Speak Up-Kōrerotia8 February 2017

Canterbury’s residential red zones

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Nau mai haere mai, welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. Today we’re talking about Canterbury’s residential red zones and to get us going we might want to think about what are the red zones. Well, these were areas in Greater Christchurch - which is Christchurch City, Waimakariri District Council and Selwyn District Council - that were established after the earthquakes of 2011 in areas where the land was deemed… or remediating the land was deemed uncertain, disruptive, lengthy and uneconomically viable and that was specifically in the short to medium term. There were also red zones in the Port Hills, these were more if areas were deemed at risk of rock fall risk or landslip. So about 8,000 houses were in this red zone and 7,200 of those were residential properties.

And we’ve got two parts to this show: the first bit will be with Human Rights Commission Chief Commissioner David Rutherford talking about a recent report released by the Human Rights Commission, and then the second part will be a discussion about what’s going to happen with particularly the large tract of land around the Avon River corridor.

So to start with we’ve got David in the studio. David, welcome.

David Hi.

Sally If you could kick us off maybe by thinking about what was this Human Rights Commission report and why did the Human Rights Commission consider it an important topic to research?

David Well it was the second major report on the earthquake and the first one was much more general. This one focused on a group of people who

were perhaps the most affected - apart from obviously people who died and were injured - they were most affected by the situation and while they were a very small group of people, we thought they had a story that needed to be heard and not only for their sake but actually for the sake of disaster recovery in the future in New Zealand.

Sally You mentioned the first report that was very general; can you pull any links out between the two reports?

David The main link is actually around the need to use the human rights approach in disaster recovery. I think the second report really emphasised the importance of that and put it in a detailed context and enabled people to tell New Zealanders exactly what it felt like and I think the additional thing in the new report - sorry, the second report - was the concern about property rights and ensuring that Ministers in future only exercised powers within the bounds of the Act that the Parliament had passed.

Sally David, you mentioned that it was just a small group of people. Do we have a sense of how many people were affected or remain affected by the red zoning?

David Well around this time last year there were 300 left but we don’t know exactly how many were there. So when we did the survey there would have been around 300 but it’s a very small group of people and they’re in different situations - you know: people on the hills, people on the flat - but they have plenty to tell us.

Sally I think that’s another good point you raised that there were three quite distinct red zones, we’ve got the Port Hills, we’ve got the Christchurch flat land - Avon River corridor - and also Waimakariri District. One of the things you mentioned, some people are still there - and this is maybe for the people who haven’t been around in Canterbury for the last few years - but why have the vast majority of people left the red zones?

David I think the vast majority left because they felt the offer from the Government was the best option for them and the work that I think CERA did on surveying those people suggested that was so. I think one of the things that was really important in the report - and who knows how much it’s sunk in - but these were people that had every right to stay. A lot of people, I think, thought that this was some sort of compulsory acquisition but it wasn’t, it was supposedly a choice, albeit that the Supreme Court called it Hobson’s Choice to stay. That’s really been a real concern of ours and that goes to also the issue around labelling because one of the things we said that was an issue was being labelled a ‘red zoner’ which sort of suggested that someone could do something to your land and people there today still suffer that problem with commercial people and other people saying, well no we can’t do something because you’re on red zoned land.

Sally So I think for people who weren’t here what happened was these 8,060 properties were red zoned and then the Crown, the Government, offered to purchase those properties at the last Rateable Value which was in 2007 or 2008 but then there were difficulties around different types of properties, whether those properties were insured or not. So yes, the vast majority of people - 99%ish - have left the red zones. An important point you raised, though, about it never being compulsory for them to accept it.

If we think about the report, what are some of the major findings that were drawn?

David Well there’s a number. The key is to make sure human rights are front and centre in terms of how you address, to be flexible in terms of how you deal with different groups of people - that was quite an issue. Communication is absolutely critical and communication to the right people, i.e. the affected people.

Sally I imagine time as well. Communication.

David I think recently in the context of Hurunui and Kaikoura generally you’ve seen it as good but actually interestingly perhaps a couple of places where it broke down was around communication so with the Conway farmers feeling that nothing was happening on the State Highway 1 North when in fact there was a lot happening but no-one had actually told them and that sort of led to a bit of a flare-up that might not have been necessary and no doubt a lot of stress for those farmers.

Sally You mentioned flexibility, communication and the human rights approach - were there any other findings?

David Well I think the two other things that were particularly important and one is I think most people do understand now but we certainly collectively didn’t understand going into it, is this issue around mental health and post-disaster stress. And you can see, again in the context of the Kaikoura/Hurunui earthquake, some real focus on that.

And the other really was something that we really strengthened, it’s a constitutional point but it’s a very important one which is that property rights are not properly protected in New Zealand’s Bill of Rights. Why is that important to the Canterbury situation, the red zoning? We just think that people thought you could do things to the land that people owned but you shouldn’t be able to. And one of the people in the red zone put that very well at a much earlier stage than just this report when he said most New Zealanders buy a home so that no-one can tell them what to do it and now everybody is telling me what to do in my home. And that’s what we mean about property rights. Why it’s important is that it secures a space for you to be you and whether its property rights secured by freehold ownership or whether it’s the right to adequate housing and decent security of tenure, both those things secure that space where you

can be yourself.

Sally And based on that finding particularly that one around constitutional reform I suppose, are there any recommendations coming out of the report?

David Basically in different ways our recommendations reflect all those things. We have recommended, in relation to the constitutional issue, that the provisional property rights go into the New Zealand Bill of Rights. We have in the past in our constitutional review submission - and it’s worth noting that the co-chairs of the constitutional review were both red zoners, John Burrows and Sir Tipene O’Regan - we also said that we stress the importance of human dignity at the beginning of the Bill of Rights in the way the Germans have. So they say the human dignity of all people in the state of Germany is inviolate and it’s the duty of the German state and everyone in it to uphold that. Because that’s the other thing that was at the heart of all this, people felt that they were being done to.

Sally I imagine that ties very much into that comment you made earlier about mental health.

David Yes it does because agency - having the ability to make up one’s own decisions - is critical to mental health and I think that again goes back to the big learnings about why self-determination is the first article in both our major human rights covenants.

Sally I think as well - as a lot of people in Christchurch and Canterbury can probably attest to - it’s such a disempowering experience being in a disaster, you can’t control things.

David Yes, so to the extent that you can enable people to is very, very positive.

Sally Now David, the next part of the show is going to be a conversation around the future use of one of these areas of red zones which is the Avon River corridor which is the biggest tract of red zoned land. Have you got any comments from a human rights perspective before we head into that conversation?

David Well just that that is… The rules are the same, these people live in this property. One of the things that was worrying us is they’re still there and they should be consulted first about what’s going to happen to their land. The property owners now are the people who have stayed and the Crown… So they need to be thought of. The worst thing would be for them to be hearing what was going to happen to their property from somewhere else.

Sally And there’s also quite a movement here that people who used to live in the red zone but who have accepted the Crown offer should also have a fairly significant say in it as well.

David That’s been something that’s been there all along. I remember one of the proposals two or three years ago was to grow a kahikatea forest and the idea put out at that time was that the people who had left should have the… and it was going to be sustainably harvested so they were talking about those people having the cutting rights. I think anything you could do to acknowledge that status would be really helpful.

Sally Have you got any final comments then before we head into that section?

David No I think just the signs are with a couple of exceptions one of which I’ve mentioned that we have learned and so in terms of some of the things that have been going on in North Canterbury and that’s a good thing.

Sally Well thank you so much and I know you’re a busy man so thanks for taking the time.

David It’s no problem, thank you.

Sally Coming up we have a song by a Lyttleton band The Eastern, ‘Hope and Wire’.

MUSIC BY THE EASTERN – HOPE & WIRESally Nau mai hoki mai, welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. We’ve just

been talking with David Rutherford, Chief Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission, about the report they recently released on the residential red zones. We’re moving into a slightly different focus now thinking about primarily what could be the future use of the residential red zone, particularly the residential red zone in the eastern part of Christchurch along the Avon-Ōtākaro river corridor. We’ve got some new guests in the studio; gentlemen, welcome. And it would be fantastic if you could please introduce yourselves. Simon, maybe we’ll start with you.

Simon Kia ora, I’m Simon Markham, I’m with the Waimakariri District Council. I’ve been associated with the planning for future use of the red zone in Kaiapoi, The Pines and Kairaki Beaches.

Sally And Simon, I’m looking forward to hearing more about Waimakariri’s red zones and if there are any particular lessons or learnings that might be passed on to what we’re thinking of doing with the Christchurch flat land red zone. Evan?

Evan Kia ora, Evan Smith, I’m co-Chair of Avon-Ōtākaro Network, also previous red zone resident that took the Government’s offer some time ago. And we have a vision for the red zone that we’ve been advocating for for the last five years and this is a critical point in that process.

Sally Could you tell us a little bit what is the Avon-Ōtākaro Network, please?

Evan The Avon-Ōtākaro Network is a loose network of individuals and

organisations all with a shared vision that came into place and has evolved in the last six years really. Since the very first earthquakes, it was clear that a lot of the housing would have to be substantially changed after the first couple of earthquakes and then the red zoning decisions came in so we had a proposal that many people had at the same time actually and the group has just coalesced from that and that was to turn the red zone into a multipurpose river park from the city to the sea and include in that as much naturally-restored habitat as possible.

Sally Fantastic. You also mentioned this is a bit of a critical time to be discussing the future use of the red zone or the red zone in general and we’re going to talk to Rob, who will tell us maybe why.

Rob OK so I’m Rob Kerr, I’m from Regenerate Christchurch, I’m the General Manager of the Residential Red Zone Programme. So our job is to run a process to determine what is the future use of the residential red zone in Christchurch so that includes not only the big one which is the Ōtākaro-Avon River corridor but also Brooklands, also South Shore and South New Brighton - there’s a strip down beside the estuary there - and the Port Hills as well.

But the reason why it’s critical right now is that we’ve just released for comment a draft outline which is required under the Act, the Greater Christchurch Regeneration Act, and it’s lots of statutory stuff and all that sort of fun but the idea of the draft outline is to say this is what we’re thinking about what the plan should cover - not what’s in it but what it covers - and so it starts the process which will eventually end up with a regeneration plan which is the plan which says here’s what those uses are going to be, here’s who is going to do them and here’s an indicative timeframe of when things are going to happen as well.

Sally Do we have a sense yet of any kind of timeframe or will that come through the plan?

Rob Well in terms of developing the plan we have proposed a timeframe which is around about… well six months after the outline is approved. Now in reality that takes us through to September this year, 2017. So that’s when the draft plan is finalised and goes through a bit of a process before it gets approved or not by the Minister. In that plan we’ll set out the timeframe for the actual, if you like, development or use or changes within the river corridor.

Sally Guys, this is a question for all of you: the February earthquakes are now very much almost six years ago, February 2011. If we’re thinking about timeframes, what’s happened in this six years since 2011 that’s got us to this stage here now?

Evan Well in terms of the red zone itself all but a few of the houses, the home owners have moved on and they’ve sold the properties to the Crown and they took one of two options to do that and most of those or all of those

houses actually now have been cleared and the area is levelled or cleared of a lot of vegetation and they’ve been grassed over for easy maintenance but a lot of the old mature trees, the existing mature trees have been retained and vegetation retained. We were very keen to see that happen and advocated for that very strongly and it’s good to see that that has happened so you can still see fence lines of old properties there today but it’s now if you look on Google Earth it’s changed from a densely populated residential series of suburbs along the corridor to a big green space all along.

Sally There’s something kind of beautiful and a little bit eerie, I think, about seeing those treelines where the houses used to be.

Evan Absolutely, it’s quite an experience just walking through there.

Simon It’s a very similar landscape, on a smaller scale, in Waimakariri/Kaiapoi/Pines and Kairaki so as Evan said red zone process clearance and then kind of stabilisation of the land, retention of the significant vegetation. Waimakariri District Council has progressed some of the infrastructure recovery in and around the red zone and late 2015 through to the end of last year we undertook a future use planning exercise with the community and it was great to have a Minister signing that plan off just before Christmas.

Sally And then what’s the plan looking like? What are the activities, space use, those sorts of things?

Simon So that’s about a plan for about 100 hectares which was previously occupied by 1000 homes, and the future uses range from a wide variety of active and naturalised greenspaces through to there are some areas set aside for business use and that’s principally because the red zone is right next to the Kaiapoi town centre on three sides and so this provides a pretty unique opportunity to future-proof the long term growth of the Kaiapoi town centre. So that’s it in a nutshell, there are a lot of different components to each of those areas that I’ve just mentioned.

Sally Excuse my maybe not quite getting it but when you say future-proofing the centre, what does that mean exactly?

Simon So that means because Waimakariri generally and Kaiapoi is a growing community, it’s a really unique opportunity to enable the town centre to expand as the community grows. Oftentimes with existing towns it’s very difficult and quite contentious to grow the size of the commercial area into adjoining residential areas that are occupied. Through tragic circumstances we find ourselves with a large area of land in one ownership that’s vacant, it’s a really unique opportunity to think about what are the requirements of that community 20+ years out and to plan accordingly.

Sally Cool. In the Waimakariri and also the flatland red zone here in

Christchurch, there have been some activities that have been taking place, am I correct in thinking that? Some of the… I’m thinking orchard trails and foraging trails and these sorts of things through the red zones?

Evan They have been looked at but really, they haven’t really gone much further than that. There have been some walks associated with the Breeze Festival last year through different parts of the red zone. The one thing that’s been happening over the last six years is people have had more and more reduced access to the red zone as the works were undertaken, it was for health and safety reasons. Now it’s time that communities can go back into the red zone and experience it and those walks showed us that many people hadn’t appreciated the scale and size of the red zones and they were blown away when they go through for a walk through there. And I think that’s still the case for probably the majority of Christchurch, they really needed to have a good chance to experience those lands and just see how much was actually there before they can even have a meaningful discussion about what could be there in the future.

Sally Have you guys got any ideas on how that might happen? Encouraging people to go back in and have a look around.

Rob Yes we’ve got lots of ideas and Evan’s and his team are making a number of them work. I think one is creating a pathway through there and putting in some signs to help people navigate and Evan’s been great in terms of prompting and helping with that as well. And then there’s holding events and I think that will grow over time as people understand the opportunity and also as we combine that with the really important dialogue around what happens next. And so by inviting people in and having that discussion in the area is much more useful than doing it in a windowless room or a hall.

Simon In the process we’ve got to be cognisant that there are green zone areas immediately next to the red zones so there are peoples whose long term future is there and also they’ve got keen interest in what’s going to happen in their neighbourhood. But also in some situations, as in Kaiapoi East area, we’ve got people accessing their homes through the red zone and they’ve been doing that on damaged roads for six years so they’re pretty keen to see us get on, now that the plan is confirmed, to restoring that on a permanent basis. And also we have some new routes through the red zone to provide more direct access to the outside world that we can now progress.

Rob I think that’s a really good point Simon, we always need to be aware of that when we’re talking about what is what I call ‘the former residential red zone.’ I don’t think we need to keep talking about it as ‘the residential red zone’ - we can talk about it as ‘the Ōtākaro-Avon River corridor’ and we can start leaving behind those names.

Sally Yes.

Rob But there are people living in there and right adjacent to it, there are concentric circles of influence about what the impact of land uses and decisions and activities are within that land and those people are the… will benefit or be impacted adversely the most and so we’re really aware how important they are in this conversation in terms of them finding things out as well.

Simon I think that’s a good point, Rob, and if you think of the Kairaki community - it’s a small beach community of about 80 homes, all red zoned so the entire community red zoned but about 20 are retained properties so there is still a very active community there - and they are particularly interested in what is going to happen next door.

Evan There’s also a large population - close to 9,000 households - that have had to move on from there, couldn’t stay whether they wanted to or not, my own family included and many of us would not like to see the same mistakes being made again; in other words rebuilding residential accommodation in those areas. We see there’s great potential for other uses that would still assist the prosperity of the area without having to rebuild homes there. And I think there would be a lot of… There is a lot of feeling already and a lot of emotional attachment to the lands.

Simon It’s been an interesting - as you say Evan - process going through the planning process for people for whom this was their homes. We found that people are either intensely interested in the process and/or completely uninterested. Probably the most divisive issue about future use has been whether it should or shouldn’t be used for residential purposes. Probably everyone to greater or lesser degrees have looked to a whole variety of green space and less intensive kind of uses and there’s a broad support for that. But the issue of future residential use is a very significant issue and so just a small anecdote, there are still people who on a Saturday afternoon will park up outside their home and go and pick the fruit or the flowers and they still do that every Saturday so it’s an intensely emotional experience for a lot of former red zone residents.

Evan And there’s also quite a few I know of that won’t go anywhere near the place because it reminds them still too intensely with what they experienced so they’ve never gone back since they’ve left and still can’t face going back.

Sally Very tricky. Given these concentric circles of groups you’ve been talking about, hopefully when people come to provide feedback on the Regeneration Plan, are the circumstances of these different groups going to be taken into consideration? And if so I guess, how? It’s quite difficult to do.

Simon Yeah it is, obviously it’s quite difficult to do, it’s large numbers of people, there will be diverging views, I can never get my family to agree on

anything and so getting 8,440 [former red zone households plus] 4 million - how many people live in New Zealand now? I’ve lost track - to agree on anything is obviously going to be challenging. So that’s going to be part of the process about how we distil down the key messages coming down and try to hear what’s underlying and also what people are saying because it’s easier to talk at a high level about wants and things like that but what we really need to understand is underneath that, what are the needs and what are the needs of east Christchurch? And what are the needs of New Zealand? What do they need from the Ōtākaro-Avon River corridor? What’s the biggest contribution that land can make to our future? And I think that’s the sort of conversation that we need to have.

Sally That seems like an excellent point to have our break. We’re going to listen to Imogen Heap ‘Neglected Space’ - which I don’t think is the right term for the red zone but it is one of the songs that was on the Songs for Christchurch CD that was released a while ago so I thought it might be appropriate for this conversation.

MUSIC BY IMOGEN HEAP – NEGLECTED SPACESally Hi guys and welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, we’re speaking

with Simon Markham from the Waimakariri District Council, Evan Smith from Avon-Ōtākaro Network and Rob Kerr from Regenerate Christchurch and we’ve been talking about the red zones, what are they, the things that are formerly known as the red zones which is definitely more accurate. And something that I’d like to just think about is: Waimakariri is a long way ahead of Christchurch and the Avon River corridor in this respect - what are some of the key learnings that you can take from the Waimakariri experience that you can pass on to what we’re doing here in Christchurch now?

Simon I think, yes, there are many things in common but there’s a quantum leap in scale in Christchurch and that always needs to be brought into account, not just in the land area but in the potential significance and scale for some of the future uses.

I think some of our learnings around process: firstly once you’ve started, carry on. So there was a bit of a false start and then a stop and then we started again… so really important to maintain momentum in the process. Set out a very clearly staged process and as far as possible stick to it.

Second is around the different methods of engagement and that ranges from given those kind of concentric circles of influence spanning right out across Greater Christchurch and beyond, you’ve really got to think about different ways that are going to attract those different audiences to participate. Ironically for us one of the oldest kind of methods of engagement worked really, really well with one of the newest and by that I mean the newest in terms of a lot of online and social media, one of the oldest - the good, old three-dimensional model that we toured around the

working men’s clubs and the schools and that was a little physical model of each of the five regeneration areas - we’re calling red zone into regeneration areas - potential future uses. And they’re really engaging and captivated a lot of people to express their ideas through reaction to a very simple but still quite a useful three-dimensional model. So different tools for different audiences.

Sally I liked your idea, Rob, before of bringing people into those areas. I think that must be hugely different if they can visibly see… holding events, those sorts of things, that must be fantastic.

Rob Yes I think it’s really important to use a really wide range of things so I think Simon is absolutely right to gather views and also help people understand what the opportunities and options and issues are as well. We’re all different and we all hear and see and we receive information differently so some people will really need to be in the physical space - and I think a lot of people really need to be in the physical space - but others work just as well and maybe even more effectively by online or paper or physical models as well. So we’re looking at all those different things, in fact I had this great experience looking through a hollow lens earlier which a consultant was flogging to us about how to do different ways of visualising what the possibilities could be. Now, I don’t think we’ll be using that because each hollow lens cost an enormous amount of money and I think we can spend our money better, but the challenge is how to get a wide-ranging and diverse set of views and opinions that are well informed of those issues and options and opportunities.

Simon Another part of that is striking the right balance in all of that discussion and consideration between being aspirational - these are unique opportunities long term - and also being realistic in terms of these are large areas and even green space is expensive to maintain, develop and maintain. We’ve found the community has been really realistic but at the same time wanting to see areas kind of reserved for the future as well as some things delivered right now.

Evan I’d support that as well, from the community’s perspective, and I certainly think that the 3D model idea is excellent. We have one that we’ve used - only the size of a card table - which we have used for the last three years and we put it on a display affair or anything like that and people congregate around it all the time, the first thing they do is work out where they live and where they are now and they could see then the scale of the red zone and what they could envision in there. T

The other thing I would say is the online is a really useful tool. I was involved in getting the EVO::SPACE consultation going for Eastern Vision and that had close to 1600 people that were putting input on that and that was a way of visualising things as well and I think it’s a really good tool. But again I think as many methods as possible. In relation to actually meeting in the red zone, the next Children’s Day on 5 March is happening in the red zone in Dallington and it’s also an excellent

opportunity for people to experience those learnings and what could be there.

Sally Evan, you mentioned EVO::SPACE, what were some of the suggestions that were put forward for the use of the red zone through those sorts of consultation processes? What were some of the suggestions?

Evan I guess there’s a whole range of different suggestions and they fall within various categories. There’s a range of different proposals for play, recreation and sport and they range from natural playground areas within the red zone to cycleways and network of cycleways and walkways to more formal organised sport facilities like playing fields and potentially a flat water sports lake and other aquatic playground type activities that could be done for recreation. There’s also a need probably to recognise the heritage that lies within the area both in terms of community heritage - what existed there before and acknowledging what happened to the communities there - but also in terms of long-term cultural heritage from pre-European times right through to… You can tell the story, for example, of the urbanisation of Christchurch by walking from the centre of the city along the red zone out to Brighton. So those stories can be told and need to be developed and unfolded as you go through.

There’s also space there to look at things like food growing, food production and certainly the Food Resilience Network throughout Canterbury is keen to see something happen in there. If you cast your mind back to after the earthquakes, food had to be flown in from Rangiora and Waimak into the red zone and Aranui to maintain the food supplies there. It would be much better if that food could be derived locally a lot more.

There’s also a lot of opportunity for education and training opportunities out there. We’re already working with a lot of the schools from pre-school right up to high school and tertiary education as well, to provide opportunities there like living laboratories for people to learn. Also a lot of employment and business and tourism opportunities out there as well. So lots of different ideas.

Sally Massive. Do we see those reflected in the plan?

Rob Well we haven’t done the plan yet so I don’t know what’s going to be in the plan and clearly there’s been a lot of talk about all those different uses, so the process that we’re just embarking on will try to flesh all those different things out, invite for other ideas and so on but also get behind that. And like I was saying before about getting behind that in terms of what Christchurch really needs from the residential red zone and what we should use the residential red zone for - I’ll rephrase that, the Ōtākaro-Avon River corridor for - it needs to link back to what Christchurch really needs and what the people really need and if we do that and we do that well then we’ll come up with the right answer and the right plan.

Sally I’m not sure if I’m correct on this but I definitely have gotten the sense that people have become more disengaged from what’s going to happen to that land as time has progressed. Do you share that view and how is it that you think we might get people re-engaged, if that is the case?

Simon It was the case in Waimakariri where we really had to work hard to bring out the opportunities from the background to the foreground again even before you can have the meaningful discussion that this is now up for consideration. Look this community: the Greater Christchurch community has been faced with an awful lot over a short period of time so this is one of the many challenges for a lot of people and it’s not been front and centre so allowing the process to bring it back into people’s gaze and then allowing time then for the consideration once it is there and that’s going to be challenging. It was for us on a much smaller scale. I’m really hoping as a Greater Christchurch resident it will be a fantastic process for the Christchurch regeneration areas but it will be challenging to get the wider community into a space where they do want to engage.

Rob Yes I think it will be and that’s OK, time has passed, we all have busy lives and part of recovery from a natural disaster is about looking ahead as well. So some people have moved on but on the other hand this conversation about what the future use looks like is about looking ahead and is about aspiration and excitement and about what Christchurch could be so it’s a really, really important conversation. The challenge is, of course, that there’s a lot of us - actually it’s a small town really, Christchurch - but there is quite a few of us and so allowing people to sense that they can be heard is important as well but we’re planning a process which is going to do it hopefully a little bit different than perhaps normal local government consultation processes that can really encourage participation in the process.

Sally Good, I look forward to seeing that.

Rob I want U2 to come along and do a big concert in the river corridor and bring a load of people and we can all corral in there but they haven’t responded yet.

Evan I certainly would agree with the comments before. We can’t underestimate the challenge involved in activating the community. And about this: it’s been longer than Waimakariri, people have been waiting over six years, they’ve become very disengaged with the recovery or they haven’t been allowed to be engaged in the past with recovery so there’s a lot of disillusionment out there. Even at the weekend we posted a couple of posts on Facebook and people say it’s never going to happen anyway so why bother? So there’s that whole activation barrier to overcome before we can engage people in this discussion that it does actually have real meaning and it’s important and you can influence what happens in the future.

Sally On that note, and I think just a final conversation to round up, Rob you’ve been talking about using this land to best fulfil whatever Christchurch/ Greater Christchurch/ eastern Christchurch/ New Zealand needs… What do you see as being a very good use of that land? What would you hope to see there?

Rob It’s a tough question which obviously I’ve been pondering since… well since well before I got the job that I have. So my first response is: I care very deeply what happens but I don’t mind what happens. I want whatever it is that’s the best thing for greater Christchurch but also underneath that also we can create a place where people maybe go on the weekend, sometimes on a nice summer’s evening and I think if that’s all we do we probably failed. We need to create a place where people want to be in and want to use whether it’s passive or active or whatever sort of way that they use in whatever way. If we can fill it with people and bring it back to life I think that we would do justice to all that has been lost that’s created the opportunity.

Simon That’s a good sentiment. It’s reflected in the process and outcome in Waimakariri where yes, it was about green but it was also about the community both at a local level and at a wider sense. So these need to be a mix of uses and activities that are going to be engaging, drawing people from near and far.

Sally Evan?

Evan I think the most important thing is that whatever happens there, the community is behind it and there’s a strong community mandate for it. And some of that may not be decided by this community, it might be three generations’ time and I’d love for them to be able to look back and say yes, these guys made the right decision; all these people in 2017/2020/whatever it might be, they made the right decision and they’ve left some ground for us to make decisions as well still in the red zone, there’s still space to do that sort of stuff. But it’s an amazing asset that contributes to the economy of the South Island and to New Zealand, it’s not just a green park somewhere in the corner of a city.

Sally I hadn’t necessarily thought of it in such a longitudinal view before so that’s, I think, really refreshing.

Evan I think we need to look at it in that context both in terms of the importance to it nationally and also generationally.

Sally Fantastic. And so if people want to get involved, what can they do?

Rob So I guess that’s for me to answer. So out at moment is we’re inviting comments on the draft outline which is… and I say this rather… It’s a plan to make a plan. It sets out the process and the timeframe and the scope of what the plan will be about but then listen out, sign up to… Go to our website, the Regenerate Christchurch website

(http://www.regeneratechristchurch.nz/) and sign up for the e-newsletter and keep in touch and there will be lots and lots of opportunities to get involved and express views and perhaps even be entertained as well.

Sally That sounds positive. Any final comments then, guys?

Simon I think Evan has put it well in terms of a balance of stuff for now, people of this generation but also for the future and in each of the two contexts - Waimakariri and Christchurch - these are significant areas, you’re not going to fill them up with activity completely any time soon. And so that’s crafting the balance between opportunities for the future and things for people now is really going to be the challenge.

Sally The balancing act.

Simon Indeed.

Sally Alright. On that note, then, I’d like to thank you all very much for coming into the studio, I know you’re all really busy. And I would encourage you all listening to get involved in this, it really is something that I would hope all of us feel is worthwhile spending some time devoting to it once again, I guess even if you’ve gotten involved in the past. So thank you very much.