Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The only reason Germany and Japan have so fully renounced aggressive war is because they looked around their devastated cities and finally understood the consequences of reckless military adventurism.
I don't think it's the only reason. Some of it was also because the Allies renounced the idea of endlessly punishing them for it, and instead rebuilt those countries, rather than squeezing their throats with sanctions.
But yes, I think that we don't want to look to Japan and Germany for inspiration about how to deal with destruction. The victors would be more appropriate, if we must substitute war as the disaster.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Emma Hart,
Has the building collapsed though? If not, salvaging what's in there could be a priority - replacing all the buses isn't just an expense thing, it's also time - I doubt there's huge surpluses of them in NZ.
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I asked myself over the last few days where the free public transport service for those suburbs is?
Isn't the main bus station near the city center and also at the bottom level of a carpark building. How much rolling stock survived?
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Yes, it's worth remembering that there are also Marxist economists, and other flavors. There's lots of ways to count beans, but they still need to be counted and distributed, by some mechanism.
It's even possible to explain the anti-gouging tendency in Chch using "classic" theory, you just have to take more factors into account in your pricing signals. Goodwill, for instance.
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Homes. Infrastructure.
Yes, I'd have thought the prioritization would be:
1. Assess what is unsafe and mark it as no-go
2. Get places where people are living safer and functioning
3. Get basic infrastructure to deliver services to those places functioning
4. Remove irreparable and unsafe buildings
5. Save/repair anything that can be (taking cost into account of course).
6. Think about rebuilding.Of course all these can happen in parallel (and have already done so), but if resources can go one way or the other, I'd order them as above. As Emma says, getting people onto real sewerage is more important than getting offices in the city built. A great many businesses will simply need to relocate. Whether they go suburban or to another city is their call.
Which does mean that Christchurch goes through a phase of being a pockmarked landscape of empty lots. But at that point it will also be a functioning and basically safe city. I hate to say this, but pure human wariness of damage leads me to think that we can't count on there not being another major quake.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Megan Wegan,
I've been thinking a lot about this.
Yes, it came to my mind too. But I'm not entirely sure that it was a German choice to leave it that way, or something the Allies cooked up "lest they forget". Germans would probably prefer to fix the spire and forget the war.
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While sprawling suburban design lacks efficiency, it certainly is very resistant to disaster. Classic decentralized network. Not advocating, just saying. If the only interchange for a train system is right in the CBD, and that is taken out, there's no network left. Buses can at least reroute immediately. Similar comment regarding motorway interchanges. Ring roads provide fail-over.
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My business partner had a curious take, which was quite helpful and pragmatic, when I told him I'd had trouble working last week, feeling powerless to help. He said: "Let's make lots more money - the tax will be way more than any charity you were thinking of paying". He's got a point - getting back to work and cranking the $ pump is actually good for Christchurch, and the whole country, really. First time I've thought of what I'm doing at my desk as being helpful.
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Do you rebuilt the Cathedral spire to look as if the earthquake never happened, or do you make the rebuilt part look quite different, to never forget?
When I went to Dresden about 7 years ago, they were trying to rebuild it "wie es einmal war" - "how it once was". Actually trying to make it look exactly the same as what they could glean from old plans and photos. In Berlin, the famous landmark Kaiser Wilhelm church retains the damaged main spire from the war - I believe they're not allowed to fix it without law changes. The people I stayed with wanted it fixed. They could either not understand the point of the grim reminder, or they disagreed with the idea.
But Germans wanting to forget WW2 is not quite the same as the Christchurch situation. There's guilt and forced shame built into that, whereas the quake damage could be a reminder of past horror, but also of the extraordinary resilience of the people.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to Scott A,
Thanks for linking!
My pleasure. I can attest to most of the designs, I played with them a lot after the first quake. These things work. It's nice to know I can make a wood stove from a tin can any time now.
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