Today is the fourth anniversary of the 7.1 earthquake on September 4, 2010 that initiated what I mentally term the “Year of Awful” for Christchurch and surrounding area’s: from that first earthquake through the major events of Boxing Day 2010, February 22nd, June 13,\u00a0 and December 21, 2011—and over 10,000 lesser events.<\/p>\n
Although September 4 was the beginning, to date I have tended to focus my reflections on February 22nd, which was the event that resulted in loss of life (185 dead) and major injury, as well as almost complete destruction of the city centre. Nonetheless, on Tuesday night—during a leaders’ debate in\u00a0 the current election campaign—Prime Minister John Key assured us that, four years on, Christchurch is “booming.”<\/p>\n
So it seemed timely to examine that conclusion: is Christchurch booming, or is recovery and lack thereof more a “tale of several cities”?<\/p>\n
To give you an idea, here’s some of the earthquake after-effects that have characterized the past four years: ongoing demolition and disruption; Red Zoning of whole suburbs and compulsory relocation; widespread flooding; chronic accommodation shortages, soaring house prices and rental costs, with many people living in damaged and unhealthy homes and resultant homelessness for those at the bottom of the market.<\/p>\n
In addition, concern at the pace and adequacy of response from both the government Earthquake Commission (EQC: charged with all residential repairs under $100,000) and insurance companies (repairs over $100,000, aka “over cap”) has been a constant throughout the past four years. If anything, rather than diminishing, concern is increasing over:<\/p>\n
I believe these two areas in particular constitute a huge failure of leadership, hand in hand with a substantive failure of the Christchurch\/Canterbury community.<\/p>\n
With respect to the Prime Minister’s observation that Christchurch is “booming” I also note that the ‘blueprint’ for rebuild of the city centre has yet to begin in any substantive way. The Press’s Saturday 30 lead article noted ongoing delays with commercial building consents. I believe this would not equate with “boom” in most people’s lexicon…<\/p>\n
So what’s good? I still think SKIRT’s doing a pretty good job with the vital infrastructure rebuild, despite a lot of disruption, mainly traffic and congestion that goes with it—but that’s largely unavoidable given most infrastructure is in the roads.<\/p>\n
It’s “around the edges” stuff when set against the core concerns of home and business repair and rebuild, but organisations like Gapfiller <\/a>have done good stuff with “greening the gaps” projects—and we’re starting to see a few new buildings where you think: “hey, that’s interesting…”<\/p>\n I also feel it is worth noting that Christchurch is “a tale of several cities” because there are residential areas, particularly in the west of the city, that are relatively unaffected by the repair\/rebuild woes.<\/p>\n