Events assist in Canterbury rebuild
“The earthquakes that have rocked Canterbury over the last 10 months have had a profound impact on the region’s residents, infrastrucure and landscape”
Magnetic South
These momentous events were the backdrop for an innovative new public-driven online ‘game’ that discussed how Christchurch could look in the future.
The Magnetic South event, managed by Landcare Research, used an online tool developed in Silicon Valley, California, by The Institute for the Future and ran for almost 30 hours.
Participants could play for just five minutes or for as long as they wished and Magnetic South allowed them to explore the future together by drawing on the collected knowledge of the crowd. And, as well as spotlighting unexpected challenges, it helped reveal new ideas and solutions to keep Christchurch vibrant and thriving in the next few decades.
It posed the question ‘In 2021, when talent and investment are in even shorter supply than clean energy, what will you do to attract them to Christchurch?’
Project Director Bob Frame says it was a critical question that captured the fast-changing world in which the future Christchurch must be a destination of choice for the talented if it is to be the success it so dearly desires.
The event encouraged people to think about life in the future. A lot of the ideas bouncing around at the moment are based on people’s current lifestyles and preferences – naturally. But many of the redevelopment decisions about to be made in Christchurch will impact people for generations to come, so it is useful to think about the longer term.’
And, the answers came in thick and fast – almost 900 participants in 16 countries took part generating more than 9,000 ideas.
‘That’s an average of six a minute, though at times it was many more. It highlights a genuine community commitment to engage in the exciting opportunity to rebuild the city in a way that will continue to attract talent and investment,’ says Bob. Some ideas spanned as many as 10 secondary ideas and one conversation went on for more than 25 exchanges.
All the data is freely available online at http://blog.magneticsouth.net.nz/ and can be analysed by anyone and unique visualisation created by Landcare Research’s Chris McDowall enables every conversation to be examined in depth.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker, who was supporting the event, said Magnetic South was a great addition to the City Council’s successful ‘Share an Idea’ website and community expo initiatives.
‘What makes Magnetic South different is we’re looking at the city from a future perspective. The decisions our forebears made in the 1800s, creating Hagley Park and the grid layout of our streets for example, continue to impact us today, and it’s important the decisions we make in redeveloping Christchurch also stand the test of time,’ Mr Parker says.
This unique event – only one of a handful tried n the world – utilised new technology, and its limitations were exposed. Two hours before the event was meant to end, the US-based system crashed due to very heavy interest following an interview about the event on Kim Hill’s ‘Saturday Morning’ radio show on Radio New Zealand.
‘While the event was forced to end a little earlier than expected it still generated almost 9,000 “ideas” on how to shape the city following several devastating earthquakes in the past nine months. This is an exceptional result that highlights a genuine community commitment to rebuild the city in a way that the community wants and in a way that will continue to attract talent and investment.’
Support for similar events has already been voiced by authorities leading the earthquake recovery as well as from other councils throughout New Zealand who are grappling with other challenging issues.
‘Future events of interest to Landcare Research include more boutique crowd-sourcing events with perhaps no more than 500 people on quite specific issues in more focused environments. We will be discussing this with Christchurch City Council and the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority,’ Bob Frame says.
Contact: Bob Frame
The 48-hour challenge
Landcare Research staff were among some of the best design brains who went into ‘lockdown’ to focus on generating viable plans for the city's red zone.
For Colin Meurk, Ian Lynn and their team- mates including former Landcare Research social scientist Will Allen, Lincoln University's School of Landscape Architecture was home for the 48 -hour challenge where 15 teams of seven each, comprising landscape architects, engineers, architects, urban planners, ecologists, health professionals and/or social scientists, designed alternative visions for the way the city's CBD could look in future.
The Christchurch City Council selected five key sites in the CBD and assigned three design teams to each of them in an effort to gather ideas on how to rebuild the damaged central city. The council has been canvassing ideas for months, receiving more than 90,000 submissions from the public through events like ‘Share an Idea’, ‘Magnetic South’.
Two members from each team were taken into the city’s ‘Red Zone’ so they could view their designated site, its context and the issues that come with it.
Colin and Ian’s team were given a small, challenging 880-m2 section in Gloucester St, in the midst of the Red Zone adjacent to Cathedral Junction and opposite the New Regent Street historical precinct.
‘We were really happy with how the building looked because it was a Roman-esque fi t with the wider theme that continues along New Regent Street. We utilised high-tech wood materials as well as other LIUDD (low impact urban design and development) features including solar panels, water features, pedestrian and bicycle friendly aspects, green roofs and swales,’ Dr Meurk says
‘It was certainly a challenging event given the time constraints but it was another novel way in which ideas are generated to scope the future of the city.’
Ideas from both the public and professionals will become part of the new central city plan due out on August 22.
Contact: Colin Muerk