Over the past two months, 3news.co.nz has looked in depth at the city of Christchurch. First, paying homage to the founding fathers who shaped the original city, then looking at the present day people and organisations involved in the immediate rebuild. This final instalment looks at how new media has been used to facilitate the spread of rebuild ideas, as well as the future minds that will influence how the city is shaped in the decades to come.
By Chris Whitworth
This month the Christchurch City Council held an ideas forum giving residents, young and old, a chance to have their say in the rebuild of Christchurch's CBD.
The council used the weekend to gauge public opinion and encourage the free flow of ideas, Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker calling it the "the beginning of our community saying what they want".
But Christchurch resident Deon Swiggs says in reality the people of Christchurch - and even the wider nation - have been exchanging and discussing ideas using new media since the aftermath of the first quake in September last year.
Mr Swiggs started the website rebuildchristchurch.co.nz in the weeks following September's quake and has seen his small pet project skyrocket into one of the leading discussion and information sites for the rebuild.
"Since February it's just gone mad, it's getting thousands of visitors a day - I just can't keep up," says Mr Swiggs.
An 'information hub' for the rebuild
The original site was a basic discussion forum, run and maintained entirely by Mr Swiggs. Now, eight months on, he's hired a web developer to work full-time on the site and teamed up with like-minded individuals to expand the reach and depth of the site, offering news updates, official releases, picture and video upload and a range of specific and general discussion forums.
"I just wanted it to be about everything and anything that people might want to know.
"Basically what I want is a one stop shop for the rebuild - an information hub, a community voice hub."
Mr Swiggs has individually approved every comment on the site, as well as monitoring the site's social media branches across Twitter and Facebook. He says while the council spent two days documenting ideas during their community forum, he's been tapped into the discussion for almost half a year.
Among the most discussed ideas are better traffic management, greater public transportation in the inner city, more green spaces and the idea of leaving some destroyed buildings as monuments to the quake.
Chrischurch's new sustainable future
He says by far the most popular idea to emerge is that of "sustainability".
One commenter on Mr Swiggs' site even suggests that sustainability could be a "unifying concept" that makes Christchurch once again great.
"There is no widely accepted architectural style today, unlike after the Napier quake. But we are living in this time of great change and the disruption of all the wasteful ways we've been living. We may not have a unifying architectural style, but we could have sustainability, energy efficiency and ecological principles as a unifying concept," writes Simon Gregory.
Where Christchurch was originally built to commemorate its English heritage and the founding fathers' religious fervour, Mr Gregory suggests sustainability be the overriding influence and inspiration for a modern Christchurch.
Another popular website created in the aftermath of the quakes which also puts the concept of sustainability at the heart of Christchurch's rebuild is elevatedgardencity.com.
The site's futuristic animation clips show a low-rise Christchurch interconnected by rooftop gardens that weave their way around the central city.
Grant Ryan, creator of the site and known worldwide for his futuristic invention the Yike Bike, says the idea came from successful overseas examples found in cities such as Chicago, Vancouver and Tokyo.
In recent years, more and more cities have embraced rooftop gardens, praising their clean, green look and practical applications.
Rooftop gardens in the Garden City?
A 2009 National Geographic article said there is a strong movement for planners of 21st century cities to “naturalise” urban design rather than build conurbations in spite of nature.
Green roofs also offer energy efficiency by reducing the heating and cooling cost to a city because the organic top acts as insulation to harsh weather. According to the article, the roofing style also offers cleaner water and drainage solutions – something many Christchurch residents would no-doubt readily embrace given the sewage troubles the city currently faces.
But practical implications aside, Mr Ryan says the concept also gives Christchurch a chance to create a city that would capture the world’s imagination.
"If Christchurch just builds and we're just another city, you know that's fine, it'll be a perfectly lovely city but the criteria should be that people across the other side of the world should be able to say, 'Have you heard about this elevated garden city?' and it becomes a world iconic city,” he says.
Mr Ryan says from the comments on his site and discussions he's had in the community, there is a real sense that the people of Christchurch want to do something special and not waste the rebuild with quick fixes and boring plans.
"It's just a chance to do something extraordinary rather than just ordinary.
"The enemy in this thing is boring or haphazard."
He says Christchurch's forefathers had grand designs and aspirations for the city, when they too were faced with a similar blank canvas.
"When people came to Christchurch first it took a big foresight to put the Hagley Park in and invest in quite beautiful buildings at the time, given there was nothing there. And that was quite a big punt they took and they created a gorgeous place to live that has done all sorts of cool things in the world," he says.
Mr Ryan is an inventor by trade and has setup various projects over his career. He says he's never seen such creative enthusiasm and hunger for ideas as the Christchurch rebuild has produced. If Mr Ryan’s experience is anything to go by the rebuild has really captured people's imagination, and prompted detailed and intelligent discussions about Christchurch’s future.
A colleague of Mr Ryan’s, who created many of the detailed animations on the site in the days following the quake, worked from one tiny room of his otherwise condemned house. It’s that sort of unprecedented passion Mr Ryan believes is bring about a communal desire for people to contribute to their city.
The Christchurch City Council announced that in less than two months a draft plan for the city will be unveiled. Even now the city is showing small signs of life with roads being repaired, buildings dismantled and others strengthened. So is it too late for ideas such as Mr Swiggs and Mr Ryans?
The future designers of Christchurch
Senior lecturer Mark Southcombe at the Victoria University of Wellington's architectural school says it will be years before Christchurch takes shape and says many young minds of today may take a lead role in the city's rebirth.
"They are the designers of our future environment," he says.
"There's certainly a commitment, a very real and tangible commitment to helping out rebuilding."
As websites such as christchurchrebuild and elevatedgardencity were being created, Mr Southcombe and other faculty members were devising their own creative strategy for the rebuild.
In this year's third trimester graduate students will undergo a 13-week rebuild project where they not only discuss the underlying issues of the rebuild but also try their hand at redesigning much of the central city.
“The value of a student project is that you get a level of innovation and you get the avant-garde."
Mr Southcombe says the project will evolve a detailed discussion of the role a city plays in people's lives and identity.
"They've lost a lot of history there and it’s interesting, people get very emotive about history, and often that's because the quality of what is replacing it is not as good from a design and detail and quality point of view.
"We don't talk about that often as a society, we don't talk about the values that are put on design as opposed to cost."
Architectural historian Jenny Mae echoes Mr Southcombe's thoughts, saying the physical makeup of a city can define the society that dwells within it.
"The tangible things in our society are what define our society; culturally, socially, historically and spiritually. And when that changes...it changes your way of life for ever.”
People's emotional attachment to buildings may be subconscious but it could help explain the overwhelming stream of ideas and discussions being put forward about the way Christchurch will be rebuilt.
If Ms Mae's philosophy on buildings is anything to go by, the people who lead the rebuild should remember the decisions they make today are not just the imminent and the practical, but also shape how Christchurch will work again as a community.
3 News