Speaker by Various Artists

In the last few months, Auckland Council has announced three major public art works: Michael Parakowhai on Queens Wharf, Judy Millar at the Devonport Library and Gregar Kregar and Sarah Hughes at New Lynn. All three have set off a burst of public controversy for various reasons. In all three the commissioners – Auckland Council arts bureaucrats - have left the artists hanging out to dry.

Mostly the outrage was about money. In the last episode it was caused by a partial image of the work deemed by the media to be phallic. The consistent response suggests that in this city public art is poorly managed and poorly conceived by those who commission it.

There is no excuse for that. Public art has be around as long as there have been public spaces. Public art is not a piece of art popped into a public space. It is a work of art conceived for that space by those who control it and for the public whose space it is and defined by the nature and purpose of that space.

In the early 1950’s when the United Nations headquarters were being built in New York, one of the artists commission to make a work for the world’s most prestigious building complained that not even the architects could “spare the time” to discuss with him and the other artists involved “how their work was to be conceived as part of the general plan”.

The artist was the sculptor Jean Arp. Among the other artists were Jean Miro, Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore. The architects were Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer. Not only Auckland Council gets the management of public art wrong.

Here was a building, devoted among other things to the cultural work of the UN, where some of the world’s greatest artists were left in the words of one critic to “loiter about the place without function, distracted and disunited.” The artists knew that rule number one for public art was “Why are we doing this?” and number two: “How does it fit into the general scheme of the place?”. They are not questions artists should answer. They are the reasons for the work and they need to be clearly and unambiguously answered even before any artist is approached.

Before the artist who will carry out the work has been thought of some key things have already been determined. Not only the why and the context, but the nature of the work. Its size. What kind of work – sculpture, mural, free standing or attached. What will it be made of. Once those things have been determined – and they will be determined by the site – then a budget is defined.

When all that is clear to everyone involved, an artist whose work seems likely to fit is commissioned to submit a concept. There should be no element of competition involved and nor should a number artists be obliged to pitch for the work. If the concept fails the artists should be asked for another or another artist asked to submit. Once that succeeds a design is commissioned and then briefed through to the completion and installation of the work.

Essential to this process is the management of the commission by someone who has been involved from the beginning and who understands those essential elements and can communicate them to the artist and to the commissioner. Most importantly to the successful management of any public arts project, is the ability to communicate its progress and its purpose and to ensure there are no surprises, budgetary or aesthetic.

Each public art work should have its own project manager. This is not a job for a committee.

What do Japan's Blue Sky Library, Malaysia's answer to John Wayne, and the first recorded composer from New Zealand all have in common? They could all disappear from their countries' public domain for the next 20 years, if the current agreement on copyright term extension in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) holds.

You may have read in the news over the past year about how the public domain has recently been enriched with some exciting new additions, such as Sherlock Holmes and—in countries with shorter copyright terms, such as Canada—James Bond, passing out of copyright, freeing them for reissue, adaptation, and remix.

But what you probably haven't heard before is that six of the countries presently negotiating the TPP, and who have reportedly caved in and agreed on copyright term extension, would have been about to contribute cultural icons of their own to the public domain, enriching their own countries and the world with home-grown art, music, and film that is otherwise at risk of being forgotten.

These countries are Brunei, Canada, New Zealand, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam. Each of these fascinating countries has such a depth of creative talent that an entire article could easily be devoted to each of them, exploring the public domain works that the world can look forward to—or that we will miss out on for another 20 years, if the TPP passes and terms are extended (in New Zealand, the copyright term is currently 50 years from the author's death for literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works and for sound recordings and films 50 years from when they were made). But for now, a little taste from each country will have to do.

New Zealand

Since 2010, New Zealanders have finally been able to perform and reuse the works of their most important yet under-appreciated early composer, Alfred Hill, without asking for permission from his estate. Hill was the very first antipodean composer to have a chamber work committed to record, and some of those same precious early recordings have been preserved by the National Archive of Australia, and brought to the world free of copyright restrictions.

Although these crackly old recordings may not seem to be of wide interest in themselves, imagine the potential for these works to be brought back to life in another medium such as film, as the songs of Annette Hanshaw were in Nina Paley's masterful Sita Sings the Blues.

Canada

The Group of Seven were an art movement of the early 20^th century whose distinctively Canadian landscape paintings are collected in galleries around Canada and the world. In the United States only one of the members of the group died long enough ago that his works have reached the public domain, but in Canada it is a different story—within a decade, the entire artistic output of the Group of Seven will be freely available to the public, allowing anyone torestore, reproduce and share these timeless masterpieces.

That is, unless the TPP is passed and the term of copyright in Canada is extended. In that case, you can hold your breath for another twenty years.

Malaysia and Brunei

Actor, director, writer and composer P. Ramlee is truly a Malaysian superstar, who starred in over 60 movies during Malay filmmaking's golden age in the 1950s and 1960s. He remains a cult figure in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore—John Wayne may have a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, but Ramlee has an entire street in central Kuala Lumpur. Although he died in 1973, many of his films have already come out of copyright in Malaysia and Brunei, and others continue to do so. An example is Seniman Bujang Lapok (The Three Worn Out Actor Bachelors), a metafictional comedy from 1961 that Ramlee also wrote, directed, and composed for.

A point of note is that in most of the TPP countries (Canada a notable exception), films are protected from the date of publication, not from the death of the author. That makes an enormous difference, when the “author” of a film can include whoever is the longest-lived of the the principal director, the author of the screenplay, the author of the dialogue, and the composer of its soundtrack. This is why so few European films have ever reached the public domain, and why Malaysian and Bruneian film lovers are far more fortunate—for now.

Japan

Just as the United States has its well-known Project Gutenburg that digitizes and distributes public domain literature, so too other TPP countries such as Australia, Canada and NewZealand have sister projects that focus on works from local authors, as well as those that can legally be made available sooner to residents of those countries that have shorter copyright terms. Japan has such an archive also; the Aozora Bunko, which translates as Blue Sky Library.

Over the last three years, Aozora Bunko has celebrated the release of classic works from authors such as historical novelist Eiji Yoshikawa, philosopher Kiyoshi Miki, and poet Tatsuji Miyoshi. But the curators of the archive are worried about its future, with the shadow of copyright term extension under the TPP, noting that of 572 authors whose works they have published, about half would have to be taken offline if the copyright term is extended retroactively. (Even if not retroactive, the extension of copyright would mean no new Aozora Bunko releases until 2036.)

Vietnam

Under a regime in which copyright in film lasts for 50 rather than 70 years from publication, films made in 1965 are now coming out of copyright. In the case of Vietnam, this of course falls in the middle of the Vietnam War, and for this reason the Vietnamese films of that period, which include both documentaries and dramas, are of immense historical and cultural interest.

Such a film, due to return to the public domain next year, is Nổi gió (Rising Wind), directed by Huy Thành, which jointly won the Golden Lotus award for best feature film at the inaugural Vietnam Film Festival in 1970. Considered as the first movie of Vietnam's revolutionary cinema, and adapted from a play of the same name, it tells the tragic story of a family torn apart by war, from a very different perspective than shown in American films from that period or since.

Why Should Americans Care?

It might be assumed that an extension of the copyright term in the TPP wouldn't affect the United States, because our law already provides for that same copyright term. But although the impact might not be so immediate, the United States would still lose; for one thing, it would lose the flexibility to reduce its own copyright term back to the Berne Convention minimum term of life plus 50 years.

This isn't such an unlikely prospect as you might think. Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights, wrote in 2013 about her vision of the Next Great Copyright Act, including the suggestion that:

perhaps the law could shift the burden of the last twenty years from the user to the copyright owner, so that at least in some instances, copyright owners would have to assert their continued interest in exploiting the work by registering with the Copyright Office in a timely manner. And if they did not, the works would enter the public domain.

In her draft report for the European Parliament, Julia Reda went further [PDF], suggesting that the European Commission “harmonise the term of protection of copyright to a duration that does not exceed the current international standards set out in the Berne Convention” (ie. 50 years from death). So our lawmakers should not be too hasty in ruling out the future reform of the copyright term, by cementing current law into a multilateral trade agreement.

It is true that the US already has trade deals with other countries that do require a life plus 70 year minimum—but these are largely with countries (such as Jordan, Australia, and Singapore) who were forced into changing their own law as a cost of entry into that agreement, evenagainst the recommendations [PDF] of their own domestic advisers. Those countries would hardly be likely to put up much of a fight if the US acceded to a joint relaxation of the copyright term obligation.

But if the US locks the same obligation into the TPP and TTIP (Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership), that dynamic changes, and it will become much more difficult for the United States to reconsider later down the road, without the much more complicated task of coordinating this with both the copyright-maximalist European Commission as well as eleven other countries of the Pacific rim.

The Good News

So that's the bad news. But there's also some very good news: any of the six countries above can stop this deal! If even one of the countries—New Zealand, Brunei, Canada, Japan, Malaysia or Vietnam— is brave enough to stand up to the United States and block the extension of the copyright term, then that ill-advised deal could still fall through. If you are from one of those countries, you can call your Member of Parliament, or your trade ministry, and demand that they save the public domain, by retaining the life plus 50 year copyright term that is your right under the Berne Convention. If you are in the US, your best avenue to stop term extension, and the TPP's other anti-user threats, is to support our Fast Track action.

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This post is a lightly-adapted version of the original by Jeremy Malcolm on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website. Jeremy is EFF's senior global policy analyst.

Do two people who have sex in an office block, unwittingly in full view of a pub full of people, have any legal rights if one of those onlookers decides to film the incident and post the footage on the internet?  The answer is probably ‘yes’.

Civil law

Let’s start with the civil (non-criminal) law.  If one of the pair wanted to sue the person who put the film on the internet, their main claim would be for compensation for breach of privacy and/or an order that the material be removed.  In order to win, they would have to show two things: first, that they had a reasonable expectation of privacy in what was published (ie the video of the so-called ‘sex romp’) and second, that the publicity given to the video was highly offensive. 

Offensiveness is unlikely to be an issue.  A publication might not be offensive if it shows the claimant in a good light or uses their story to highlight an important social issue.  No-one is claiming that is the case here.  Disclosures which are designed to mock or humiliate are generally seen as particularly offensive.

So what about the reasonable expectation of privacy?  The fact that something takes place in public or is visible from a public place doesn’t stop a person from establishing a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of it.  Justice Allan stated this to be the law in Andrews v TVNZ, a case which involved the broadcast of detailed footage of a couple being extricated from a car wreck.  He said:

It will not always be a complete answer to a claim to a reasonable expectation of privacy to show that the relevant facts or information arose from something occurring in public. In exceptional cases a person might be entitled to maintain a claim to protection from additional publicity, although the relevant circumstances arose in public, and were observed, or were observable, by those in the immediate vicinity.

He went on to apply that law to the Andrews’ case and said that, even though the accident occurred in a public place, the couple’s conversations were still private:

Although the plaintiffs would have been aware that they would be overheard by those around them, they had a legitimate expectation that there would be no additional publicity.  Neither was aware that they were being filmed throughout from close range.

In other words, just because the accident happened in a public place, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is okay to broadcast it to the world at large.  This is especially the case if the people in question didn’t know they were being filmed. 

If you apply that reasoning to the Christchurch sex romp, just because a bunch of people in a bar happened to see two people having sex, doesn’t mean it’s okay to film them and post the clip on YouTube.  That is particularly likely to be the case where, as in Christchurch, the couple had no idea they were being watched, let alone filmed. 

UK courts agree with this analysis.  They say that whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy depends on all the circumstances of the case.  Where the event took place is only one factor.  So in one case a man was able to sue for breach of privacy when the moments preceding his suicide attempt were caught on CCTV and broadcast on television.  This was still the case even though he was on a public street at the time.  In another case, a newspaper breached Naomi Campbell’s privacy by publishing a photo of her outside a Narcotics Anonymous meeting even though she was standing on the street when it was taken. 

Both these judgments have been cited with approval in New Zealand courts.  What they show is that location isn’t everything.  The nature of the activity in question is also crucial – sexual and health matters are top of the list of things that are private.  The nature of the publication is also very important – courts tend to take a dimmer view of wide dissemination of salacious details and/or detailed images.

What all this means for the Christchurch case is that anyone – including the mainstream media – who published images of the couple in the office block could find themselves being sued.  And the couple in question might just win.

Criminal law

Liability for voyeurism doesn’t end there though.  It is also a criminal offence to make an intimate visual recording of a person.  If you do this, you can go to prison for up to 3 years. 

The reasonable expectation of privacy is central here as well.  Section 216G of the Crimes Act 1961 explains that an intimate visual recording is:

(1)… a visual recording (for example, a photograph, videotape, or digital image) that is made in any medium using any device without the knowledge or consent of the person who is the subject of the recording, and the recording is of—

(a) a person who is in a place which, in the circumstances, would reasonably be expected to provide privacy, and that person is—

(i) naked or has his or her genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or female breasts exposed, partially exposed, or clad solely in undergarments; or

(ii) engaged in an intimate sexual activity…

The pair in question clearly didn’t consent to the filming and they were engaged in an intimate sexual activity (and were probably sufficiently naked as well) to satisfy these requirements.  The issue is whether they were ‘in a place which, in the circumstances, would reasonably be expected to provide privacy’.  

It’s difficult to say how a court would answer that question.  They might take a tougher line than the courts in the civil cases.  But the point of this part of the Crimes Act is to target digital voyeurism and its often very damaging long-term consequences.  Voyeurism was certainly going on here.  And those damaging long-term consequences are likely to be felt.  A judge might just decide its criminal. 

The moral?

One of the newspapers has suggested that the moral of this story is that we need to remember to turn off the lights.  But perhaps the real moral of this story is in fact that it’s all fun and games until someone pulls out a camera phone.  

Auckland Transport’s decision to remove six mature pōhutukawa from Great North Road near the SH16 interchange has got many Aucklanders fired up. Protesters have adorned the trees with signs, online petitions have been set up, vocal opposition has been expressed at public meetings, and social media is buzzing with people determined to save the ‘Pōhutukawa 6’ (including, apparently, the trees themselves). Campaigners have promised to take legal action unless Auckland Transport changes its mind.

So why are people so up in arms about an issue that, on the face of it, seems somewhat trivial? Aren’t there bigger problems to worry about? Sure, those trees are valuable in many ways, both tangible and intangible, but shouldn’t we be more concerned about kids going to school hungry or people being unable to afford housing?

Part of the answer is that the process has been appalling. At the resource consent hearing, the vast majority of submissions (mine included) were deemed invalid as they had the wrong reference number. More recently, in the face of public discontent, Auckland Transport has shown a belligerent attitude with a ‘my way or the highway’ response (or should that be ‘my way is the highway’?) There is certainly a sense among many commentators that unelected officials have been given far too much power and that the views of ordinary people are being ignored.

But still, it’s only six trees. What could explain this level of public outrage?

Perhaps it’s the recognition that, in a sane world, this decision could not have been reached.

It’s impossible to imagine anyone looking at that vast expanse of tarmac and saying to themselves, “you know what this area is crying out for – another lane of road”. Or, “gee, I wish someone would get rid of those trees – they’re ruining the uninterrupted asphalt landscape”. And yet that is the decision that has been made – to destroy six 80-year-old pōhutukawa, planted by our forebears so that future generations could enjoy their amenities – in the name of progress.

And what is the incredibly valuable social goal that requires such a sacrifice? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s so that in about ten years’ time motorists can save a few minutes going through that intersection at certain times of the day. And even that is based on a hypothetical future scenario, using traffic projections from a parallel universe in which current trends are reversed and we inexplicably decide to drive our cars a lot more.

How could this possibly have happened? Surely, when senior Auckland Transport officials were presented with the plan, the response would have been something like, “sorry, that’s not what we had in mind. The aim wasn’t to see how many traffic lanes you could fit into that space – we’re actually trying to achieve a functional, vibrant and attractive area that is designed for people. After all, our city has aspirations to be the most liveable city in the world. So I’m afraid it’s back to the drawing board.”

That is how one imagines our transport leaders would have responded in a sane world. Yet that was not how things transpired – the plan for the intersection was approved, along with the requirement to remove the six pōhutukawa. That is despite the plan being unfit for purpose, having been roundly condemned by transport commentators as being entirely out of step with 21^st century design principles.

So we stand to lose these valuable taonga, “the only bit of civility in this area”, for the sake of a negligible time saving for motorists in a distant scenario that, in all likelihood, will never eventuate. Have our priorities really become so distorted that social ideals such as healthy and safe environments, vibrant communities and quality spaces for people are trumped by the desire to drive from A to B more quickly? Has ‘liveable’ really come to be synonymous with ‘driveable’?

In a sane world this decision could not have been reached, so the implication is that we live in an insane world. That is, a world in which decisions are made that go against the best interests of its inhabitants and disavow the values that have allowed human societies to prosper for thousands of years. A world in which power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of privileged elites who exercise that power in ways that make things worse for the majority of us. And that is something that strikes a nerve with people, whether or not they would ordinarily care about a few trees by the side of a road.

It is extremely heartening to see so many people engaged in active citizenship in an attempt to save those six grand, old pōhutukawa. It is undoubtedly a worthy quest: those trees deserve to be cherished and protected. But they also represent the tip of a deeply troubling iceberg. Their planned removal provides a very palpable example of a society moving in direct opposition to the values and aspirations of the people. If we can sit idly by and let this happen – something that is so clearly wrong – what else are we prepared to tolerate?

The fight to save those six trees is symbolic of the broader struggle to save our values, our decency and our humanity in the face of powerful opposing forces. I believe that is why we’re seeing an outpouring of passion and determination seemingly out of all proportion to the issue at hand. That is why so many people are pushing to have the decision reversed – such an outcome would offer hope that the voices of the people can be heard in finding solutions to other, arguably more critical problems. We need to believe that sanity has a chance of prevailing in what increasingly feels like an insane world.

Dr Rhys Jones (Ngāti Kahungunu) is a public health physician and Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland.

The issues around the Christchurch rebuild are dense, manifold and inevitably localised, and it can be hard for people outside the city to understand how or why its citizens might be unhappy with the decisions made on their behalf. Decisions about what kind of place people will live in.

A good deal of light has been cast on the matter by the book Once in Lifetime: City-building after Disaster in Christchurch, published by Freerange Press and edited by Barnaby Bennett, James Dann, Emma Johnson, and Ryan Reynolds. The book features a foreword by Helen Clark and its 55 authors include Kevin McCloud, Rebecca McFie, Eric Crampton, Giovanni Tiso and Raf Manji.

The book is still available from Freerange for $45, but the editors have kindly granted Public Address permission to to run its introduction in full in this post. It explains some things.

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What a day it was

It began with a sharp jolt at 4:37 a.m. on 4 September 2010. Radio New Zealand shifted to their emergency broadcast (which unfortunately was the Beach Boys’ song Good Vibrations) and a collective thought emerged from New Zealanders that would be repeated endlessly over the next few years: ‘Christchurch isn’t supposed to have big earthquakes.’

When dawn rose and the dust settled after this first quake in September, it felt like a bullet had been dodged. The damage was significant; buildings were evacuated; there was talk of widespread demolition. Yet somehow, almost magically, no one was killed.

The quake altered the political landscape, and the previously unpopular mayor Bob Parker surged to a second term in the November local body elections. Local MP and Minister Gerry Brownlee was given the new role of Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery (CER), and Parliament passed the first version of the CER legislation to enable a coordinated response to the destruction. Little did these leaders or the people of Christchurch know what was still to come.

At 12:51 p.m. on 22 February 2011, a violent aftershock centred in Lyttelton shook the city, causing extensive damage to buildings and land across the region. The city’s power, water, sewerage, roading and governance systems were overwhelmed. The next day the New Zealand government declared the second-ever national state of emergency. It would emerge that 185 people from seventeen different countries died as a result of the quake. The majority of these deaths were due to the collapse of two relatively modern central city buildings: the Canterbury Television and Pyne Gould Corporation buildings. The heroism in the hours and days after the quake was extraordinary – involving thousands of volunteers, police, fire service, armed forces and urban search and rescue teams from around the world. This book looks at what happened next, as the people of Christchurch were forced to recreate their broken city.

It was immediately evident that the post-quake demolition and planning processes were going to be long and complex. Shortly after the February quake, the Government reconfigured its portfolios and chose Minister Brownlee to lead the official response as Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery, alongside the mayor, Civil Defence and other officials. At the end of March a new government organisation, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), was created to oversee the reconstruction processes. A few weeks later a major piece of legislation was passed that gave the Minister extraordinary powers to bypass most other New Zealand laws to accomplish the reconstruction.

That legislation obliged the Christchurch City Council to undertake a process to determine the planning of the central city, and present it for ministerial approval or revision. Pre-quake, the city council had already sought recommendations to improve the liveability of the city, engaging internationally recognised Gehl Architects. Gehl Architects were utilised again post-quake, and helped facilitate the large city-wide consultation campaign that became known as Share an Idea. Through digital media, snail mail and in-person workshops, more than 100,000 ideas for Christchurch were garnered from a population that was still reeling from the impact of the February quake just three months prior, and experiencing regular and often violent aftershocks. In total, Christchurch has suffered more than 13,000 aftershocks, including two more large and damaging shakes on 13 June and 23 December 2011.

The abundant ideas were recorded by Council and analysed for commonalities and patterns. This led to the development of five overarching themes: a green city; an accessible city; a stronger built identity; a compact central business district; ‘a place to live, work, play, learn and visit’. These themes in turn informed the urban design in the Council’s draft Central City Plan (CCP), which was revealed to the public and opened for feedback in August 2011, less than six months after the fateful day.

In November 2011 a nationwide general election was held, and the National Party – including Minister Brownlee – was re-elected to government for a further three years.

The next month, as per the legislation, the Christchurch City Council presented a revised CCP to the Minister for his approval, having digested public feedback on the August draft. The Minister opened the opportunity for further submissions to be made regarding the Council’s plan.

After what had felt like the rapid development of the Council’s plan, it took the Minister four months to announce that, while the principles of the plan were solid, the spatial layout was not well enough defined and the rules that underpinned the plan were too restrictive. On 18 April 2012 the Minister announced the establishment of a new unit within CERA, called the Christchurch Central Development Unit (CCDU), and appointed former Timaru District Council Chief Executive Warwick Isaacs to lead it. His most recent experience had been coordinating the building demolitions programme for CERA. The first task of the CCDU was to pull together a team of designers and come back with a more developed design – a blueprint for the city – within 100 days.

New Zealand-based planning and design consultants Boffa Miskell led a consortium of designers and architects from firms in Christchurch and Sydney: Woods Bagot, Populous, Sheppard and Rout, RCP, and Warren and Mahoney.

The designers and consultants were pulled together to substantially revise the spatial framework of the Council’s CCP and largely rewrite the regulatory framework: the zonings, consent obligations and other foundational rules. The group’s major task was to find sites for the series of anchor projects that the Government had decided would comprise their recovery plan.

On 30 July 2012, almost a year since the Council’s first draft plan and seventeen months since the worst quake, Prime Minister John Key joined Minister Brownlee and Mayor Bob Parker to launch the national Government’s new Christchurch Central Recovery Plan (CCRP) and Blueprint at the Council’s Civic Offices. While the city’s politicians, businessmen and leaders applauded the occasion, people outside could be seen protesting the slow progress of repairs and lack of attention to housing.

Christchurch now had the controversial plan that was to become the primary document in the reimagining of the central city.

The new Blueprint placed a series of major buildings and precincts across the city. Most of these were carried over – in a slightly different form or scale – from the Council’s draft plan, such as a Metro Sports Facility, the re-design of the Avon River and surroundings, a large children’s playground, a convention centre and a new central library.

A handful of significant new projects emerged in the Blueprint: the Performing Arts Precinct, Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Innovation Precinct and a new stadium in the city. The most notable change was the formalisation and extension of the desire, expressed in the Council’s plan, to have greenways along the edges of a more compact central city. The new Blueprint entailed the purchase of large areas of the central city to develop a massive green edge called The Frame, encompassing around twelve entire city blocks. The goals of The Frame were to create a government-owned land bank to protect property prices in the city, to create an edge to prevent the central city from bleeding into the light industrial areas to the east and south and to provide future opportunity for inner-city residential development.

The integrated public approach, seen in the earlier Council plans, was now gone. The Council’s CCP had proposed large publicly-funded projects, but also included incentives and regulations, with frameworks for how to incorporate education, housing, public art, high-quality streetscapes, character, identity and heritage. The Government CCRP removed environmental standards for buildings in the city, directives to investigate light-rail for the city, and any strategic approach to how to manage the city’s diverse and important heritage stock. It progressed from a framework that encapsulated a wide range of community ideals to a minister-led masterplan.

The differences between the Council plan and the new Blueprint are evident in the process as well. The Council draft plan was developed from a city-wide consultation exercise. They sought feedback on the draft plan, with a travelling roadshow that more than 6000 people visited. A further 4700 submissions were received on the draft plan, and 427 people presented in person to the Council over eight days in October 2011. The government-led Blueprint was launched on 30 July 2012 and became law the following day ­– with no further feedback or review process. The new government-led process does, however, continue the significant and historic relationship with Ngai Tahu.

It soon became clear that many of the anchor projects in the ambitious Blueprint were placed where there were existing buildings that had survived the quakes. Thus, it was unstated but insinuated that the Majestic Theatre would be demolished for a proposed road to be widened; the old council offices for a new transport interchange; the Centennial Pool complex for a large family playground; the NG Building of art galleries, shops and offices for the new stadium and so on. Other controversial aspects included the apparent assumption that the Christchurch Town Hall would be demolished and the inclusion of a Cricket Oval in Hagley Park.

The transport-related aspects of the plan had been excluded from the Blueprint and postponed to a separate addendum. It was to be another fifteen months before the transport plan, An Accessible City, was released and adopted into the larger planning law of the city. This long process did, however, give stakeholders and the public the opportunity to submit feedback. The main aspects of this plan were to retain the people-focused urban design of the spatial plan and to restrict travel speeds to 30 km/h in the central city. Controversially, most of the one-way streets were preserved, a decision that overturned the Council’s proposal to remove the one-way system that, it claimed, encourages people to drive through rather than to the city.

The new plan required significant investment from local and central government. It led to tense negotiations between these organisations, behind closed doors, with many of the city’s own elected councillors excluded. The negotiations were only publicised once a deal was signed between the two agencies – despite involving billions of dollars of public money. On 27 June 2013, a deal was announced: $4.8 billion of funding for the rebuild was to be split, with $2.9 billion coming from central government and $1.9 billion from local government.

In October 2013 Council elections were held and Lianne Dalziel – who stepped down as Member of Parliament for hardest-hit Christchurch East to stand for the role – was elected mayor, along with nine new city councillors and only four incumbents. They rode a wave of public enthusiasm to clean house, to revitalise the dysfunctional bureaucracy with a stronger council that could both work with, and stand up to, central government. Changes to the local government had already transpired prior to the elections, with the CEO resigning amidst controversy around his salary and his handling of an issue that resulted in the Council being stripped of its accreditation to issue building consents.

There is considerable tension between the local and central governments with overlapping areas of planning and governance in the central city, and competing views on financial priorities. This leads to complex power relations. Central government can impose a new stadium in the city that the local government must partly pay for; Council can assert some autonomy and decide to repair the Christchurch Town Hall, which contradicts the CCDU plan for a Performing Arts Precinct. In this post-quake tangle, every issue has become thornier.

While the central government is covering a significant amount of the costs they also stand to recoup a considerable percentage of this through taxes from increased economic growth as a result of the rebuild. The local government on the other hand has large debt problems and is in danger of not being able to meet its commitments to the large projects.

By 2014 it was abundantly clear that the rebuild was going to take longer than most initial projections. The cost, complexity and scale of the whole process continue to surprise everyone. Most major projects are running behind schedule; it is likely to be at least ten years on from the first quake before all the major projects are completed. The entire earthquake recovery is estimated to cost around $40 billion, the majority of this coming from insurance companies, with central and local government contributing significant amounts, and comparatively small amounts of new private investment emerging to support the city so far.

Two years after the launch of the Blueprint, onsite work has begun on just four out of the eighteen government-led anchor projects: the Cricket Oval, Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, Te Papa Otakaro / Avon River Precinct and the Bus Interchange. Many are in various stages of tendering, designing or documentation with little public discussion or presence.  A number of projects such as the Arts Precinct, the Stadium and Te Puna Ahurea Cultural Centre are contested, or there has been little progress to date.

Like the land, the people of Christchurch are well-surveyed. Coming up to four years after the first quake all data still indicate that people here are suffering considerably more hardship and stress than normal. The quakes that at first united everyone and brought together communities of people from different economic and class backgrounds now risk amplifying those differences as the well-off and financially independent are able to adjust and adapt more readily. Amid these many controversies and complexities, it is important to acknowledge that much that could have gone wrong hasn’t. There has not been a collapse in land value, mass emigration, a ruined local economy, widespread fraudulence or a general lack of basic provisions. There has been significant adaptation and innovation by government institutions in health, justice and economic support. And many of the unplanned activities in the city – private developments like C1 Espresso; community groups like Addington Action and the Student Volunteer Army; cultural inventions like the new Festival of Transitional Architecture, the Ministry of Awesome and the many Gap Filler projects – have been both inspirational and influential.

In short, it’s all very complicated.

There is no clear dividing line between the disaster and the subsequent plans, actions and developments. The city’s character is saturated with the disaster; the earthquake remains an inescapable daily presence and topic of conversation.

Alongside the continuing trauma, this crisis has helped form profound friendships and a collective sense of purpose. In a complex web comprising multiple layers of government, local and external developers, community groups, NGOs, architects, planners and all the residents of the city, we have the daunting chance not just to rebuild, but to reimagine our city.

Once in a lifetime

The title ‘Once in a lifetime’ indicates both an opportunity and a threat: the unparalleled occasion to grow, develop and explore, and an imperative not to miss our collective ‘only chance’. This phrase captures something of the simultaneous liberation and pressure felt in Christchurch in the past few years.

In an interview about the Talking Heads’ song of the same title, writer David Byrne said: ‘We're largely unconscious. We operate half-awake, on autopilot. And we end up with a house and family and job and we never stop and ask how did we get here.’ Thus, his song actually implies that every moment is a once in a lifetime opportunity and burden – though people don’t often think in this way.In nearly every facet of our lives – work, relationships, home environment – humans are constantly navigating between fully investing ourselves in the choices we’ve already made and opening ourselves to new possibilities and ways of being. We may reveal these inner struggles to our friends and family, but it is rare that these personal considerations take collective form.

In times of crisis, many issues that were previously hidden, unknown or private become temporarily communal. Whole societies of people must suddenly debate their collective values and future. Balancing, on a city-wide scale, the inevitable sense of urgency and need for decisiveness with the sense that meaningful change may be possible is one of the most daunting tasks that individuals and societies can face.

The real once-in-a-lifetime prospect in Christchurch, then, is that these questions – of whether and how to re-assert our old values and choices or take time to flirt with rare new possibilities – are unavoidable, shared and city-wide. A few years on from the major earthquakes many key decisions and plans have been made, including the crucial final Government Blueprint for the recovery, but the consequences have not been fully reaped. The purpose of this book is to reflect on these issues while it is not too late to make informed changes.

City of dreams

In late 2013, the editors of this book felt that what had been a fairly widespread optimism about the rebuild – for both the official plans and the unofficial activities and developments – was steadily wearing away. This seemed to be the occasion to examine whether we, collectively as a city, might be missing our chance to make this new city the best representation of our shared values, to make the most of this awful situation. We put a call out, seeking contributions on a wide range of urban recovery topics from planning, economics, arts and health, to anything else people wanted to propose. The fact that most of the authors transcend their disciplinary boundaries may indicate the convolution of this unprecedented post-quake scenario: nobody is an expert and no discipline can work in isolation. This process yielded a unique collection of multidisciplinary essays by professional journalists, politicians, students, planners, academics, publicans, artists, designers, economists and much more.

Recognising the diversity of the submissions, we opted to group the essays not by topic or discipline, but by their underlying theme or consequence. The chapter sequence tells a story of the past few years, from exploring different methods and philosophies of Making Plans, to the marketing, politics and genuine consultation involved in Selling the Plans to the general public and investors. Implementing the envisioned change requires Rewriting the Rules to permit new ways of acting. During this process, we have been Considering the Common Good, asking how we might shape our city to reflect our shared values, and debating what those values might actually be. Along the way there are repeated reminders of the importance of Thinking Big, Acting Small and Meeting in the Middle, which refer not only to the scale of responses, but also to hierarchies and power relationships. This cognisance leads to many real and imagined possibilities of Building Back Better, and culminates in Reimagining Recovery, dreaming of ways in which we might yet enact deep-seated change.

Within each of these chapters there are at least two different currents, revealing perhaps the most persistent theme of the book: the relationship between the official responses of those in power and the many and varied unofficial responses. As an example, the chapter Rewriting the Rules focuses on the Government’s extraordinary powers and the legislation that granted them – but also on the ways certain developers, community groups and concerned citizens have been subverting conventions to reshape some of the unwritten rules and habits of our city. Similarly, the chapter Making Plans includes pieces representing both ‘sides’: the tendency of the official architects’ and politicians’ plans to concentrate on the finished product, and the tendency of the unsanctioned approaches to emphasise who’s involved and the process by which the eventual plans are made or enacted.

This leads to the next most prominent, and multifaceted, theme of the book: means and ends, or the correlation between process and product. Are closed-door decisions necessary in order to act quickly and guarantee quality outcomes? Or will exclusive processes inevitably lead to an exclusive city? Can deep and meaningful consultation occur once and inform many subsequent plans, or must consultation be a recurring and iterative process to be valid? Must every process begin with the people, buildings, resources and activities that already exist? Or does starting from scratch allow for more innovation?

There is also a third current coursing through the book: anger.

Of course, anger has been present from the very first moments the quakes disrupted the lives of people in Canterbury. Like the issues that radiate from the earthquakes, anger and frustration have spread to other aspects of life in the city such as traffic problems, dealing with insurance companies and government agencies, school closures, rent increases, political decision-making and more. But it is belittling to treat this anger as simply an emotional consequence of the quakes to be mitigated by holidays and relaxation. Much of this anger is justified. It can be the motivating factor for people to clearly articulate difficult issues, and it’s certainly part of the creative process that leads to new solutions.  

Living through the past few years has been difficult here, but it has also provided moments of joy, engagement and a sense of collective effort rarely experienced in the routines of normal daily life. We’ve tried to capture some of the liberating potential of the city through the range of visual essays throughout the book, many of which document and celebrate things – sanctioned and unsanctioned – that have been happening in the city. Along with the anger we hope that some of this excitement and adventure comes through the pages of Once in a lifetime.

Though this is undoubtedly a book about Christchurch, there are contributing authors from around the country and the world. Partly, this is in recognition that for those who’ve been living in Christchurch, we editors included, it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. External eyes, voices and calm minds are more important than ever. We also draw upon parallel situations in post-disaster New Orleans and Italy, post-riot UK, and even find key similarities in ‘healthy’ cities in Australia and the USA. As with the multiple meanings of the phrase ‘once in a lifetime’, we must recognise the singularity of this state of affairs and simultaneously learn from its many precedents.

In addition to the themes discussed above – official versus unofficial responses, tension between means and ends, and the anger and joy beneath the surface – is one last idea that has been prominent in much of rhetoric here in the past four years: putting people first. While cities are extraordinarily complex collectives of systems, objects, infrastructures, ecosystems and other unnamed things, humans are the glue that holds them together.

 Ka rere ki uta, ka rere ki tai.

Kī mai koe ki au, he aha te mea nui o te ao?

Māku e kī atu,

He tangata! he tangata! he tangata!

Pluck out the flax shoot and where will the bellbird sing?

 It flies inland, it flies seawards. 

Ask me, what is the most important thing in the world?

I shall reply,

It is people! It is people! It is people! 

 The last three lines of this whakatauākī (proverb) have been widely quoted in post-quake Christchurch. In a place where there has been such significant grief, hardship and radical change, it is easy to understand why the focus on humanity in this message has resonated.

Yet, when used post-quake, the first two lines of the whakatauākī are almost always missing, and these are important to understanding the latter half. The saying – credited to the Te Taitokerau (Northland) region – tells us that if the young flax shoots are not protected the bellbirds will leave. While the proverb is interpreted a number of ways – as all good proverbs are – all versions utilise the sophisticated mixing of human and natural metaphors. Flax grow in a radial fashion, with the need to protect the young fresh shoots at the centre, and the harvesting of the older mature leaves for production.

It is a reminder that to truly care for humans we must also care for the environment – in all its forms – that supports our wellbeing. It is clear that we all share a desire to care for people in post-quake Christchurch, but how to cultivate the wellbeing of the places, ecologies, and institutions that support and care for all the humans that live here is less often discussed.

How do we use this rare and unique, this terrible, opportunity to (re)make a city that cares and provides for the things we hold important? It is a question that has many different and competing answers.

This collection of 55 essays spans arts, economics, ecology, architecture, planning, philosophy, health and much more, and introduces the complex problems and opportunities this situation has provoked. Reflecting from the midst of this entanglement is essential for the future of Christchurch and New Zealand, and what emerges should be of increasing interest to cities worldwide as the challenges of the twenty-first century confront us.