Posts
I
have just returned from a visit back to Christchurch, the city where
I grew up and left 30 years ago.
Here
are my impressions
Revisiting
Christchurch
by Seemorerocks
Some time after the February earthquake in Christchurch I wrote an article for CollapseNet in which I expressed the opinion that there there would be no reconstruction of Christchurch. One person, a "prepper" living in Canterbury took offence.
Of course Christchurch would be rebuilt!
Perhaps I should have added the phrase "in a meaningful way".
Today, when I look back, although I wasn't exactly right, I wasn't exactly wrong either.
Today, when I look back, although I wasn't exactly right, I wasn't exactly wrong either.
Going back to Christchurch over two years after the devastating February quake that killed 185 people, and coming up to the third anniversary of the first, September quake, it seems that part from the wholesale demolition of the CBD little has happened to rebuild the city.
For many people in the city life is the same, if not worse, than it was after the quake.
On the urging of my partner I agreed to revisit Christchurch.
It was a chance to catch up with people I have not seen for 2 years or so, and in one case to catch up with a good, childhood friend whom I have not seen in years.
It was one rich in memories of times past as well as one of grieving for what has passed.
It was one rich in memories of times past as well as one of grieving for what has passed.
It was also a chance to see the city at a time when, for the first time since the quake the Red Zone was opened up and it was possible to walk around the ruins of the central city, including Cathedral Square, the hub of the city.
We needn't have worried about the weather, Christchurch put on its best weather with beautiful sunshine.
Many parts of the city are scarcely recognisable. Most of the old landmarks have gone, most of its tall buildings. What marks Christchurch, despite the destruction is the river Avon and the gardens and the trees.
The trees are the heroes of the city.
We needn't have worried about the weather, Christchurch put on its best weather with beautiful sunshine.
Many parts of the city are scarcely recognisable. Most of the old landmarks have gone, most of its tall buildings. What marks Christchurch, despite the destruction is the river Avon and the gardens and the trees.
The trees are the heroes of the city.
A tour around the post-quake city
Let's have a brief look with the way Christchurch looks today, starting with Cathedral Square.
Looking back towards the Square - the building on left background was one of the old landmarks
Demolition going on in Hereford Street
Taking in the wholesale destruction of Manchester and High Streets
This view is across Colombo St towards what used to be Beaths, one of the city's old department stores
Sunday morning on Cashel Mall
Looking along the Avon from Oxford Tce in an area that was once one of the most picturesque and quaint areas of the city. Now, almost nothing remains.
For me my Christchurch, the one that I grew up with and could identify with - the old Victorian shop buildings of High Street, the neo-Gothic buildings - has disappeared.
When I look at the photos it all looks more like a mid-sized Soviet city than Christchurch, the 'garden city'.
When I look at the photos it all looks more like a mid-sized Soviet city than Christchurch, the 'garden city'.
Prior to the quake much of Christchurch was laid waste by corporate vandalism - the jackhammers of developers.
What they couldn't achieve was completed by the quake.
Many of the heritage buildings were beyond hope of repair but others have been pulled down at the behest of the dictator of Christchurch, minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, Gerry Brownlee.
'Old dungers' he calls them.
'Old dungers' he calls them.
We have left perhaps one street in the whole of the city that remains largely untouched.
What remains are nondescript modern commercial buildings, so loved by minister Brownlee.
A Glimpse of pre-quake Christchurch
A view of pre-quake Cathedral Square
This is a view from the cathedral of life on the square before the quake
Here is a travelogue of Christchurch from a bygone era - 1952 - before I was born.
I would say that 90% of the buildings that feature in this were, if not demolished prior, were destroyed after the quake.
I would say that 90% of the buildings that feature in this were, if not demolished prior, were destroyed after the quake.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8PVvm71DPk
Making do in the midst of destruction
So many houses and blocks of flats were damaged. Others seemed to be OK, but were boarded up. Other houses were empty.
In the midst of empty houses there would be signs of life and the residents, frequently elderly, would be continuing to make do as best as they could, living in houses with cracks in them that were impossible to heat - living with cold, damp and mould.
We have one good friend, C, who is living near Lyttelton and trying to make do in a house that she has been told is too dangerous for inspection.
Previously a professional life wasn't easy but since the quake C has no paid work (but does a lot of voluntary work). She is living still, after 2 years, in a house without hot water, with cracks such that some days it is 2C (36F) inside the house. The old car she has been driving has finally given up the ghost.
This is the way that people are flipped out of the middle class and into a fairly desperate existence.
This is collapse working itself out.
I have another friend, S, who was a successful airline pilot who lived in one of the leafy, better-off suburbs. This changes when he suffered a devastating stroke nine years ago. Add to that being disinherited and cut-off by a dysfunctional family.
They realised that they couldn't continue to live in Merivale so sold and moved into a house in the inner city.
Now S is a regular at the Beat Street Cafe that acts as a hub for the community, providing free coffees for those in need and, reportedly, feeding some of those sleeping rough in the city.
the Beat Street Cafe, Barbadoes Street
As a regular he is the beneficiary of others' largesse as he can no longer afford to buy a regular cup for himself.
I am sure that these are not isolated stories.
Building community
People are starting to realise that they cannot rely on the government to help them, so they have to work as a community to help themselves.
There are many shining examples of communities coming together, right from the Beat Street cafe, to the Time Bank in Lyttelton, which already knew who the vulnerable people were when the quake hit.
One shining example featured in the Press the weekend we were there. The article Helping People to Help Themselves discusses Addington Action which has recognised that help is not going to come from on high and that "we're not going to do things for people. We're going to do it with them' They have organised themselves to fix up people's quake-damaged homes and to bring in retired builders from other parts of the South Island to help.
Mike Peters of Addington Action with a model of the organisation's new warehouse to be built in Garlands Rd
.
A housing bubble
While many people quietly suffer in their quake-damaged homes in areas that show no signs of recovery like the eastern suburbs, Sumner and the central city the city is expanding towards the north and west.
In Halswell, a suburb on the edge of the city where I lived as a youngster, was semi-rural - I used to ride my pony along the roads.
Now this semi-rural area has been replaced by huge, soul-less housing estates, (mostly in the last 3 years), with houses that are selling for prices that are unaffordable to most working New Zealanders.
This is part of a huge housing bubble.
The government paints it as a housing shortage, and what is needed to bring housing prices down is more and more (and more) building.
Expand the economy, increase the population, keep the Ponzi scheme going, at all costs.
And the costs are considerable.
There is a serious lack of rental accommodation for those that remain and cannot afford to buy a house that costs half-a-million dollars.
This is made worse by houses that have been damaged beyond repair by the quake and the extra demand for workers coming into the city to be employed on demolition and building.
There were several workers like this living at the backpackers hostel where we stayed.
He told me the rents were unaffordable and the bonds required by landlords exorbitant.
On the very morning I returned home there was a report on Radio New Zealand on the rental situation in Christchurch. It is worth listening to.
Rents have increased 25 percent in this last year,
Tenants have been moved to short-term contracts and live in seriously substandard accommodation. If they complain they are evicted because there are plenty to take their place, often outsiders involved in the rebuild, who can afford to pay still higher rents.
Landlords put up rents because they can.
Credit Crunch
While we were down in Christchurch there was a thorough report on the question of debt in Christchurch.
Of the 5 billion dollar cost for the central city and 'horizontal infrastructure' rebuilding costs the Council will pay $1.9 billion - the rest is covered by central government.
This will lead to a huge ballooning of debt in a city that previously maintained its social spending and raised funds by issuing bonds .
Christchurch had a far lower debt burden than almost any city in New Zealand.
As the article points out, Christchurch's credit card has been 'maxed out'
If we take an optimistic, 'business-as-usual' approach to this it is going to saddle this generation and the next with debt.
It is predicated on high growth levels (7 per cent per annum projected over 10 years) and population growth. "Christchurch now needs a population strategy and, more than that, a jobs strategy"
Much of this is being pushed by the this National government that is pushing major projects like building a new sports stadium, a convention centre, an arts centre and a cricket stadium in the city's beautiful Hagley Park.
The struggle for the Council in its relationship with central government has been to avoid "being treated as an open chequebook, taking on debt in the ratepayers' name for projects that might be mostly required by the Government's national economic objectives"
A view of the the plan for a stadium
It is hard to imagine that the present housing bubble and rates of unsustainable growth are going to last for long.
It only takes a real slow down, increased interest rates and the city (indeed, the country is in deep doodah.
What if there is another disaster? The coffers nationally, are well and truly empty.
As my friend S said, "heaven help us if there is another disaster".
There are people in Christchurch who are worried by the direction Christchurch is taking.
One is Vicky Buck, former mayor who is standing for council again. She has some insight when she says that "This is going to be a century of great environmental and economic challenges" and that "flexibility may be what is most important for the city"...."If a developed country like Greece can have a 50 per cent youth unemployment or New York is worrying about getting washed away by climate change, you want to have the feeling that you've got choices. So as a community, high levels of debt are quite a concern"
Thank goodness there is someone in the public arena with some sense!
Denial
Getting back to my friends, M expressed thinking at the time that Christchurch was the worst place to have an earthquake in.
What she meant by that was that one side,at least of the social divide, was repressed and valued above all the stoicism, the stiff upper lip.
While in many aspects the community has opened up and has started talking to each other, there is still an inability to acknowledge what has really happened and to acknowledge the grief as to what has been lost.
In a way this resembles the inability to acknowledge death.
Like the inability to acknowledge the possibility of the collapse of the world as we have known it, even our own extinction as a species.
Living in denial.
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