National risk if Christchurch fails to rebound

Tuesday 1st March 2011 1 Comment

The head of the University of Canterbury is warning New Zealand will suffer if Christchurch is not successfully rebuilt, while a business community representative believes the new city should be quite different to what it was.

"If Christchurch does not re-establish itself as a vibrant, entrepreneurial, innovative centre in New Zealand, there is a risk that the country slips into essentially a city state with a large hinterland," University of Canterbury Vice-Chancellor Rod Carr said.

New Zealand would be disadvantaged, not just Christchurch "because the risk is that the financial capital and the human capital doesn't all just decamp from Christchurch to Auckland, it leaves the country," he said.

A national conversation needed to decide that it was unambiguously in this country's interest to have, at least, a strong bi-nodal economy, said Carr, who is also a former deputy governor and acting governor of the Reserve Bank.

"That is a choice that Auckland has to influence because of the politics of MMP.

"The bureaucrats in Wellington need to be reassured, and the ministers need to be reassured, that the voters want a Christchurch recovery, because Christchurch doesn't have the capital alone, and cannot generate the capital alone that will be needed to rebuild this city," Carr told Radio NZ today.

"That just makes economic sense for New Zealand. We can't all crowd on the Auckland isthmus. We're beginning to understand the true costs of urban agglomeration on an isthmus - that New Zealand needs to consider this idea that there need to be a number of nodes of growth, that a single node of growth will constrain us severely."

He added that geologically New Zealand was "extremely unstable".

"If you take a 150-year view of this country, you wouldn't put all your eggs in one basket."

For Christchurch, it was necessary to ensure there was a knowledge pool and pipeline of learning, which could sustain an institution which could be the centre of a vibrant, entrepreneurial, science, engineering, technology, and liberal arts capital within the South Island.

He expected a small number of iconic heritage buildings would be saved at a cost, while the risk to human life meant others would not be retained.

Carr also questioned whether high rise buildings would be appropriate in Christchurch in future.

Another querying how much of a high rise future Christchurch has is Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce chief executive Peter Townsend.

"I think the future for the central business district is completely different to its past," he told Radio NZ.

Most of it would have to be rebuilt and he saw the new buildings being a low profile mix of accommodation, housing, educational institutions, businesses, and hospitality facilities - not much of it too close to the river, along with large amounts of green space.

At the same time much more intense activity would occur in seven or eight "villages", such as the suburbs of Riccarton, Papanui and Merivale, which would be well linked by transport infrastructure to the central area.

"So you get this whole concept of a modern city with a beautiful green centre, with a river flowing through it and commercial activity spread much further across the city rather than all being boxed into the CBD," Townsend said.

People would be able to live closer to their work and could work in places where they did not feel threatened.

NZPA

Comments from our readers

On 1 March 2011 at 4:36 pm Bill said:

Just because there has been two big shakes, does not mean there will be more in the near future. City codes must be re-written (nation wide) and this time we must involve the Earth Engineers/Scientists.