment and other challenges.
Community well- being is vital in the recovery strategy. The Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority has noted that “being mindful of people’s emotional well- being is an integral part of this work.” The other four key areas of recovery have been set as culture and heritage, the built environment ( resilience of buildings, etc.), the economy ( which includes attracting skilled tradespeople for the rebuild), and the natural environment ( the fix from liquefaction, flooding prone areas, land subsidence). The aim is to “make the region a great place to live.”
This aim will be backed by the tenacity and wry humour of those who make the region their home, and was encapsulated very nicely in travel guide Lonely Planet’s January 2012 online update on Christchurch: “Coupled with the endurance and energy of the people of Christchurch, the city’s future promises to be both interesting and innovative.”