Dear Jen, from Christchurch

Dear Jen,

I'm in the city you worked in as a young engineer, wandering the streets you wandered over 10 years ago. I can't help but think of how brave you were to put yourself into Christchurch after the devastation of two major earthquakes, with continuing aftershocks and the grief of the community. I feel the spirit of your younger self walking along with me, weighing the progress since you left.

It's 12 years later and the limited recent development is not masking the devastating impacts of the earthquakes. Walking through the city, it feels as if buildings were randomly constructed amidst empty lots camouflaged with parking, park benches or simply gravel and chain link fences. Here and there, there are buildings that have been renovated, or remain empty, plus occasional giant new developments. It is the gaps between that are most striking.

One of so many empty lots.

Christchurch is in a giant flat plane organized by a vast grid with a downtown at its center. There are so many 'missing teeth" at the core, as we used to say in my urban design days, that the downtown's visage feels incomplete, like a retired prizefighter. There's plenty of construction going on to fill in gaps, but not at the quick rate one might expect for a recovery period over a decade old. Outside of this CBD and immediately adjacent, I walked through one enormous big box area with a quickly-assembled mall, endless car dealerships and oversized parking lots that seemed to be land banking. Not exactly high-value land uses for the largest city on the south island, but perhaps in a reasonable range for a city of under 400,000. In other zones just outside of the downtown were new housing developments, mainly 2-3 stories but a few a bit larger. I understand there are 2000 to 3000 units under construction right now. However, some 8000 urban and suburban homes were lost in the disaster, and wound up as government-owned, development-prohibited land.

Stabilized for future repair, when additional funding becomes available.

The most substantial new building I saw was a government environmental protection building for Canterbury. There are a few corporate buildings but there wasn’t the sense of a lot of activity on the street, except at lunchtime when it seems Christchurch workers all take a walk. In evenings, I've not seen more than one table occupied at any restaurant I've walked past, and in the walk to the grocery store last night, I walked past no restaurants or bars that were open and the grocery store was nearly empty. Twelve years after a catastrophe, Christchurch feels like it's still suffering, still struggling to regain its footing.

Buildings awaiting repair.

And why shouldn't it be? Today I went to the Quake City exhibit, which told the story of what happened. I'd no idea what profound devastation was left behind. Film footage of many, many collapsed buildings, of multiple locations where the ground level dropped feet or opened up giant cracks. These images were jawdropping. What really got to me, though, were the interviews with survivors. A young woman who'd been trapped at the base of a collapsed building, and what it was like to wait for rescue. A man trying to save his daughter from tidal waves in a municipal pool. A woman running from the suburbs into the city to find her daughter at school. A security video showing the tremors and buildings collapsing around people in a parking lot. I cried.

Not only did people live through these earthquakes, but they continue to live with the memory of the fear and daily visual reminders of the lasting impact. Loss of life or permanent injury for themselves, family or neighbors. The “missing teeth” of empty lots. The shored-up building facades. Utility repair on-going, still. The rebuilding of the cathedral at the heart of the city, to be completed in 2027. Other beautiful historic buildings mothballed, because the money to rebuild has run out.

The Cathedral being reconstructed at the heart of the city, due to be complete in 2027.

Mothballed building.

Christchurch of today does not feel like an easy city to live in. New Zealand does not share the visual trappings of prosperity I saw in Australia, and Christchurch does not compare to Auckland in that regards. This is the first New Zealand city where I've seen unhoused people, and where I've been panhandled. Food and chemist (drug store) prices here are higher than the other New Zealand towns and cities have been in. My guess is that housing demand will only be met with far more construction, after the many homes lost.

Continuous development remains along the left and right side of this park/square, but the end is all vacant land due for new construction.

But the beauty remains and is being expanded, too. The magnificent botanic garden remains. The elegant Art Gallery that served as an operating theater in the aftermath of the quakes is exhibiting. Replacement retail and entertainment venues take advantage of outdoor spaces in laneways and along the river in new ways. A new Riverside Market, with fresh ingredients plus prepared foods, restaurants and bars, is the most recommended tourist destination in my informal poll, and, the tourist tram now tells the story of the quakes in addition to other tales from Christchurch's history.

I thought about New Orleans and Katrina as I learned about Christchurch, and how the two cities may be experiencing a similar generation of disaster and recovery, a sea change of people leaving and new people arriving, a repair and replacement of basic city building blocks, a stronger version of each city rising from the debris. It cannot come without a cost, and yet there is no choice but resilience.

I’ll offer a follow-up post with the highlights of recent construction.