If you are a developer in Christchurch or know any or have funding from
developers you might not want to read this post.
If you look out from the Eiffel Tower in Paris and have heard any of the debate
over the height of buidlings in Christchurch then you will be struck by the
fact that apart from the Tower itself, most of Paris is the same height -
around five stories high. Some of the Paris CBD has high rise buildings but its
less than that in Auckland and perhaps even less than Christchurch.
So lets compare: Christchurch was founded early in the 19th century while Paris
is over 1,000 years old,
Christchurch has a population of around 350,000 and Paris is around 10 million.
You can see Paris's main landmark from most parts of the city, our Cathedral
can barely be seen from Colombo St and only if you stand in the right spot.
When I was at my citizenship ceremony (a very proud event for me) Garry Moore
came up to me afterwards and explained that he had just returned from a
conference on urban design (another council junket - actually I disagree with
Rik, we need to get out and learn from other people so I think Garry and Bob
and all the rest need to be out there!)
Garry asked me whether I thought as a city we should go up or out and I
couldn't really answer as I hadn't thought about it before then - but Garry
hadn't asked me for my opinion he just wanted to tell me that he believed we
needed to go up because we could manage infrastructure around higher buildings
and wouldn't need to pay huge amounts on roads as we grow.
Now I have thought about it and looked at other cities and to me its very clear
- we need to go up one level at a time - if we are at two storeys now then we
all go up one more and so on, then we can perhaps in a thousand years be at 5
storeys. I have posted a number of times before about the disconnectedness of
social groups when they live in high rise buidlings - many highrises in the UK
and US are being ripped down because they have realised that the social
engineering of the sixties just didn't work (another thing we learn if we look
overseas). They created gangs and ghettoes and we are going down that path all
too quickly in New Zealand.
While there are advantages in areas such as low cost housing and service
delivery in high rise buildings, is that what we New Zealanders aspire to do -
live in boxes? I was always told that kiwis appreciate the outdoors - but I
wouldn't call it appreciating the outdoors, for example, when you are living by
the beach but 12 storeys up.
No-one in Christchurch should need to live on the 12th floor!