It’s well past time to tidy our city

If you have a weekend away from Christchurch, you will often return with a heavy heart. The airport looks good and the smooth drive along Memorial Ave feels just as pleasant as ever, but once you hit the central city and suburbs to the east, you will see buildings and streets that are still derelict and poorly maintained.

Who lives here? Who cares for these streets? Most of us will have seen tourists wandering central Christchurch looking dazed and confused, and not just because of the blocked or narrowed roads that are being repaired or upgraded and render the city almost unwalkable in places and make driving torture, but because of the obvious neglect. They see gravelly, muddy, potholed sections of urban land that are doubling as carparks and flood when it rains. And this gloomy scene is about to get worse. An already grey city is that much more depressing during winter.

No one expected a shiny new city only six years after the earthquakes but Christchurch City Councillor Yani Johanson is correct when he says that the city is looking poorly maintained. Johanson represents Linwood and Woolston in the east and he has drawn attention to streets in his ward that he says have been inadequately repaired. He says that the council is ‘‘failing spectacularly’’ to focus on the basics of city maintenance.

You can see the same sense of neglect in New Brighton and other eastern and low-income suburbs of the city. It feeds a wider sense of resentment and a belief that higher-income, leafier neighbourhoods of Christchurch will always receive better treatment. It is one of the ways in which Christchurch’s traditional class divisions remain intact.

Johanson is talking specifically about the council’s own services in areas such as roads, footpaths, parks and stormwater and is referring to a council report on fixing maintenance levels. The report, requested by the council’s Finance and Performance Committee, is due in April.

But the ugliness of parts of Christchurch is a much bigger problem than that. The delayed construction of such key rebuild projects as the convention centre, stadium and housing in the East Frame will leave large parts of the central city as building sites or wastelands for years to come, which is unavoidable even if the delays are a concern.

Of greater concern are the urban areas that remain largely untouched since 2011. Fields of weeds grow in empty sections, derelict buildings are heavily tagged and wire fences and rubble resemble a war zone. Parts of Hereford St east of Colombo St are a disgrace, although the very slow demolition of the old BNZ House has represented some progress.

But it is sad that the greatest Christchurch eyesore of them all is to be found at the historic heart of the city. If you can see Christ Church Cathedral from a tourist’s perspective, rather than that of a jaded or oblivious local, you will be shocked all over again that a loved building has been allowed to fall into such an appalling state of disrepair and remains open to the elements as yet another winter approaches. And that particular mess is entirely out of the council’s control.

Derelict buildings are heavily tagged and wire fences and rubble resemble a war zone