Here is a brief reflection on the shaping of Christchurch as a place. You might think of 'place' as nothing more than a static location, somewhere you go to and from. But, as you will see, there is more to it than that.

A place is a meaningful location, according to Cresswell (2014). But the meaning attached to places is not the same for everyone. While the location and locale may be fixed, we all develop our own sense of place for everywhere we have been, and even places we have not (Agnew, 1987). When you first hear the name ‘Christchurch’, without any other knowledge of the city, your sense of place may start off with ideas of England and Christianity. In what follows I will describe and analyse Christchurch using the Western approach to places.

Christchurch, as with many other places in Aotearoa | New Zealand, is rooted in colonialism. Everything from the street grid and the architecture, right down to the introduced flora and fauna, was born from a desire to take English norms and superimpose them upon a foreign and potentially unsuited location. The British made the place fit their ideals, their vision of home, instead of adapting to the environment. Cresswell (2014) writes of places being “simultaneously a geographical location and a position on a social hierarchy”, and one could think of the construction of Christchurch, exemplified by its Cathedral, as the colonisers attempting to assert dominance over Māori and force them to feel ‘out of place’ in their own land.

It must also be acknowledged that Christchurch’s unfortunate fate is owing in part to the capitalistic ideologies that the British held. Choosing to build the city in a flood-prone area suggests that the colonisers did not seek to understand and cooperate with the land. Instead, they sought to gain what they could from it, using Western methods of manufacturing, farming and so on which too often left the environment damaged – of course, this is still an issue, as our society is still governed by capitalism and neoliberal principles. While Māori see land, or whenua, as a determinant of health – when the whenua flourishes, so do the people – from a Western perspective, it is merely a determinant of wealth (Moewaka Barnes, 2019).

We all know the consequences of these previous points. I refer not only to the extent of the damage and forced migration caused by the earthquakes, but to the cultural and spiritual detachment that haunts many people’s sense of place of Christchurch. At least the rebuild has provided a chance to address the latter, by accepting that “places do not have single, unique ‘identities’”; they are diverse and negotiable – not just Christchurch, but Ōtautahi (Massey, 1994). Ōtākaro Limited’s projects are one way of defying Western norms in Ōtautahi Christchurch. However, if we have learned just one thing from what has happened in Ōtautahi | Christchurch, perhaps it should be to value the indigenous method of planning more, as it could have prevented all of this.

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