Posts by Sacha
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Hilary, you're not only being patronising and condescending, you're failing to accord me the courtesy of assuming that I'm posting here in good faith.
Steady on. I believe you're both being genuine.
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Architect Miles Warren talks about injecting residential usage back into Christchurch's centre.
Our city blocks are, compared to most cities, quite large: 100m by 200m, which immediately suggests a built perimeter, and green squares within. We have the perfect example in the two quadrangles of the Arts Centre. The best way to promote this is that the council or some other entity should be bold and develop a whole city block to demonstrate the solution. There is a great opportunity to do this with the land the council owns on the former Para Rubber site and on the Tuam St carpark site.
Around the perimeter, if you build two or three-storey apartments on top of retail or offices, so that the apartments look into tree-lined streets on one side and contained green squares on the other, the outcome would be very attractive and, most importantly, affordable.
The worst thing that could happen is to have single-storey shops along those city streets with verandas plastered with signs.
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Apartments and townhouses haven't been built in the central city to date simply because areas like Merivale and Fendalton are just over five minutes away from the city centre. The issue remains that the apartments that have been built recently have all been in the million-dollar-plus category, not the building type that the average person can purchase, develop or lease.
And, if greater density and affordability is to be pursued we cannot just plonk blocks of flats in the south and east of the city. They will not be seen as attractive, they have to have something else - and that is green space.
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Hard News: Walking upright again, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Great photos. Rebecca Macfie has a few from her preview of the public bus tour. She notes:
Finally, the Cathedral, which is about to undergo “partial” demolition to make it safe. Exactly what that means, and how much will be left at the end, Bishop Victoria Matthews can’t or won’t say – and this morning’s lead in the Press suggests she and the Anglican Church Property Trust are under pressure from the Government to get it down. The church has likewise failed to disclose the nature and extent of the structural damage, although you don’t have to be a chartered engineer to see that it’s in a bad way. In its place, says Bishop Matthews, will be a “combination of old and new”.
It’s a sign of how exhausted we all are, and how blunted our emotions, that the church’s fuzzy statements about the future of what many regard as the city’s most important building has aroused barely a whimper of response. Christchurch, a city that has been the site of vicious and passionate heritage wars in the past – over the museum and the Arts Centre especially – seems to be too tired to fight for ChristChurch Cathedral. Perhaps now that the people are finally to be allowed in to see their brutalised, diminished city, they will decide the time has come to fight for the little that remains.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Sacha,
This William Gibson quote posted by Ian on another thread fits perfectly (my emphasis added):
It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable. It would be harder to accurately imagine what New York City was like the day before the advent of broadcast television than to imagine what it will be like after life-size broadcast holography comes online.
But actually the New York without the television is more mysterious, because we’ve already been there and nobody paid any attention. That world is gone.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Cecelia,
Come on coach! Prepare him better.
Some strategic Cnut decided the voters - and the campaigning Nats - would wait for the figures until a time of the party's choosing. There's a word for that.
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Hard News: We interrupt this broadcast ..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
"the costings are in the mail" was what's known in sporting terms, I believe, as an unforced error.
The left's Gordon Campbell certainly agrees.
Any points Phil Goff may have won in the television debate a few days ago went west during last night’s public debate in Christchurch – which, as Vernon Small says, had turned into something close to a rout by night’s end.
The centre-left can feel justifiably furious at Goff and his minders for going into this debate without a narrative (much less a credible defence) for Labour’s election costings. Sorry, but “We’ll have them for you by the end of the week” doesn’t really cut it. Somehow, Goff managed to make Key look like a hard-headed and credible manager of the economy.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Joe Wylie,
While I appreciate that the book is now somehow officially closed, I believe that you’d have found more than a few fellow spirits in those genuinely reformist years before the empire building mentality set in. A pity that their stories will never be told.
Those stories are still really important to understanding that side of our culture and understanding of others. Even recording yours somehow would be a tremendous help - so long as you're clear who you are speaking for.
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Speaker: Doing the right thing on retirement, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Gerard Smythe's excellent doco on the closure of Templeton played on TV1 on I think Christmas Eve 2004
Certainly made an impression on me. He said at the time he was working on the broader one as a follow-up. No surprise to hear that the network gatekeepers would prefer a charitable disease-of-the-week weepie instead.
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From that story:
Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns said there needed to be more public debate about the future of the cathedral.
"We just get a sense that the cathedral is proceeding towards a major demolition option without the public debate that many of us believe should happen," he said.
"It is profoundly disturbing for the community not to be engaged on this issue as I think it deserves to be."
Chair of heritage campaign group Iconic, Dr Ian Lochhead, said the order was "appalling".
Let's see if anyone can more forcefully join the dots for local voters during an election campaign rather than wringing their soft hands over this.
The audience seemed none too pleased with Key during the eqnz parts of this week's Press-hosted leaders debate.
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Hard News: Walking upright again, in reply to BenWilson,
dynamic environment
Heh