I had never been to a broken city before.
With its abandoned buildings and piles of bricks, Christchurch was confronting. It had been five years since the major quake that shook their buildings and liquified their soil. I'm not sure what I expected. It wasn't this. The city centre still mostly vacant. Lots where buildings stood reduced to rubble. Yellow tape howled about asbestos. Where are the people? Where are the cranes? Shouldn't this be rebuilt by now?
Living in earthquake-prone California, I can sympathize with Christchurch. If the soil is subject to liquefaction, rebuilding will take much more time and money than just using the previous construction methods. Foundations will need to be much deeper; buildings will need to be flexible. Who will pay for all that?
ReplyDeleteSo very true in every way. That sentiment was echoed by locals. The money isn't there to rebuild. Instead the asbestos floats free in the wind.
DeleteI took my family there in January (flew in on our way to Dunedin). I hadn't been there for 10 years, but they had never been there. I nearly cried when I first looked around at the mostly vacant city skyline and the ruined buildings that remain. My husband wanted to know where all the people were too. But the tram was just up and running again and we put all our heart and $ into doing all the touristy things and still had a great time - punting on the avon and eating some wonderful food. The cathedral though, so very sad to look at and remember what used to be such a vibrant and busy cathedral square and city centre.
ReplyDeleteI was there a couple years ago. It was shocking, but still a beautiful city. Hopeful. A shame that there hasn't been more progress in all this time.
ReplyDeleteI have to post this as several responses due to the character limit in your comments section.
ReplyDeleteI read this almost a week ago but was overseas and on an iPad and thought I would reply later. Then I saw your Kaikoura post last night and became even more determined to respond to this post.
I am from Christchurch. I have lived here most of the past 13 years and of all the places I have lived around the world it is definitely where I will settle. The series of earthquakes we had were quite awful. There's an overuse of hyperbole in general these days and so even using words like terrifying, devastating, or XX no longer conveys the actual experiences we had.
The sheer scale of it (200,000 houses damaged or destroyed plus businesses) and the effect of the peak ground acceleration (highest ever recorded) plus liquified ground meant that this was an enormous task to get over. It was always going to take time. Even if every insurance assessor in the world hit town the following months followed by every builder in NZ and Australia, we were still going to spend years getting back to a new type of normal. So resources were an issue. Plus we kept having big events - September 2010, December 2010, February 2011, June 2011, December 2011, May (?) 2012 and then again even this year on Feb 14. Property owners did not want to invest until things settled down, not just in terms of the ground shaking but also in terms of the new blueprint for the city plan as we all saw this as an opportunity to improve what we had already had.
Add to that the complexity of a dual insurance system (EQC, the government insurer taking up the first $100k per event) and the inability to move on to your own insurer to cover the rest of the damage until EQC had formally passed you over. This meant people whose houses were totalled still had to wait until EQC had done their thing. I remind you again of the enormity of the numbers of houses involved, let alone the commercial properties. Just assessing one house properly took at least half a day when you count visiting time then office work. Assessing alone took years.
Of course during this time people are moving on, literally and figuratively. They left town or they held on to money and adopted a wait and see approach. Others bought undamaged houses and others repaired their own houses. We were forced to wait while the government reviewed the building code and made adjustments. Which was critical and essential and although the delay was annoying, it's better to build once properly and not have further issues than to build quickly and find it inadequate.
part 2:
ReplyDeleteIt takes time to demolish buildings in that quantity. It takes time to get plans drawn up, consents issued and then get a builder and building materials. As I stated above, resources of this kind had to be shared around. I guess we have more such professionals per capita than many other cities in the world, but even so and with a huge influx of migrant labour and expertise, the resourcing is still stretched.
I personally am at the start of building a new house. We have known for 2 years that we were in that position but it takes that long to get the ducks in a row and await resources to move on. My office building was destroyed and we relocated tot he edge of town and rebuilt. We have been in our new building for 18 months now. It's right by New Regent St, where the trams go. Every lunchtime I go out for a wander - a randomly decided walk through different parts of the city. Each week I see something new, new progress, a company that has returned to the city. It's a busy city now in quite large pockets with corridors of demo and rebuilding in between. Of course busy is relative - with a population of 350,000 and lots of agriculture and industry on the outskirts, this is not a bustling Sydney, but it's such a long way from tumbleweed town too.
So I was really disappointed when I read your very brief post. I found it negative and factually incorrect. Previously I have enjoyed reading your posts about different places you have been. You include interesting photos and narrative, and you always seem to find good things to say and make me want to visit those places. This was completely different. I wonder if you had a bad experience here that is reflected in your post? Was it raining and you didn't get out anywhere?
There is not asbestos floating in the wind, and to say so is irresponsible. There has been absolute control of anywhere where asbestos might be present, and those buildings have been wrapped and cleared by specific monitored companies. Most people in this city feel the approach to possible asbestos has been overkill but better that than one person has an adverse effect from us not managing any asbestos present.
Since the quakes Christchurch has become quite an entrepreneurial and creative city. It used to be quite staid and conservative and known for being a little bit "white, middle class". All that has changed. Migrants here for the rebuild have added diversity and that is reflected in the food available and in the attitudes of people. Not for profit organisations have sprung up, such as Gap Filler, which takes empty lots where a building has been demoed and not yet rebuilt, and turns the lot into an art installation or an interactive experience. You might care to Google them and maybe check out the Dance-o-Mat for example, where Prince William and recently the Dutch royal family have shaken their booties.
part 3:
ReplyDeleteMany businesses lost premises. As a nation, and a city, of small businesses this could have been devastating, but instead, many of these business owners thought creatively and found alternate ways to survive and often thrive better. Our ways of thinking were challenged and many new and better processes and services came out of it. For example, near my home was a great Thai restaurant. They immediately got a shipping container and turned it into their kitchen, installed benches outside and covered them with a funky tarp. They installed all this on a car park lot and there is always a queue for the food. The experience is also part of their brand. We got food truck markets and other markets, which might have come eventually but we definitely got them earlier than we would have. We built the Re:Start shopping mall out of shipping containers to ensure people still came back to the city to shop. These containers are gradually going now as the buildings around them are developed.
We got the Margaret Mahy playground, right in the CBD, and an incredible area for children. Did you not see all the graffiti art on the sides of buildings? There are many art tours to walk through the city and see the various artworks. I do them every few months as it's changing so much.
We got to create a new city blue print, which is being loosely used for town planning. Right by my office I will get a huge city park with some urban living. I am really looking forward to spending summer lunchtimes on the grass enjoying the city.
Maybe you'd like to come back to Christchurch one day Amy, and I would be happy to show you around and show you how people here live a very normal life despite the changing environment. We always knew it would be 20 years for the city to be fully restored. Of course that damn cathedral sitting in a poor state in the square might still be there. The cathedral has become a pawn in a stand off between two opposing views of how it should be fixed/replaced. It's the one blot on our landscape and it is very unfortunate that it has such a prominent geographical position, but in some ways it is a good reminder that when egos and politics mix no progress gets made, whereas in the rest of the city we have well and truly moved on.
Hi Ali. Thank you for the lengthy reply offering a local viewpoint. I do appreciate it. As a tourist, I admit I found Christchurch to be rather depressing. I did go out and do things like take a tour of the botanical gardens, which are extensive. Sadly throughout the tour, the guide would point out buildings destroyed on the grounds. There was no escaping the vacant buildings and destruction. I chose not to go see the original cathedral. As for the asbestos, when I am back at my computer I will see if I kept the photos. When you see a block of rubble cordoned off with danger asbestos ribbons surrounding it, what else is one left to believe? My impressions of the city itself were not unique. My coworkers expressed the same negative reaction, but I do appreciate the perspective you have shared though and hope in time the city refreshes itself.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
Delete