Hard News: Christchurch: Is "quite good" good enough?
459 Responses
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Peter Martin, in reply to
Woah, hold up. You know how you could avoid playing in 3 degrees? Play games in the afternoon.
When it's five degrees? Sitting facing a southerly is never fun...any time of the day or night. *l*
I have no problem with day time games. No problem with Sky or the NZRFU helping with the costs for the ratepayer.
I note in that respect, a comment I came across elsewhere along the lines that the Chch CBD was well in retreat prior to the quakes and that the new green areas reflect that...and also serve to maintain if not increase the value of the rest of the land. Which is nice of the ratepayers of Chch to help the developers maintain their equity whilst increasing the cost of new building. :) -
Ed Muzik, in reply to
Lancaster Park is also just a short walk from the CBD, and could be a dedicated cricket ground. Once the stands are down you'd have a great view of the Port Hills. It's right next to the train line, if we ever get that going for public transport. It has history - Astle blasting 222 in a test against England springs to mind. And it doesn't involve fencing off part of Hagley Park. But no-one seems to want to talk about it.
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Hebe, in reply to
we have two options, either I’m underestimating what it takes to get to this level of details, or there is a lot of decision making that has taken place that is not in this plan. I’ve seen small teams of architecture or design students produce as much as this in 100 days before, so I’m led to believe the gritty detail in this has been left out on purpose. I’m also inclined to belief that some big and controversial decisions have been made and not announced today to protect the good news of the delivery. The absence of any announcement on the town hall is characteristic of this.
That's the point of this"grand plan" surely; not to do details, but to make a general framework. Details -- such as the town hall - are problematic because each building is a separate decision to be made. Each of those decisions is unique because structural, land, insurance negotiations, planning, and existing use rights factors all come into play in a different form in each case.
If CCDU were to try to decide everything, the blueprint would take five years; the amount of work to do is incomprehensibly huge. The message that still is not easily communicated is how massive the destruction of the CBD of New Zealand's second-largest city actually is. The CBD is munted, it's buggered, it's not there any more, it's dead (think John Cleese thumping the dead parrot on the counter). Gone. It's a world-class disaster; one of the biggest destructions of a Western world CBD ever. Think Willis St to Mt Vic, Wakefield St to Abel Smith St with the big buildings gone and about 25 per cent of the smaller ones left. Or take out the same from the waterfront to K Road. Then you've just about got the scale of destruction.
So the Town Hall in that scheme is a detail, and where exactly housing is to go, and where the secondhand bookshops will wedge themselves etc etc. (I'm thinking east of the green frame to Fitzgerald, but most likely St Asaph to Moorhouse for the quirky). Some of those things will be decided, others will grow; whatever the people I talk to agree on 20 years for a mostly working CBD and 50 to have the city crammed.
It's billed as a blueprint, and I'm happy about that because I want space for things and people to develop and grow; a plastic totally planned CBD would be awful.
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Press story compares key Share an Idea themes with the blueprint.
Interestingly, the web addresses for Share an Idea and the City Council's cbd plan all redirect to the CCDU site now. Erased.
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James Caygill, in reply to
I seem to be the person in Chch who’s in favour of the Hagley Oval upgrade. A proper for-real test cricket venue in Christchurch? Yes fucking please. Auckland doesn’t currently have an international test ground. Parking is a concern, yeah, but there’s no street parking round the Basin Reserve, either.
I'm another one Emma.
The upgrade of the Oval has been talked about for years - actually the biggest impediment to it (pre-quake) was the netball courts on the other side of the park, because being unable to shift them and messing with the oval messed with the overall layout of the sports grounds in South Hagley.
If people want to get up in arms about private use of the park why don't we get angrier about the CCC continually bailing out the golf course in North Hagley? I for one would happily see it go in favour of the Hagley Oval upgrade.
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Lilith __, in reply to
If people want to get up in arms about private use of the park why don’t we get angrier about the CCC continually bailing out the golf course in North Hagley?
Cycling through the Park would be much less exciting without that frisson of danger! :-)
You have a point, of course. Although the golf course doesn't fence off part of the park the way the Oval would.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
You seem to be talking about Auckland.
Or Beijing. No lack of monumental, intimidating, but ultimately soulless architecture in the centre of this city - and the CBD and scattered around many other areas as well.
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Emma Hart, in reply to
Cycling through the Park would be much less exciting without that frisson of danger! :-)
The number of times I either fell in a bunker or got sprayed by the automatic sprinklers short-cutting through the park in the dark...
But yeah, the golf course is bizarre. You'd never be able to do that now if it weren't already there.
Lancaster Park is also just a short walk from the CBD, and could be a dedicated cricket ground.
Something needs to be done with that space, for sure. But it's not just that the stands of the stadium are munted, the ground - the actual Lancaster Park - is too. Rebuilding a cricket ground there could turn out to be more expensive than starting from scratch. I guess the same goes for what might have been the ideal place for it - the pitches at QEII.
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Sacha, in reply to
If people want to get up in arms about private use of the park why don't we get angrier about the CCC continually bailing out the golf course in North Hagley?
I'd welcome public agencies being clearer about their various trade-offs and deals. Who knows what informed citizens might prioritise for their city?
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Sacha, in reply to
Which reminds me, what's planned for AMI stadium now?
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Hebe, in reply to
it is great to have a lovely river park, but wouldn’t it be better to line that river park with high density residential housing so that it is actually practical for someone living there to punt their beloved down the river on a summers day?
The land is not viable for building on anytime soon. That's why we have a lovely river park. It's also why there are big questionmarks over whether the Town Hall is rescuable: the building could come back, but the land is unstable.
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Sacha, in reply to
Who knows what informed citizens might prioritise for their city?
I note satirical comments already saying 'monorail'
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Hebe, in reply to
Not much I would guess. The land around the Wilsons Road side looks like a blanket has been shaken and not smoothed out: it billows. Lots of liquefaction round there too. Can't see that anything big should be built there.
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Lilith __, in reply to
satirical comments already saying ‘monorail’
Well the cats have to get around somehow...
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Sacha, in reply to
punt their beloved down the river on a summers day
To be in England in the summertime..
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Hebe, in reply to
Light rail is dumb: why build rail in a seismically active area. We need to sit lightly on the land. Three quarters of a billion up front would buy a lot of Amsterdam-style free bikes and a network of little shuttle buses going anywhere and everywhere.
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Robert Fox, in reply to
If the cricket oval development goes ahead, and I hope it does, you could always free up more recreational space in the park by getting rid of the ridiculous golf course. I think this is going to be a huge issue as Hagley Park is a bit of a sacred cow when any development is proposed. I cant see any harm in improving an existing sporting facility there.
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Patrick Reynolds at Transportblog posts about the blueprint's lack of bringing alive the key changes spelled out in the central city plan through integrated transport planning.
A key to making these five aims real would be to make damn sure that the first lines drawn on any page are direct and effective transit links between key sources of vitality and the centre that they are trying to revive. And then of course to continue to design the arrangement of new generators of activity around direct and appealing means of interconnection. That successful land use and good transport links go together is pretty elemental planning.
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Buses will clearly be the best immediate mode to use this new system as they can quickly and cheaply be reintroduced and levels of service ramped up as the rebuild continues. But to not plan for the possibility of upgrading to more appealing and permanent electric systems on key routes such as out to the university and the coast would be singularly short sighted. But the key is the network, the system, not the mode; and in the plan released yesterday there is no sign of any thought about the role that transport plays in in both forming place and the success or otherwise of it.
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merc,
Gerry says sell.
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Sacha, in reply to
Amsterdam-style free bikes and a network of little shuttle buses going anywhere and everywhere
Sounds good. I'd still be designating future corridors for efficient mass transit once oil prices and population make private cars no longer the sole answer they seem to be to Gerry and chums.
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Hebe, in reply to
Gerry says sell.
Again. We don't want to. If he wants c convention centre and a stadium, he will have to save his pocket money
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Hebe, in reply to
Mass is the problem: not enough people here to make fixed lines pay. Electric buses and bikes the answer.
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Sacha, in reply to
not enough people here to make fixed lines pay
yet
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
If you want light rail in the long term, you could do worse than lobbying CERA / the council to stop consenting subdivisions further and further out into the plains
GLWT. For the foreseeable future there will be zero support from Wellington for limitations on sprawl. Look at the battle Auckland's got on its hands trying to constrain sprawl in the Plan, and the government's explicit opposition to not sprawling.
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merc, in reply to
John says his Govt. (sic) will pay for public amenities. John just hasn't said what they are yet. Gerry says sell, he just hasn't said what yet.
Seriously, these two are more weird than Dick and Bush.
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