Shiny New City

The Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand cost Amanda Fuller three fingers on her right hand. Fuller worked in probate for Perpetual Trust on the first floor of the Pyne Gould Corporation building and was there on February 22 in 2011, the day the magnitude 6.3 quake struck.

“It was four minutes to lunch and I was updating my will,” she told New Zealand newspaper The Oamaru Mail only weeks after the disaster. Then the quake began.

At first it wasn’t too bad and she assumed it was simply another aftershock. “All of a sudden it got very violent and I crouched down behind my desk.”

The ceiling crashed down on top of her – a concrete block landing on her right hand, pinning her in place. When the shaking stopped, Fuller was in the dark and was trapped amid smashed concrete and broken glass, with her hand stuck fast. When rescuers lifted off the concrete block, she saw three fingers fall off her hand that could not be reattached.

This is one of hundreds of accounts describing the moment that the earthquake in Christchurch hit in February 2011. The Pyne Gould building came to symbolise Christchurch’s darkest hour – a once-solid office block, which crumpled and concertinaed to the ground, taking 18 lives with it. The Canterbury Television (CTV) building fared even worse; it collapsed within minutes, killing 115 people inside. Tragically, the disaster exposed some real design and engineering problems precipitating a strengthening of building codes and a rethink of how the city is planned and designed.

But the most immediate concern in the days and weeks after the earthquake when people had been rescued and evacuated from the central city was continued safety. Because of the extent of damage to the city’s central business district (CBD) the area was cordoned off along the four avenues surrounding it – Bealey Avenue, Fitzgerald Avenue, Moorhouse Avenue and Rolleston Avenue and the government called a state of emergency in the city. At the time, Warwick Isaacs, head of the Christchurch Central Development Unit (CCDU), said: “Between these four avenues, there are in excess of 1,000 buildings being demolished… the landscape is almost back to Ground Zero.”

City of Ruins

Murray Sinclair, Christchurch City Council’s Manager Civil Defence and Emergency Management, headed a team that had the job of assessing which buildings were safe and which were not. 

“I think 80 per cent of the buildings in the CBD had been demolished,” he says. “Engineers went in to assess the conditions of the buildings and gave them a rating. If given a green placard rating, it meant it was OK, but still needed to be checked out. An amber placard rating meant you couldn’t go in without an engineer and you couldn’t occupy it. Red meant it was too dangerous to go in,” says Sinclair.

He says his team also worked with the businesses to make all these assessments and to retrieve all their essential requirements so they could relocate successfully. But he concedes that the council had not been able to adequately help all of those in need.

“We could have probably done better working with the business sectors, looking after and trying to find alternative accommodation for them. We were relying on most businesses having continuity planning in place, but many didn’t. There was even a protest as a way of saying they were not being able to operate in the CBD, so they broke through the cordon. They weren’t militant, but it was a gesture to say [to us that] more needed to be done.”

Doughnut city

Many businesses started to relocate themselves in the suburbs, resulting in what some refer to as a ‘doughnut city’ – with businesses located on the periphery but with an empty centre.

“A lot of people have located there and won’t come back,” says Nicholas Dawe, work group manager for facilities management at Opus, a property asset management company in New Zealand. “It was a no-win situation; the companies couldn’t afford to wait and the government couldn’t make decisions. The central business district was in limbo while they came up with another central city plan.”

But the effect has led to a partial revitalisation of the suburbs that may not have otherwise been prioritised. For example, a local businessman, Alasdair Cassels, built the Tannery, a boutique-shopping emporium on the banks of the Heathcote River in Woolston, in October 2013. Located near a gelatine factory, it has given industrial Woolston an appeal it did not previously have. It houses 50 ‘boutique’ businesses, many of which were previously dotted over the CBD.

A spokeswoman for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), set up by the central government post-quake, told The Planner: “We know that some businesses won’t return from the suburbs as it simply suits them better to remain there.”

Also, global real estate company Colliers International reports that 22,790 square metres of office space have been completed in the Christchurch CBD post-2011 – 88 per cent of which has been leased.

The 12 per cent vacancy rate compares with around 8.2 per cent in Auckland’s CBD and 11.4 per cent in Wellington. The CERA spokeswoman adds: “The hospitality industry is a good example of this, with the numbers of restaurants, cafés and bars in the central city back at pre-quake numbers. Businesses are already returning to the central city and the city is thriving, with unprecedented building activity, very strong economic growth and low unemployment attracting workers from around New Zealand and the world.”

CERA was set up to take over the management of earthquake recovery from the city council. It has the statutory power to make planning decisions without going through normal procedures. It is due to disband next year.

“CERA has a statutory role to ensure public safety,” says its spokeswoman. “Decisions around repair, restoration or demolition of heritage buildings rest with the owners and the insurers.” But often owners will accept insurance, as restoration is too expensive for them to afford.

Under sections 38 and 39 of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Act (CERA) has the authority to require urgent work to be done on a building where an emergency has caused or is likely to cause loss of life or injury, damage to property or the environment, or danger to any works or an adjoining property. This was the case with many historic buildings after the earthquakes.

But others remain unconvinced. Coralie Winn, co-founder and director of vacant space initiative Gap Filler, ponders whether the government’s slow approach was one that slowly pushed residents out of their own city – and from planning its future.

“The context is that for two-and-a-half years there was a military cordon at the centre of Christchurch. No one could go in unless you had a pass. So the citizens of Christchurch could not go into their own city, because they were told it was for health and safety reasons. I think that’s partly true, but it’s far easier for things to be done when citizens aren’t watching. And slowly people lost their connection with their city.”

The Anglican cathedral in the city centre’s Cathedral Square – described by some as the “jewel in the crown of Christchurch’s renowned Victorian Gothic architecture” – is still locked in such a battle. It had its spire and part of its tower destroyed, with the remaining structure severely damaged. There has been a tug of war between residents and the Anglican Diocese to demolish it completely, but a campaign to restore it exists.

A transitional cathedral built nearby by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban for $6 million has come to be known as an icon of Christchurch’s rebuild (See picture, p.30.) It is made of cardboard, local wood, and steel, with a polished concrete floor (under which runs a heat piping system) and a polycarbonate roof. It is built to comfortably exceed the country’s building code stipulations on quake-proofing, “making it very safe”. But not everyone accepts it.

Sandra Shaw, a volunteer with the Restore the Cathedral group, says: “I don’t like the cardboard cathedral. I object to the fact that it was built with money that was taken from the insurance money that belongs to the cathedral in Cathedral Square… it’s a personal thing, but I know a lot of people feel the same. I don’t like it, I don’t like the design and I will never step foot in it,” Shaw says. “They didn’t consult the community at all.”

Richard Hayman, architect and associate principal at architecture and design practice Jasmax has been heavily involved in the rebuild of the city. Jasmax designed a major modern office building, 151 Cambridge Terrace, which Hayman says is a ‘poster child’ of the rebuild, as well as other developments. The Terrace, which Hayman describes as “quite important for the life of the inner city”, consists of a multi-use development made up of bars, restaurants – but now, also offices. “It never used to have offices,” says Hayman. “So it’s much more mixed-use now.”

Flamboyant local businessman and property developer Antony Gough owns the site. Commercial developers were the quickest to act, says Hayman – the public developments took far longer.

An ‘Accessible City’

New strengthened building codes have required more thought from developers.

John Meeker, senior urban regeneration adviser at the city council, told The Planner: “Private developers have had a significant learning curve to understand the new technologies available to achieve code compliance and then work through the costs involved. As the techniques have been explored and tested, experience and confidence has grown. Ground stability is the key in Christchurch as it was created on an area of drained swampland – beds of cobbles and gravels overlain by alluvial deposits. By means of example of the implications of the changing code requirements, on one scheme, 17 tonnes of steel reinforcing came out of the foundation rubble of a 1960s building when it was cleared. The new building will incorporate nearly 160 tonnes to support a broadly similar structure.” 

The Christchurch Central Recovery Plan (CCRP) was created to outline the future development of central Christchurch. It incorporates a spatial blueprint plan developed by a professional consortium working with the CERA’s Christchurch Central Development Unit (CCDU) and was released to the public on 30 July 2012. Its ‘anchor projects’ include a convention centre, a health precinct, a justice and emergency services precinct, an arts precinct, a central library, a new stadium, a cricket oval and a sports facility (see map). Jasmax is involved with the bus interchange, which forms the transport part of the plan called ‘An Accessible City’.

“Some of the anchor projects are still out to bid,” says Hayman. Jasmax is also involved in building a science centre for the University of Canterbury and then there is a demand for new schools, which Jasmax is designing.

“As a result of the demographic change from the earthquake, the east side of the city was much harder hit than the west… and there was an exodus of people out to the outliers,” says Hayman. “But also within the city, there was a depopulation of the city because the government brought in a residential red zone… that covered 5,000 to 7,000 houses – which are slowly being removed – and the red-zoned sites resemble a ghost town. As a result the Ministry of Education has thought of merging in schools or closing them. In other cases, needing to build new ones to respond to growth.”

After the quakes, construction companies sought skilled trades people to help rebuild the city. Government figures released in 2013 show a net inflow of international migrants to the Canterbury region since the second half of 2012. In the last six months of 2013, 4,000 people moved there, an average of 25 people a day.

Dawe says: “Canterbury wasn’t very diverse. It was too cold for the Pacific Islanders so we never got as many as you’d see if you were on the North Island. Canterbrians are a very insular society. Canterbury is 40 years behind the UK. There’s a very conservative, narrow mindset… One thing the earthquakes have done is bring in a lot of professional people from other countries to dilute that.”

The quakes also impelled businesses to share facilities – this pooling of resources helped to feed a sense of community spirit that emerged post-quake. An IT hub, the Enterprise Precinct and Innovation Campus (Epic), set up in the city centre to house 17 companies displaced by the earthquake symbolises this spirit.

While longer-term projects have been mulled over, the city council and community bodies are working to temporarily activate vacant sites within Christchurch through a variety of creative projects. One such example is Gap Filler, which was actually set up in response to the 2010 quakes. Gap Filler has been responsible for many temporary facilities within the city. Many have been amenity-based projects such as a dance floor on the corner of Gloucester and Columbo Streets.

Winn says: “We lost a lot of dance studios and dance space in the earthquake so we created a dance floor with coin-operated lighting and sound… It was an experiment to see as to how people would use public space and it has been really well used and a success.”

Better infrastructure

While the government’s plan of a shiny new city starts to become a reality, there is also a sense of regret that far more could have been done. Anthony Van Meer, property services manager for Opus, says: “While the plans guarantee a new and modern city, some of those working in Christchurch feel an opportunity has been lost. We had an opportunity with the right thinking to make us the most modern city in the world like Singapore, but unfortunately we don’t have that thinking. So we are going to be building back the same old, same old.” 

Dawe adds: “The chance to put in better public transportation infrastructure is the biggest opportunity lost – we’re not really doing it. Yes, there are a few cycleways, but we didn’t bite the bullet and say let’s have light rail or let’s have dedicated transportation corridor… it was too expensive and too hard and no one had the initiative to think more long term… We’re a small town really, but in 50 or 100 years we might be a million and no one thought that far ahead. It could have been one of the most future-proofed cities. A city so modern you don’t have to drive your car in it.”

But there’s still hope. CERA’s spokeswoman says all future public transport options for Christchurch are to be considered in a study led by local government body Environment Canterbury.

“It is important to note that the design of the wide green spaces that link the CBD to the rest of the city are so designed that a future government or local democracy may well consider using it for a light rail system.”