On Thinking Big in Christchurch.

English: N1brick (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If there is a lesson unlearned from all this investment in bricks and mortar marketed as services is that we are all to ready to give up our ownership, operationally and in terms of civic use/access.

So our anchor projects are too employ a few people at base rates. It brings a few people to other peoples businesses in exchange for an inequitable  public benefit,  but it doesn't just fail there. If we,, as a city are to put a dollar down and everything on tick into these grand plans we have to internalise all  the benefits.

If replacing  and improving is worth doing for other people to profit from it, it is worth doing for us, for our benefit, for our children's benefit and not the shareholding 'returns' to otherwise foreign and/or distant enterprises.

English: Kilmore Street frontage of Christchurch Convention Centre. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Only on these criteria should we proceed. Design it so it is our solution, our asset and our character that is on display... not the functional but sparse tilt slab that we had in Kilmore Street, a facility we leased out to others because we couldn't/wouldn't sell it ourselves.

If WE cant do the latter, we shouldn't fund it... not until we are smart enough to realise money without brains values neither.

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Mans Best Friend... - Banned

"The comfort and contentment offered by animals is documented in a large number of studies with vulnerable people, including children, the elderly, and people with disability, disease and loneliness."  [Lynette A. Hart, Ph.D., a professor of veterinary medicine at the University of California.]

So why have we ignored the roll of 'mans best friend' in the urban city rebuild?

Checkout http://minddog.org.au

Symetric Analysis Challenges Thinking Men

www.silobreaker.com

Collective Red vs Private Greens

The assets of Christchurch are popular because they are OUR assets. Not because some speculator(s) might pay an undisclosed sum for ALL the shares.It is not what they are worth that make them assets, rather that we have them.
If we sell them they cease to be assets.
The capital becomes a fungible book entry incapable of tangible merit or ability to evidence return. Further more we loose strategic control of the ability to internalise the benefits of the structures we depend on... we may as well sell the Selwyn River Bridge to a body corporate upon whose whim, tolls will be paid. It is insulting to render a taxation per use on the very folk whose asset it once was.
That makes it worse than theft.
We had an earthquake, to whom is is logical that it is a 'good idea' we sell the undamaged bits?
The power of the collective asset and asymmetry of analysis is all the more ironic given the PGG Building was a civic asset built by and for the Christchurch Drainage Board without whom our city would neither be the shape, size or reclaimed from swamp that it is.
Or that we might want to make a Park out of much of it in honour of the collective loss.  

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Seeing Red

Zoned RED today....  an outstandingly stupid decision that can only be described as serving the longer term interest of developers. There is NO utility to the community or safety deficit acrue in anyway by asking us to move out.... other than provide an OUT for the insurance company to void its responsibiity to effect repair in accordance with its obligation.

We have no liquifaction. We live on a remnant Wainoni sand dune. The damage is the same as it was post feb 22. We live on the arterial. Services are not broken. This is not an equitable decision. Nor is it justifiable. The value is not in our 'rateable' value, it is in our location. It cannot be reasoned that this locaton is at risk any more than it was before feb 22.  So why the revised
'call' that cannot be questioned, especially as we have been advised by several builders that we can be 'rebuilt' with secure foundation.

I sense another "Joe Bennet" moment coming on....

If we move, we will be taking several 100's of thousands of dollars of annual
income to Christchurch with us.  (> 800 visitor bed nights on current interest
with growth potential >3-5times this.)

It is not just a question of another 'house' goes west. (and saves AMI a bob or
two),

It goes beyond being reasoned, consulted and rationalised. It is arbitary,
capricious and negligent when human rights along with due process flies out the
window courtesy of Gerry, Bob et al.

The evidentially deminishing earthquake(s) I can stomach. Today's  decision to
zone us out I cannot.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Never shy for the good fight, let the appeal process begin.....

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