Overlord Brownlee’s plan

Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, July 30th, 2012 - 37 comments
Categories: disaster, infrastructure, transport - Tags:

In April, Christchurch Council revealed its plan for the CBD rebuild following an extensive period of public consultation. The chance to rebuild the CBD of our second-largest city was a once-in-generations opportunity to fit the city for our future challenges. The Council plan had its faults but one of the good aspects was it addressed smart transport. King Gerry ripped it up immediately.

In fact, Brownlee said he was putting transport issues to one side. How mad is that? A CBD is a place that tens of thousands of people travel to each day – how they get there and how they move around once there ought to be an integral part of your design – not thinking about transport when designing a CBD is like building a house without thinking about the hallways, stairs, and doors.

Now, after three months of secrecy since he seized control of the CBD, and a year and a half after the most devastating quake, he’s going to dictate his plan.

What’s the bet it involves a lot of cars, driven on imported oil that currently costs us $8.3b and rising at 10% a year?

37 comments on “Overlord Brownlee’s plan ”

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  1. muzza 1
    30 July 2012 at 7:22 am

    “he’s going to dictate his plan”

    — Nah. Gerry will be dicatating someone elses plan, out of his puppet mouth”

  2. dewithiel 2
    30 July 2012 at 7:30 am

    No doubt it’ll be one that’s been dreamed up by the Dick of Mobie which involves lots of developer-led initiatives, no MULs and, yes, kilometres of motorways because ‘80% of travel is by car’ (that is when I’m not flying or sitting on my ride on mower in my life style block in Silverdale). Hey, it’s that vision thing and you’ve got to be able to make a profit if you’re a real NACT visionary and you don’t have to worry about myopia when there’s a profit to be made.

  3. Peter 3
    30 July 2012 at 7:36 am

    This all sounds a bit sad when you consider
    that major citie such as London, New York and Chicago to name a few
    revmping their cities to be more cycle friendly.

    E.g. http://lcc.org.uk/pages/go-dutch

  4. Ianmac in Adulusia 4
    30 July 2012 at 8:38 am

    Having recently biked in an overseas bike friendly city, I cannot believe that the chance to make wide pedestrian/cycle friendly streets may not be developed for Christchurch.. Ask aucklanders about what would be desirable.

  5. William Joyce 5
    30 July 2012 at 9:48 am

    Creating the world in his own image – Link

  6. vto 6
    30 July 2012 at 10:09 am

    They keep going on that the property owners and business investors are going to drive the place so they need to appeal most to them. There is surely some truth in that but it is unbalanced and over-emphasised. They forget for example that the true driver for the city will be its users, not the building owners etc. The people who live there, go there each day, museum and park goers, workers and on it goes. The daily machinations of people going about their daze. Without the people you have nothing so I would have thought that a greater emphasis on that would be mroe prudent – but it aint so. Every bit of PR and news and etc always emphasises the business and property owner importance.

    5pm today.

    it’s gonna be big.

    • Pascal's bookie 6.1
      30 July 2012 at 10:16 am

      You’re dead right, but I’m picking the news will be swallowed by shitfights about which commercial properties are going to be grabbed under the CERA act, who owns them, who knows who, what the level of compo will be, what alternative plans were considered and rejected, who owned properties affected by those rejected plans, whay school did they go to…

      It’s a set up for a perfect ChCh feud of epic proportions.

      • Puddleglum 6.1.1
        30 July 2012 at 9:41 pm

        I think you’re dead right. This is where the ‘interesting’ aspects of the decisions that have been announced will reside.

        Here’s a starter: The proposed 35,000 covered (for goodness’ sake – The Crusaders just managed 16000 at the weekend for the semi-final) rugby stadium is on the block of what used to be the Turners and Growers site (and currently the same block has one of the remaining heritage buildings – the Ng building).

        In late 2011 there was some concern over how the Turners and Growers site was going to be used.

        “In 2006, the council sold the site to Urban Winery Christchurch, which planned to turn it into an urban winery with retail areas, an art gallery and apartments.
        The purchase contract had a clause allowing the council to buy back the land if it had not started development by October this year”

        But,

        “the deal was placed on hold after developers expressed concerns about the financial implications.
        The Wellington company’s managing director, Ian Cassels, said the company had fulfilled all the conditions of the original agreement, but had been unable to develop a workable proposal.
        Cassels said the company had been close to developing a final proposal for the site before the February earthquake, which forced them to change their plans.
        The company had invested heavily in the site and still intended to develop it.” 

        And, who is Ian Cassels? He’s this chap. A self-proclaimed ‘megalomaniac’.

        Seems he no longer has the dilemma of what he can do that’s financially viable with the site.

        I wonder who this ‘Wellington Company’ man has his business lunches with? 

  7. captain hook 7
    30 July 2012 at 11:13 am

    dont worry folks.
    ‘they’ will f*ck it up completely for sure.
    It will be square and horrible.
    Just like ‘them’.

  8. Carol 8
    30 July 2012 at 11:15 am

    [groan]

    Josie Pagani, on Nine-to-Noon, just now, is agreeing with Hooton that this plan, with its collaboration between the government/council and private businesses, will be so successful, it will be seen as a visionary role model, that tax payers in other cities will want their city to follow!

  9. prism 9
    30 July 2012 at 11:28 am

    Josie Pagani – How did she get identified with the left. Is identification just a coloured wrapping that one chooses, doesn’t matter about the interior substance. Definitely a soft-centred chocolate with artificial flavour.

    • Draco T Bastard 9.1
      30 July 2012 at 2:37 pm

      Is identification just a coloured wrapping that one chooses, doesn’t matter about the interior substance.

      Seems to be that way. Labour is red because they say that they’re red but not because of any actions they actually take.

      Labour is a party of the past – time to let it go.

    • mike e 9.2
      30 July 2012 at 5:49 pm

      National extra light

    • Draco T Bastard 10.1
      30 July 2012 at 2:41 pm

      “If there’s any good that comes out of these earthquakes, and you’ve go to argue that’s pretty minimal, it’s the capacity to really get it right in terms of a vision for Cantabrians,” he said.

      The underlying message is Just so long as you don’t leave it to the Cantabrians.

      • kevyn 10.1.1
        30 July 2012 at 4:58 pm

        Cantabrians are paying for the whole Govt contribution to the rebuild via their petrol taxes and the GST on their insurance payouts. So why exactly is the government involved????

        The Council had a brilliant intelligent plan ready to go before last Christmas. But it would have required cancelling the CHCH subisdies towards the RoNS so bang went the shared space slow-core. Ya have to wonder who the puppet masters are 🙁

  11. vto 11
    30 July 2012 at 3:29 pm

    .
    This better be good. For their own sakes. After all, this is the National Party who promote themselves as the great workers and doers of all things. The ones who are smartest and most entrepreunerial. The ones who do the building and lifting and creating. They claim they are the creative doers ande action people.The ones who without we would have no economy and no way to feed ourselves or pay for schools or hospitals. Without them we are apparently all lost and doomed to …. well, I’m not sure actually …

    So, lets just watch their performance.

    The entire centre right political ideology is on show here. And so too is all of business New Zealand.

    We have heard the hype for many many years now so lets watch as the curtains are pulled back from the stage …..!

  12. Carol 12
    30 July 2012 at 7:06 pm

    What is it with this government and convention centres? That and a covered rugby stadium seems to be the big selling point of the plan, and totally off-target for large numbers of Christchurch residents.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10823289

    I like that they have included walkways, cycling and a new library and Ngai Tahu cultural centre in the plan. But while this plan was being unveiled, some Cantabrians were outside protesting that the government was focusing on the CBD, while nothing’s being done to deal with the inadequate housing many are living in, or have had to evacuate ….. shades of New Orleans after Katrina!

    An excuse to develop a city for the well-off, while the less well-off will just have to go elsewhere!

    • felix 12.1
      30 July 2012 at 7:34 pm

      Convention Centres are teh awesome. You can hold “Job Summits” in them.

      • Carol 12.1.1
        30 July 2012 at 7:36 pm

        ‘n’ Natz confrincez!

      • mike e 12.1.2
        30 July 2012 at 8:13 pm

        The convention centre could house a cycle way(velodrome) plenty of jobs their!

      • Draco T Bastard 12.1.3
        30 July 2012 at 8:29 pm

        Wasn’t sure if I should laugh or facepalm when they mentioned the state of the art convention centre. It’ll be nice but it will be barely used due to international visitors dropping as transport costs rise.

    • BernyD 12.2
      30 July 2012 at 8:09 pm

      You need to get the Army to build some barracks
      Shared kitchen, laundry etc
      Mutliple 4-6 bdrm dwellings
      Cheapest Solution, it all come down to how many do they need to build

    • Draco T Bastard 12.3
      30 July 2012 at 8:26 pm

      That entire article is nothing but PR BS. Lots of nice sounding slogans that mean somewhere between Sweet Fuck All and Not a Fuck of a Lot.

      Mr Parker said that through investment and community that the city would prosper.

      “You need investment to create jobs, you need jobs to attract people and you need people to give a city a bright future.”

      They really don’t know which way a community grows do they?

      Mark Solomon, Kaiwhakahaere, Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, said: “Developing a plan for the rebuild of our city is a huge challenge and while there may be some different views, the important things now is to put any doubts aside and commit to bringing the plan to life.”

      And finishes with the You’re either with or against us rhetoric of the last Bush Administration.

      If that rather poor video showed what it will actually be like then what I see is just more dead square concrete cutting out life.

      Well, I suppose the question is: What do the Cantabrians think of it?
      Looking at the response of the ones in my twitter feed the answer Not a Fuck of a Lot.

      • BernyD 12.3.1
        30 July 2012 at 8:37 pm

        They just want it to magically become an Operational city again.
        They know the job market will flood the second it opens.
        No thought given to where those applicants are living before and after they “Live” in the CBD.

      • vto 12.3.2
        30 July 2012 at 8:53 pm

        Draco ““You need investment to create jobs, you need jobs to attract people and you need people to give a city a bright future.”

        They really don’t know which way a community grows do they?”

        you are right. That sentence indicates their backwards view, which I have said on a few occasions.

        Just had a glance through some of the detail … first big gut instinct is that it is too big. I suspect, at this early stage, that they have simply dreamed too big. What is proposed there is absolutely gigantic. They have basically bought up the entire CBD.

        The sheer scale of this massive proposal, and the timeframe needed to get it completed, is such that it will be impossible to control and complete without many other events and governments and all sorts coming along and shoving it around.

        I suspect many will be thinking, like many govt proposals,…. believe it when it happens. It is simply too big.

        anyways, just some instant 2c. Good on them for having a bash at it though.

      • TheContrarian 12.3.3
        30 July 2012 at 8:55 pm

        Wow, Draco doesn’t like it? Well, fuck, colour me surprised…

        “Well, I suppose the question is: What do the Cantabrians think of it?
        Looking at the response of the ones in my twitter feed the answer Not a Fuck of a Lot.”

        Lets rewrite that to reflect the truth of the statement….

        “Well, I suppose the question is: What do my self-selected listeners think of it?
        Looking at the response of the ones who follow and agree with me the answer Not a Fuck of a Lot.”

        That is some fucking damning indictment of the whole plan right there.

  13. Rob A 13
    31 July 2012 at 12:59 am

    Anyone have an idea when it was decided to announce all this today? I only found out in the weekend.
    And a certain Waitangi Tribunal decision, when was it announced the findings from that would be released today?

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