City rebuild maze: Round two

Two years after his first failed attempt, can get from one corner of Christchurch to the other without passing an empty site? No, he cannot.

In January 2018, I went on a failed quest. I tried to get from from one corner of the Four Avenues in Christchurch to the other without passing an empty site.

The aim was to get from the corner of Bealey and Fitzgerald avenues on the top right of the city to the corner of Moorhouse and Deans avenues on the bottom left.

The challenge turned the city centre into a labyrinth, with every vacant site acting as a dead end. It was a way to measure how well the city had recovered since the 2011 Canterbury earthquakes and the wave of demolition that followed. It was also a way to get out of the office for an afternoon.

The odds were stacked against me. In 2017, Christchurch City Council figures showed there were 62.7 hectares of vacant commercial and residential land

Charlie Gates had more success on his revisited city scooter challenge – but was eventually thwarted by empty sites earmarked for large rebuild anchor projects.

within the Four Avenues, which is about three times the size of the Botanic Gardens.

Predictably, I failed. I managed to get just a couple of blocks south and about six blocks west before I was thwarted.

Would I have any better luck about two years later? Well, the figures were more in my favour. Vacant land in the Four Avenues

fell to 52.75ha in 2018 and 49.84ha in 2019.

Also, we could take advantage of another improvement to the city centre – electric scooters. This meant we could go faster and further than before.

Perhaps we could call this unwanted sequel Rebuild Maze 2: Electric Scooter Crew? Then again, maybe not.

We hooned off down Fitzgerald Ave and immediately had more success than 2018. Admittedly, it is harder to judge whether a site is vacant as you pass on a speeding scooter, so these results may not be entirely scientific.

Nevertheless, we were off to a tremendous start. Tremendous, I tell you.

We made it many blocks south on Fitzgerald Ave before being forced right onto Kilmore St by an empty site. Eventually, by scooting through small parks, at one point heading down a pathway alongside some apartments and zooming down Rauora Park, we got to Lichfield St. This was many blocks further south than we had ever managed before.

But, even though we got further than last time, we were eventually thwarted by empty sites earmarked for large rebuild anchor projects. It is almost impossible to squeeze past the empty east frame, set aside for new inner city housing, or the vast empty space that will one day be occupied by a new Christchurch stadium.

And aside from the large empty sites, there are still a handful of empty residential sites on the fringes of the city that hampered our progress.

So, for now, the Christchurch rebuild maze remains unconquered.

I am still hopeful that, as the city recovers, I will eventually complete this ludicrous task and make it to the other corner of the Four Aves.

If one day, many years from now, you see a grey-haired man weeping on the corner of Moorhouse and Deans avenues, pay him no heed.

That’s me.