Reflecting on the last year

Its been a busy year and is now perhaps time to get this blog up and going again. Where are we at in Christchurch?
Well, there were more traumatic earthquakes during the last year but they are getting less frequent and, it seems, smaller. The Central City is much worse than it was back in March last year because many buildings that looked ok back then have been demolished. Our national government has gone against all advice from international best practice in disaster recovery and set up a new Government body (CERA) which is overseeing the "recovery". I put recovering in ""s since at this stage it seems to largely mean the demolition of our City and the undermining of our Council. As Bronwyn Hayward suggested in a press article it might have been a lot more sensible to spend the money on supporting the Council and its staff rather than coming in and undermining them and lessening their capacity to act.

At this stage over a year since the devastating Feb 22 earthquake, we have demolished approximately half of the buildings that have been lined up for demolition which means we are not going to have a central City for some years to come, and if any of the new buildings that have been put up are anything to go by, Christchurch is going to distinguish itself by being the ugliest city imaginable! Still, some good things have also come out of this disaster and I"ll talk about them in my next blog post.