Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Sacha,
Check again in another month or three..
Sure will, although it's unlikely to be apples with apples if a billion dollars has been spent rebuilding the city instead of the suburbs.
The devastation is so total, that much though I prefer big solutions to big problems, it seems to me that Christchurch really needs lots of little solutions right now. Prioritization has to start with getting the main residential areas livable quickly. In other words Christchurch needs to become shower city, pronto. Then getting the economy cranking again becomes viable - you just can't do it if people can't live there. The sooner it's cranking the better, and if that means finding suburban/industrial zone offices for every business, do it. That prevents thousands of businesses from going straight to the wall.
Getting the CBD rebuilt seems way down the list to me. Whatever can be used in there should be, but whatever can't should wait, and be done properly. It should all go through normal processes, with an increased emphasis on compliance, especially the most obvious one, quake-proofing. If this is to be sped up, it should be done with more money, not just by dropping standards.
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As Bart suggests, it seems possible to me that a great deal of the central city workplaces could be temporarily relocated. Get people an office with working power, phones and internet and you get a huge percentage of office based businesses going again. I don't see huge urgency in erecting concrete honeycombs.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Sprawl requires more infrastructure to support, and the more infrastructure you have the more infrastructure there is to damage.
Yes, and the more infrastructure in one place, the more there is to be damaged by one particular rupture. The higher you stack it, the further it has to fall, as well.
Look at many of the suburbs of Christchurch - itself a fairly sprawled city relative to population - that are still without any reticulated services, or even any temporary ones, and tell me you still believe that sprawl is good.
Christchurch is exactly where I'm looking at. Despite the destruction in the suburbs, that's actually where I'd have rather been when the quake struck, and where I'd want to have been living too. Even one without power or water or sewerage is still a permanent shelter with all my things, which is more than can be said for the piles of rubble in the city.
Comparative disaster responses across suburbs are heavily affected by their existing resources including social capital - and in this case things as basic as the absence of local supermarkets and transport.
Yes, that is true. Suburbs without local shopping are very isolated. But that's part of urban sprawl, the development of more suburban centers. The absence of such things, and the absence of transport, are closely tied to expecting to use centralized services that have suddenly become unavailable.
NOTE: I'm not saying urban sprawl is better, period. I'm just noting that it seems to have survived better. A much higher percentage of the suburbs are in a livable situation than is the case in the CBD.
Also, I accept that it could be possible to build disaster-proof high density urban centers, in theory. But it's not even a theory for the suburbs, that's exactly what's happened. Right here, in Christchurch.
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Despite having an aesthetic predisposition to liking nice well designed urban centers, I have to note that sprawling suburban design is actually very disaster friendly.
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Messy as any open, ad-hoc, responses and spontaneously-organised networks and the champions of various individual suburbs might be, their transparency is better, I think.
Yes, interesting point. I keep being surprised by just how organized the rebels are in Libya, and how shockingly uncoordinated and weak the regime supporters are. And they have all the training, all the money, all the guns. But they're run by a madman who can't accept that they're already in a civil war, so they just can't get shit done.
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Some levity.
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how exactly do you hear where to go and who to call?
Personally, I'd be going with word of mouth, walking to wherever people are to get news. It's not the same as having radio, TV, and the 'net, but it does work. I'd be trying to hook up with neighbors for whatever I could get, lifts to the shops, phone recharging, news, etc. And for whatever I could do for them, too. I'd hate to find the oldies in my street had just keeled over because no one checked.
But I'd be getting angry about a lack of large scale support, too.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Sacha,
Would need roads to be passable before updating ground-level imagery though.
Mounted on a decent four-wheel-drive, it would only be roads that were actually cordoned off that they couldn't get to. Hell, the cameras could be walked along the worst parts.
It would probably be an expensive exercise, though.
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Something else completely off topic just occurred to me. Google could help transport in Christchurch by doing a streetview update. Then people could go looking at all the damage virtually. It might also provide outsiders with a much more comprehensive overview of what's really happened. The police could probably even let them do a city drive-through.
They're going to have to do it anyway, the current streetviews are out of date badly now.
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Was trying to avoid mentioning the dreaded RWC :)
Yes, it's an event of such magnitude that while now might not be the time, it needs to be pretty bloody soon.
Just for a curveball idea, if the games do stay in Christchurch (I don't know how damaged the stadium is) the local residents could get a massive cash injection by letting/subletting out their houses to stay in. This could also accelerate the push to get the houses fixed. "Pay in advance, and I'll fix the house for you".
But I'm currently doubting that it can stay there. Fixing up rugby game infrastructure just isn't a priority.
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