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Really Re-imagining Christchurch

by Whaleoil on March 15, 2011

Some well meaning meddling, waffly, “other people” have set up a site called Re-imagine Christchurch. The only problem is that it has been infiltrated by even more meddling, waffly tree hugging, pinko fools that want to spend screeds of other peoples money on pet projects like the arts, public transport and other useless stuff that won’t actually help Christchurch get back to work.

What Christchurch actually needs  is:

More roads, better parking no heritage buildings that could kill people by falling over, more telecommuting with better high speed broadband, politicians that understand cost, and cost benefit, and that someone has to pay for everything, no subsidy for public transport, user pays for cultural heritage, no subsidies for the arts until everyone has sewerage working,not just long drops or chemical toilets.

There is bugger all point in having ballet if you have to crap in your backyard.

Inevitably Christchurch is going to spread out. The inner city is rooted. Much of the land can’t be built on again. This means that no-one will be able to go to work in the CBD for months, so all the businesses will spread out to the city fringe. There they will discover this means better parking, less traffic and decide that with modern communications you don’t need to see people face to face very often.

So the big service providers and head offices will move out of the CBD, and therefore there will then be no point in having public transport because people will be going all over the place rather than to a central location. This won’t be temporary, they will all discover that they don’t need to meet face to face any more because they can use modern communications methods like telephones, Skype and other innovations to talk to people and do business. They will achieve a lot
more, and they won’t need a city centre to do it.

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  • mediatart

    So those 130 odd people killed in the CTV and PPG buildings were in ‘heritage’ buildings?
    One guy stopped at a suburban bakery shop and the facade fell onto his vehicle before he got out. Hardly what you call a heritage building ?
    Considering that over the last 20 years the Council was derelict in not removing the most dangerous features such as brick parapets and such , too late they have found a little prevention goes a long way.

    • grizz

      Quite, just like those heritage buildings the so called modern bulidings were not up to standard and they need to go as well. It was shear luck that no one was killed in the cathedral at the time. You can do what you like to heritage buildings, but they will never be up to modern standard and only put people in danger when the next quake comes along.

      Look on the brightside, you can redesign an entire city centre with modern, efficient functional buildings with all the necessary communication tools, cut and cover subways and possibly underground roads. Provisions could be made for arts centres, but I agree, keeping people gainfully employed comes first, the ballet and theatres will have to come second.

      • Ciaron

        just like those her­itage build­ings the so called mod­ern bulid­ings were not up to stan­dard

        Fail. Just because two “modern” buildings fell down, It doesn’t mean they weren’t up to code. It means the ground accelerations were in excess of what the code required lateral resisting systems could cope with. Along with the fact that this earthquake has highlighted torsional effects which AFAIK weren’t a major consideration in earlier versions of the code.

        One guy stopped at a sub­ur­ban bak­ery shop and the façade fell onto his vehi­cle before he got out. Hardly what you call a her­itage build­ing ?

        If it was an un-reinforced masonry structure built before 1960 with the same construction methodology as any number of “heritage” buildings, would that shut you up? “Heritage building” is not a construction type, it simply means a building has historical (or other) significance.

  • matt

    As a former resident of Christchurch, I can say that the biggest problem with the CDB as it was had nothing to do with cars, roads or public transport; the problem was that nobody lived there. Because of this, it had very little “life” of it’s own, and so people who didn’t live in the city center weren’t drawn in.

    I would suggest that instead of all this PC hand-wringing and other-people’s-money-spending, the council simply rezones some of the central city to allow a variety of residential accomodation, predominantly high density.

  • johnqpublic

    At least half the population could quite sensibly “telework” but it’s far more difficult to boss people around when you’re not in their faces, and this is precisely why I think it will never become commonplace until we all become self-employed again like we were pre-Industrial Revolution.

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