Hard News: What Now?
914 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 … 37 Newer→ Last
-
Sacha, in reply to
I think you'd have a tough time getting people down here to agree that the Cathedral shouldn't be rebuilt. It's sad. We need a symbol of hope. Yes, we also need some kind of monument, but that's the building that symbolises our city.
It will be rebuilt and strengthened to be safe, no matter the cost.
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Surely the question to be asked about the cathedral is whether it should remain a functioning church or not?
Yeah, good luck with that one.
It's a question that can only really be asked by the congregation, both of the Cathedral Church and of the Canterbury Diocese, and the decision either way will likely not come quickly. Abandoning a site damaged in anger and hatred (Nazi Germany was not bombed out of love) comes much easier than abandoning a site damaged by an act that many within the Church will call a random act of nature that carries no particular Godly message. -
Sacha, in reply to
I thought, if there is more you can do, why the fuck didn't you guys do it last time?
This week, you're going to start seeing an awful lot of anger coming through from people down here.
And let's hope it's directed at the right people - the ones whose priorities in dismantling ECan and imposing Brownlee's will via CERRA were always about access to cheap irrigation water for the region's farmers rather than urgent action to make broken suburbs habitable.
-
Sacha, in reply to
resources must flow into the poorer areas where people currently are without transport and can't get the basics.
I asked myself over the last few days where the free public transport service for those suburbs is? Seems pretty elementary when supermarkets are not nearby and many don't own cars.
-
Raffe Smith, in reply to
Matthew, I should have been clearer in my original post. Yes, it should be asked and answered by the congregation and the city of ChCh. But it is the logical question to ask at the outset, even if it is answered quickly (yes, let's rebuild) or if the decision takes time, as you suggest.
-
While the earthquake is still so raw in everyone’s minds, it is difficult to think beyond immediate issues of survival and feelings of grief. However, at some point we will have to ask, “what now?”
I am in agreement with Rod Oram. The future for Christchurch lies in the opportunity to re-imagine the city as a place where excellence in design, livability and sustainability becomes the status quo. This is as important for the morale of Cantabrians as it is for attracting and sustaining local and global support in the months and years ahead.
International design competitions for urban projects and public buildings would help to keep focus and investment interest on the city once the dust settles. Involvement from relevant departments at tertiary institutes would encourage innovation and provide unparalleled learning opportunities for tomorrow’s building professionals and trades people - learning that could benefit the rest of the country and be exported globally.
The economic implications of last Tuesday’s earthquake will affect the whole country. Our best way forward is to commit boots and all to a future Christchurch that is an exemplar for both earthquake design and urban living. There can be no room for mediocrity.
-
giovanni tiso, in reply to
It will be rebuilt and strengthened to be safe, no matter the cost.
The upper basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi, which is no less symbolic for that city as the cathedral is for Christchurch I would say, also killed people in the 1997 earthquake, and was rebuilt inside of two years.
-
I asked myself over the last few days where the free public transport service for those suburbs is?
Isn't the main bus station near the city center and also at the bottom level of a carpark building. How much rolling stock survived?
-
I asked myself over the last few days where the free public transport service for those suburbs is? Seems pretty elementary when supermarkets are not nearby and many don't own cars.
Trying to find roads to drive on? New Brighton in particular is almost completely cut off from the rest of the city because so many of the bridges are down. Because of the CBD cordon, the only spot to cross the Avon east of Riccarton is the Swann St bridge. Which is, as you might imagine, really fucking congested.
Buses, meanwhile, are being laid on to ferry the Student Volunteer Army around town.
Friends of ours who are digging two feet of silt out of the house in New Brighton they just moved out of said yesterday they saw a light truck (pretty much the best vehicle for getting around now) with a gas barbeque on the back, driving around feeding people.
-
Megan Wegan, in reply to
Isn’t the main bus station near the city center and also at the bottom level of a carpark building. How much rolling stock survived?
I don't think the depot is there, but that is a good question. It's the same building Emma's kids' school is in.
-
Emma Hart, in reply to
The Bus Exchange is in the same building as my kids' school, and is really badly damaged. Also, the exits for buses are onto Lichfield St, so even if buses survived, I don't think you could drive them out.
-
Sacha, in reply to
Doesn't have to be a fleet of buses - I've heard nothing to suggest there is any service at all linking suburbs like Brighton with centres away outside the CBD.
They don't store all the buses in the CBD terminal - and there are the ones already out on runs.
Roads are buggered. Smaller 4WD vehicles might be better for now, just something people can rely on. Maybe someone's onto that and the news just hasn't reached us?
-
Also, on the "we're all in this together" front, something my partner said that I just hadn't thought about yet. For non-location-specific work (obviously from our POV I'm talking about programming, game design, web content), how about preferentially hiring someone in Chch? Help us to stay here.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
Has the building collapsed though? If not, salvaging what's in there could be a priority - replacing all the buses isn't just an expense thing, it's also time - I doubt there's huge surpluses of them in NZ.
-
Sacha, in reply to
how about preferentially hiring someone in Chch?
Seen that suggestion making the rounds already. It's a good one.
-
Megan Wegan, in reply to
Ok, I am going to stop repeating you now.
-
Ok, I am going to stop repeating you now.
I particularly like the way you manage to repeat me from in front.
-
Megan Wegan, in reply to
I am good at anticipating your needs. (This probably isn't the time or place for and Emma and Megan filth-off, is it?)
-
The only reason Germany and Japan have so fully renounced aggressive war is because they looked around their devastated cities and finally understood the consequences of reckless military adventurism. The two Churches mentioned are warnings, not memorials and therefore are not suitable analogies for Christchurch's Cathedral IMHO.
When I thought about repairing the Christchurch Cathedral my thoughts went immediately to the success of the marriage of modern glass pyramids and an old building at the Louvre. That seems to me to be the sort of thing a good repair should strive towards, neither a reproduction or a replacement but a frank acknowledgment of what has been lost and what has been preserved.
In the meantime, a scaled up version of Napier's Tin Town (which operated for two years as the city was rebuilt) seems a good model for the CBD (Hagley park would seem to be perfect location for a tin town CBD), especially as major aftershocks may go on for some considerable time yet.
-
I suspect the rebuilding of Christchurch will be the subject of many a thesis, both engineering and architectural.
For me it seems obvious that the new Christchurch will be safe. The modern buildings survived and protected their inhabitants even through this quake. It seems that unless something really stupid happens (always possible) that what is built anew will be safe.
There is also an opportunity to redesign the infrastructure so that people can and will go to the city heart as more than as a tourist. That will take skill from the town planners but it can be done. It is also possible to make things like light rail and bicycle routes - those things we dream about for Auckland but can't do because everything is in the way. In many ways that is technical stuff and hopefully the people skilled in those arts will be allowed to exercise their talents.
But will it be beautiful?
People talk about the beauty of what Christchurch was and mourn that, which is fair. But new buildings can be beautiful too, or ugly, depending on the beholder, but worst of all they can be boring. IMO I don't mind if I hate some of the new Christchurch but what I really don't want is to be bored by it. Let architects loose and let them build striking new things, better yet make them build striking new things. Don't let them succumb to the mediocre or the lowest common denominator. Don't rush new buildings up quickly. Yes some people will hate the new buildings but that's fine. And that doesn't mean everything has to co-ordinate either, it's not a theme park it's a city and great cities are diverse.
Spend that extra money to make Christchurch spectacular.
And sure I don't mind paying for it, really I don't mind. The people of Christchurch have suffered and if it costs me some tax dollars to give them back something really good, then I don't mind.
-
Jackie Clark, in reply to
I would agree that one of the most productive ways to help people in Chch, and maybe our own economy, is to create jobs based there. I'm a bit wary of the "we're all in it together" thing, really. We can help out where possible, we can empathise and support, but at the end of the day, the only people who are in any given situation together are those to whom it has happened. It's a shared experience, and one must be careful not to take on ownership of others' pain.
-
The main bus depot’s out on the corner of Fitzgerald and Moorhouse. I have no idea how the depot stood up to the quake, but obviously given timing of quake many/most buses will have been out en route. We had two kinds of buses when we were being ferried around when out digging silt: one was ex-CBS crappy rattler, and the other was a newer machine that seemed pretty good. The problem was that they could barely negotiate the streets in the part of town.
There will have been at most ten-twenty buses in the bus exchange itself, it’s not that big a building.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
The only reason Germany and Japan have so fully renounced aggressive war is because they looked around their devastated cities and finally understood the consequences of reckless military adventurism.
I don't think it's the only reason. Some of it was also because the Allies renounced the idea of endlessly punishing them for it, and instead rebuilt those countries, rather than squeezing their throats with sanctions.
But yes, I think that we don't want to look to Japan and Germany for inspiration about how to deal with destruction. The victors would be more appropriate, if we must substitute war as the disaster.
-
recordari, in reply to
For non-location-specific work (obviously from our POV I’m talking about programming, game design, web content), how about preferentially hiring someone in Chch? Help us to stay here.
We have a contractor who was based in Christchurch, but due to schooling, and damage to their area, has temporarily relocated, continuing his work elsewhere for the time being. We are about to embark on a further contract, and I’m sure no one would begrudge the continuing arrangement with people from Christchurch who are displaced while things get better. ‘Help them get back there’ might be important too.
It’s a shared experience, and one must be careful not to take on ownership of others’ pain.
+1
-
Fooman, in reply to
Incidentally, the forthcoming revision of NZS3604:2011 (timber framed building standard) places Christchurch in zone 2 for earthquake bracing requirements. Wellington is zone 3, while zone 4 straddles the southern alps and the plate boundary. Any structural engineers about who could illuminate this?
Cavet: Engineer, not structural, but I taught some structural engineering (to NZS3404 - steel structures) as part of a mechanical design course at CPIT, many years ago. So please forgive inaccuracies from the passage of time.
The NZ design standards are reasonably basic. They work on the basis of working out the load on the initial design, and then comparing them to the specified load carrying capacity of the beams/structural elements used. The loads are based on self weight, capacity (i.e. what the building has to carry, other than itself), wind loading and earthquake loading. Wind loading is based on the effective "sail" area of the building, and the expected wind velocities assigned to a region. Similarly, the earthquake loading is based on the weight of the structure and the expected acceleration from an earthquake in a region, expressed as a fraction or percentage of weight.
These loadings are then applied to the detail of the structure, e.g. prevention of localised buckling by additional webs, load transfer across structures, bracing, and the whole design is checked again to see if any changes in the structure still fit the requirements of the standard. The factors of safety are built into the specified load capacity of the standard beams and the zonal loads.
Based on the unprecedented peak ground acceleration and previously unknown faultlines (from both the Sept and Feb earthquakes), these zonal load factors may be reviewed, and the boundaries changed (i.e. CHCH may be zone 3 from now on).
I can only presume that NZS3406 works in a similar manner - I suspect is is more conservative (due to wider scatter in the properties of the building material and wider scatter in the skills of the people designing and building such structures), but the I think the loadings would be worked out in a similar manner.
hope this helps,
FMCheers,
FM
Post your response…
This topic is closed.