Today was our first day in Christchurch, NZ and we spent some happy hours wandering through the Central Business District (CBD), enjoying the tremendous growth and vitality of an area that was basically completely destroyed in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The picture below was taken in 2015 and shows a fairly typical post-earthquake building. In the CBD, these sites were interspersed with empty lots or piles of debris.
Since then there has been what feels like a magical transformation. Where we once walked by empty block after empty block interspersed with construction sites, there are now many modern, beautiful, earthquake-safe buildings. Downtown was so damaged that few people ventured there in 2015 but today it was crowded with visitors and locals enjoying the newly opened museums, lovely parks, and wonderful restaurants and cafes. The energy and vitality were a joy to experience, especially after the dreary and often sad surroundings of 2015.
The Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū
The Piano, Centre for Music and the Arts
A flooded ruin - much of the CBD looked like this in in 2015
The saddest note today was to see that Christchurch Cathedral is still a ruin and has barely been touched by any restoration activity (the crane next to it gave us some hope that work is underway or will be soon). Restoring the cathedral has been a massive controversy. Though it is the heart of Christchurch and deeply connected to the original European settlers, the cost to repair the church is far beyond its value. The Anglican Church and City of Christchurch have spent years debating the feasibility of the project and final agreement to restore the cathedral wasn’t made until June of 2018. The repair work will take about ten years to complete at a current cost estimate is $104 million dollars.
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