Christchurch at the round table
What we really want from our local body election:
Local elections are on the horizon and candidates are making their pitches. But what do people in Christchurch actually want from their city council over the next three years? Dominic Harris and Tina Law find out
Christchurch is at a crossroads. While the looming elections will affect lives across the country, for New Zealand’s second city they play perhaps a greater role than anywhere else.
What happens on October 12 may decide more than just who leads the city council – it could shape the direction of Christchurch for years to come, govern the pace of the rebuild and dictate whether the city prospers or flounders.
Decisions made in the council chamber are far-reaching, yet residents wield great power over how they want their city to move forward.
To find out more, The Press convened a round-table of people representing diverse Christchurch organisations, quizzing them on what they felt are the most significant issues facing the city.
We asked them what they want from the city council over the next three years, how important the reactivation of the central city is to wellbeing, and what the authority could do to make a real difference to the communities they represent.
Guests included:
– Hayley Guglietta, a volunteer and committee member of groups including Richmond Residents and Business Association, Canterbury Community Gardens Association and the Inner City Action Network; – Developer and investor Richard Peebles, whose projects include Little High and the Riverside Market, among dozens of others since the earthquakes;
– Central City Business Association chairman Brendan Chase, whose group represents more than 400 business and property owners in the central city; – Julie Downard, Christchurch spokeswoman of the global climate change campaigning movement Extinction Rebellion, a non-violent civil disobedience organisation; – Dom Wilson, a 15-year-old Burnside High School student and chairman of the Christchurch Youth Council, an organisation that champions and empowers young people;
– City Missioner Matthew Mark, whose social service agency served more than 40,000 people last year, dealing with issues such as homelessness, addiction and education.
During a wide-ranging discussion that lasted more than two hours, key themes emerged as playing central roles in people’s lives.
Young people
For many in Christchurch, the rebuild seems to be taking forever. But for one particular group, the city’s young people, it has been forever, defining their lives.
‘‘I’ve grown up through the earthquakes and the rebuild – I don’t remember a Christchurch that wasn’t broken,’’ said Dom Wilson.
Despite his tender years, Wilson has a message he hopes the city’s leaders will heed.
‘‘The city that’s created needs to be for us, because we’re the ones who are going to have to live with the decisions made today.
‘‘When you’re talking about the idea of vibrancy it needs to be sustainable for future generations, for my generation. Young people across the city, they don’t feel Christchurch is a place where it is actually truly their home.
‘‘When young people already don’t feel like the central city is a place where they can grow up, you’re going to have people not wanting to come and live [there], and you’re going to have it all over again in 10 or 20 years.’’
Chief among the hurdles to venturing into the centre? Public transport and not enough places to hang out, Wilson says.
‘‘I live in Burnside, I go to get the purple line bus and it says five minutes away and I get there and it’s gone, it’s not on the system any more.
‘‘I then have to get my parents to drop me off or I’m late to a meeting because the public transport system doesn’t work for people who don’t have another option to go into town to get places.’’
Then there is not enough on offer for young people in the city.
‘‘We have the youth space on the corner of Lichfield and Manchester streets with the spray cans and basketball court, and we try to promote young people to come.
‘‘But so many have no other option, especially those in the east, so they just stand around outside the bus interchange, outside EntX and the museum.
‘‘They end up getting trespassed and told to go away because they’re becoming a ‘nuisance’. There needs to be more spaces like Tu¯ ranga.’’
Kate Burgess, the Youth Council’s sole staff member, suggested Wilson’s age group – 12 to 18 – were at the bottom of the pecking order in the city’s design, with not enough specifically for them.
‘‘Often young people are linked in with families. Margaret Mahy Playground was designed for children, young people and families, and there’s this hierarchy of needs – someone Dom’s age and size wouldn’t feel comfortable playing when there are little children around, so often it means that young people come at night.
‘‘Having young people in safe spaces – but their own spaces – is really important.’’
So what do the people leading the rebuild think about the frustrations of Wilson and his generation?
Little High developer Richard Peebles is sympathetic to their plight, one shared by his own four teenagers.
‘‘They’re the same as you, the city they know has always been a broken city. That’s something we don’t realise – that our kids, a whole generation, don’t have a city.’’
Peebles said providing for young people underpins the ethos of his ventures.
‘‘You say you’re not welcome – we think we’ve got a successful development when we see schoolkids in uniforms and retired people sitting side by side at the venue.’’
Peebles promised his Riverside development would also greet them with open arms.
‘‘My kids go to Westfield, which drives me insane, the EntX and the bus terminals. I’d rather they be at Riverside, so you’re most welcome.’’
While Wilson and his peers have a clear message, their voice only carries so far – something he would like to see change, starting with the next council taking up a youth strategy.
‘‘As young people we are the ones who, it is constantly said, are the leaders of tomorrow, and yet there is not that representation.
‘‘We as a Youth
Council really want to see the whole council looking from a youth perspective.’’
Voting age should be lowered to 17, he believes – something he has discussed with
‘‘quite a few MPs’’ – and education in civic issues should be ‘‘nonnegotiable’’.
With the election looming, Wilson wants a push to engage young people, from more social media to greater efforts to bridge the gap between the current crop of politicians and those to come.
‘‘The youngest councillor is 32 – that is an eight-year difference to being a young person.
‘‘Ultimately we need younger people to be interested in civics, so when they get to 18 they end up voting because they know what they are voting for.’’
Central city
A key issue for some of the panelists was the importance of a vibrant, successful central city.
But they feel retailers are struggling as they compete with suburban malls offering free parking.
Peebles, who has invested millions of dollars in post-quake Christchurch, has a strong message for the council: ‘‘Get out of the bloody way.’’
The biggest single risk to the CBD is the city council, he said. ‘‘They don’t get it. At the moment they’re very anti-car.’’
Peebles said he is a big cycleway advocate and believes the city needs them, but not at the expense of parking.
‘‘We probably won’t have a need for car parking buildings in 10 years … but right now, the retail precincts that are successful are the ones with massive free car parking.
‘‘Every road they’ve done up post-earthquakes, all they’ve managed to do is spend a lot of
I think it’s important to Christchurch’s identity that it’s got a successful central city. Brendan Chase
money to carry less cars, less pedestrians and not a massive amount of cyclists. [They] do away with on-site parking, they don’t provide alternatives and they make less people use the roads in a slower time.’’
The mayor and council chief executive have promised to speed up development, he said, but problems come from council staff putting up ‘‘roadblock after roadblock’’, and he has little confidence new chief executive Dawn Baxendale will make any difference.
Vibrancy of the central city is, for Chase, Christchurch’s most significant issue, and he is desperate to see local people return, something he believes the council could aid by better marketing the centre to people in the suburbs and wider Canterbury.
‘‘Cities are interesting not just because of the buildings, but because of the density of humanity. As they get more populated they’re more vibrant, they generate business of their own.
‘‘I think it’s important to Christchurch’s identity that it’s got a successful central city.’’
Guglietta believes vibrancy was compromised by urban sprawl triggered by opening up greenfields outside the city for development following the earthquakes.
The council should have instead forced intensification inside the four avenues before allowing additional housing areas to be opened outside the centre, she said.
‘‘You can’t have greenfields and intensification of the city when our population increase is so incremental. We’ve got to look at our planning at a bigger level.’’
The council wants the inner-city population to reach 20,000 by 2024, but Peebles agreed with Guglietta that the authority had missed the boat to encourage this change of living style.
‘‘They should have just committed to building instead of giving all that land to Fletchers to enable them to have 20 years to build the properties.’’
The CBD is a city’s ‘‘heart and soul’’, Peebles said.
‘‘When you go to another town and get off the plane, you don’t go, ‘Right, I’m straight off to Westfield’. When you’re visiting towns you go to the central city.’’
City Missioner Mark, like, Peebles, believes one of the best post-quake projects is the Avon River corridor, a point of difference to the high-end market of the CBD.
‘‘It doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from, whether you have means or not, people can all sit side by side and enjoy it equally,’’ he said.
‘‘There’s a real importance in ensuring that we’ve got that equality in there.’’
Mark fears the social gap is widening, particularly around housing accessibility, citing the failure to replace boarding houses on Barbadoes St lost in the quakes that were home to many people served by the City Mission with similar homes as an example of the problem.
‘‘When you’ve got Fletcher’s selling apartments in the CBD at
$1.3m, that’s not a home for the people we’re serving.’’
A defining image of the rebuild is the new stadium, something Peebles believes is critical to the city centre’s recovery.
‘‘People say we can’t afford a stadium, I’m saying we can’t afford not to have one.’’
When Ed Sheeran performed in Dunedin last year, 21,000 cars and
30,000 residents left the city and spent nearly $600 each, and having a stadium in Christchurch will be a ‘‘game-changer’’ economically, socially and mentally, Peebles said.
‘‘We have the money and the land, stop mucking around. We need to build the bloody thing and stop spending money on consultants and talking about it.’’
Downard suggested ratepayers are paying for the stadium but would see its benefits go elsewhere, but Peebles disputed this, saying money would go to taxi drivers, dairy owners, and hospitality operators – all ratepayers.
Downard also questioned whether the stadium would help those served by the City Mission, but Mark did not agree, suggesting the success of people in the wider community was vital to them supporting his organisation’s work.
Transport
The panellists also believe good transport is vital for the success of the central city.
But Downard disagreed with Peebles’ view about provision for drivers, suggesting he was equating successful businesses with massive free car parking.
‘‘The people using our car parks in the central city at the moment are largely commuters who park there all day for free and go to work,’’ she said.
‘‘Every car park the council provides actually undermines public transport.’’
Public transport can be made as nice, frequent and reliable as you like, she believes, but unless driving is made unattractive, people will not swap cars for buses.
Peebles suggested free bus rides for children would encourage people to use them, but Downard questioned such a move.
‘‘Why should we expect free for public transport when we don’t expect free for our cars?’’
She argued that Christchurch, with the highest rates of car ownership in the country at 913 cars per 1000 people, offers little alternative.
‘‘Auckland and Wellington, who have much better public transport systems because they have got their s**t together around public transport, they have around 700 cars per 1000 people.’’
But Peebles said the offer of free bus rides could help change behaviour.
‘‘You want to use a stick, I’m saying let’s use a carrot.’’
For Guglietta, the population and land area of Auckland and Wellington encourage strong demand for good public transport, but Christchurch’s unfettered urban sprawl hindered the creation of an effective system.
Wilson said public transport needed to be cheap, accessible and to work for people, otherwise they would not use it.
Young people often use sustainable transport as a default, but are taught that they should learn to drive as soon as they are able to.
‘‘They also tend to be people that will buy the most unsafe cars, the least environmentally friendly cars, so we’re teaching them one thing up until they can learn to do another.’’
Climate emergency
No discussion of Christchurch’s future would be complete without an examination of arguably the defining issue of our time, climate change. As its extent becomes clearer, numerous groups have emerged to fight for the issue to hold greater public prominence, among them Extinction Rebellion.
For Christchurch spokeswoman Downard, the climate crisis and rising greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are the most pressing concerns.
After declaring a climate emergency in May, the city council last week indicated it would set a target for Christchurch being carbon-neutral of 2045.
But for Downard, this does not go far enough – or fast enough. She would have preferred 2025. ‘‘Yes, they’ve declared a climate emergency – they now need to act on that.
‘‘One of the clauses was to make climate and water the overarching priorities for everything they do, but they haven’t actually achieved that yet, despite having declared back in May.
‘‘They’re still doing things that are actually going against getting emissions down.
‘‘Unless we do something extraordinary our civilisation faces a rather nasty end – I don’t think that’s going to be 50, 100 years time, I think it’s much sooner than that.’’
When quizzed on how the council should accelerate its efforts, Downard was initially reluctant to offer solutions, saying: ‘‘I’m not in a place to tell them what to do, and I don’t think any of us are.’’
But a vibrant city centre with high-density housing would help reduce travel distances, she said, while alternatives are needed for the 95 per cent of residents who travel by car.
‘‘We know in Christchurch transport emissions are 53 per cent of GHGs, and that is where we need to start. Urban sprawl is contributing hugely to emissions. We need to get people out of cars and onto buses.’’
She also advocated the creation of a ‘‘citizens’ assembly’’ – a group of ordinary people advised by experts to take on the mantle of some council decision-making.
Downard said the council needs to be on a ‘‘wartime footing’’, suggesting it should encourage selfsufficiency in basics such as growing food, an idea that resonated with Richmond resident Guglietta.
‘‘The red zone is the opportunity. That river corridor is our opportunity as a city to combat some of the effects of climate change. We are nine years in and we are not supposed to plant anything. I work at the Richmond community garden, we have two acres of red zone land which we have a five-year lease on and we are limited in what we can do.
‘‘Had the regeneration plan been signed off years ago we could have started planting and fixing some of those issues.’’
Peebles believes there are ideas that could be implemented now, and cheaply. ‘‘The red zone, what a great opportunity – it could be a massive carbon sink. Native trees, wetlands, walkways and cycle paths – we’ve got the land.
‘‘[Social enterprise] Cultivate Christchurch grow fruit and veges, so put aside some of the red zone for them. Free electric scooter and bikes for people to get into the city – these things are not massive costs.’’
Walking the line between environmental needs and keeping Christchurch moving forward left panellists occasionally at odds over how both can be achieved.
Downard’s idea of making city centre parking more difficult to encourage people onto buses frustrated Peebles.
‘‘Ninety to 95 per cent of people in Christchurch travel by car. You can’t just say ‘no car parks, no cars’ that is ridiculous.
‘‘There won’t be a CBD, there won’t be any rates. Effectively if you did that our economy would collapse overnight.’’
Chase also questioned Downard’s argument that even electric cars might not be a solution as they still produce emissions through the manufacturing process.
He said: ‘‘I’m hearing your need for urgency but I think there is an evolution to happen here.
‘‘You can’t just suddenly lurch to the future because you will leave people behind.’’
But for Downard that lurch is vital.
‘‘We’ve been talking about this for 40 years and we’ve done nothing. We have actually increased our emissions, so we’re at the point we need to lurch if we’re going to succeed.’’
Chase also questioned the role councils can play in tackling climate change, saying: ‘‘As a ratepayer I don’t pay my council rates to save the planet.
‘‘You’ve got to understand how councils work in relation to central government – there are central government issues here.
Downard argued councils are best-placed to guide residents through the climate emergency, but Chase suggested concerns should be represented ‘‘more vigorously’’ to the Government.
‘‘Otherwise we get a rates burden on top of a tax burden and central Government absolving itself of responsibility. That is wrong.’’
Mental health
With the earthquakes throwing an entire generation into disarray and the horrors of March’s terror attacks still fresh, Christchurch has had more than its fair share of tragedy. Those devastating events and their consequences have taken their toll, particularly on young people forced to grow up among ruins and uncertainty.
For City Missioner Matthew Mark, whose organisation has helped 42,500 people over the last 12 months, the scars are clear.
‘‘We’ve got a whole generation coming through that knows nothing else, and actually has a whole lot of other post-traumatic effects that have impacted on their lives.
‘‘I look at our services now, alcohol and drugs services, for example – we’re seeing kids 12 and
13 years old starting to present with full-blown addictions, because that’s how their parents coped with the trauma of what happened, and then more latterly the mosque attacks.
‘‘Every time there’s something like that we see a massive spike in demand and change in demographic of those that we’re serving.
Counselling services within schools and the mission have almost quadrupled since the March
15 attacks, he said.
‘‘We saw youth suicides and all manner of things manifest out of that because it’s that traumarelated stuff, and we forget about that.’’
The idea of ‘‘wellness’’ in the community is vital to the rebuild, Mark suggested. ‘‘We can’t forget about that when we’re creating what our city looks like, and the feel and dynamic of it. If we get that wrong, we’re not going to address that and meet the need within our community.’’
Wilson, himself a child of the rubble, sees mental health as a key issue for young people and believes greater support is needed through schools and safe spaces. ‘‘The city I’ve grown up with is different every time you go into it.
‘‘That’s great, but there aren’t set things, and that does come into the ‘broken-ness’ idea of a city, and that in turn really does affect someone’s mental health.
‘‘It’s good that the current Government is trying to take a real focus on youth mental health, getting to the 18-24-year-olds, and trying to not be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
‘‘[Rather, it’s about] getting young people in their schools and places they feel comfortable when they’re up at the top of the cliff, rather than crisis resolution.’’
Chase sees many of the effects the tragedies have had on children and young people as being indirect. ‘‘They’re growing up in environments where parents are coping or not coping with all they had to deal with in the earthquakes, so I don’t know it’s necessarily that kids were traumatised by earthquakes, but they’re traumatised by environmental trauma caused by earthquakes.’’
Richmond resident Guglietta has witnessed that in her own neighbourhood on the fringe of the red zone. ‘‘A lot of our families have spent the last nine years fighting the Earthquake Commission and are still fighting it.
‘‘You talk to Banks Ave School – there’s a really high proportion of kids there with post-traumatic stress and anxiety. Those kids weren’t even here for the earthquakes – they’re getting it from their parents, because their parents are spending their time fighting EQC, fighting the roads getting to their homes where there are diversions all the time and they’re angry.’’
Then there is the new concern for young people – the climate emergency. Younger generations have spearheaded efforts to force action, but there is a fear the feeling of powerlessness amid what could lie ahead is taking a toll.
‘‘Feeling disempowered knowing that we face this big, terrible thing creates tremendous unwellness,’’ Downard suggested.
Taking action can be an antidote to that anxiety, she believes, but authorities also need to play a greater part. ‘‘The city council needs to let the public know that we need to be acting now, and they need to tell people what to do in response.’’
Mark shares the view that the council – and the people themselves – can play a huge role in improving mental health, rather than leaving it to the Government.
‘‘This is our community, so I think responsibility does rest with each one of us who form that community. We’ve got a team here who lead our city, and they should be leading the charge on that space as well.
‘‘When we’re seeing environmental things influence people’s health and wellbeing, that says that we’ve got something wrong. We can build all the wonderful buildings we can build and create environments, but if we’re not healthy and well as individuals then no-one’s going to enjoy it, nobody’s going to benefit from it to the level they could.
‘‘There needs to be a level of ownership in our local space around what are we going to do.’’ Four other groups were invited to take part in the round-table. Representatives of the Muslim Association of Canterbury, Sport Canterbury and the Art Gallery were unable to attend, while Nga¯ i Tahu declined to take part following the death of former chief executive Tahu Potiki.