Posts tagged Cathedral Square

Aerial photo comparisons of before & after – the CBD

Many of the CBD demolitions were mandated under the CERA emergency powers. This meant that those demolitions were carried out quickly so it was important to capture the changes for the research archive before too many buildings were demolished.  Ross regularly walked the CBD to photograph the changes from April 27 2011.  Our first aerial shoot was arranged in October 2011 after several months of feverish demolition activity.

It was particularly important to include Cathedral Square in this comparison as it was, and hopefully will again be, the centre of the city from which most activity radiates.

The top image was taken from that first aerial shoot so there are already “holes” showing up where buildings had been demolished in the 8 months since the most damaging earthquake in February 2011.

However the lower image taken in October 2014 shows a very different story. Almost all the CBD demolitions are complete leaving over 80% of the land vacant.

There are plenty of signs of rebuild activity starting. When the next photo shoot occurs in six months time there’ll be an abundance of changes to see.

How has Christchurch changed?

I was asked recently “What does Christchurch feel like when returning after a period away?”

I was absent from Christchurch from mid-August until late September.  When I returned I was keen to see & photograph what had changed.  In 2011, an absence of six weeks would have seen a significant change in the CBD as the frenzied demolition machine gobbled up so much in its path. 

However by August 2013 most of that activity had finished & the CBD was quietly welcoming folks who had watched from the cordon fences for years and tourists who took the city as they saw it.

A walk around the Square & adjacent Streets at the end of October thrilled me as such a wealth of local talent was everywhere. Artists & craft people had been hard at work transforming the central city to make it a bright & cheery place to visit.

The Cashel Restart Mall was busier than when I’d left. It wasn’t a dead-end street anymore; I could walk through it and into Colombo, High, Hereford & down to Lichfield Streets.

Several hotels in the centre were open or just about to. Such good news.  The work on buildings such as the Heritage Hotel (aka Old Government Building) and Cathedral Junction have restored those heritage buildings to high standards of both strength and beauty.

When I revisited the residential red zones of Bexley, Avonside, Burwood and Horseshoe Lake it was a very different scene.  Now, there is everywhere a huge number of  empty and forlorn sections & every street had workers demolishing houses or in a few cases preparing them for removal and relocation.

In the few areas where all the houses had gone, CERA had fenced the area, removed the fences & any outbuildings remaining after the demolition crews finished their job, and sowed the area in grass which was now a lovely light green.  In particular CERA had made that area around New Brighton Road where it meets the Avon River almost look attractive. A big improvement on how it looked a year earlier.

How you view the changes in Christchurch depends upon where you stand and what you look at.  If you work in the construction area, new housing is very busy out to the north, west & south of the city.  With regard to the big commercial buildings that are needed to really get commerce fired up, although planning is well advanced for a number of building projects, there isn’t much for us to observe yet in the central city.  If its retail you’re looking at, your impressions will be different depending upon whether you are looking at the central city, surrounding areas or retail complexes further out such as the beautifully restored Tannery in Woolston.  And if you’re an artist, there is plenty of scope for your imagination to continue to enliven the city and many blank canvases, if somewhat unusual ones.

I’m encouraged & excited with how the city is being transformed. It’ll be such a buzz watching & photographing the myriad of changes each time I return.