A cruel blow to a beautiful city

Christchurch is reeling after the latest earthquake.  Most of us can just look on with the sense of helplessness that distance brings.  To see the centre of a modern city, one of ours, so devastated, its people so vulnerable and suffering is numbing.

Today, tomorrow, and for some time to come the search for survivors and the cleanup will go on.  We will hear stories of miraculous survival, heroism, and tragic loss.

And then, as the city looks once more to recovery and rebuilding, we might look for the lessons to be learned. 

We cannot resist the power of earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunami, and the like.  But we can perhaps limit the devastation that accompanies them.

The implosion of many of Christchurch’s beautiful heritage buildings is a tragedy on its own, the wiping from the landscape of much of the City’s and nation’s history.  But seeing the collapse of more modern buildings is sobering. 

What are the lessons of architecture and engineering that might be drawn from this?  How much resistance can we realistically build into our structures?  Or should we be thinking less rigidly, and explore designs that deflect or reduce the impacts when buildings are faced with irresistible forces?  Should we think more about the survival of the people in and around buildings and less about the survival of the structures?  Are there innovations in design that offer refuge, protection, and escape even if walls crumble and floors collapse?

And what can urban designers and planners take from this devastation?  What does it tell us about the importance of space in the central city, of wide boulevards, generous parks, and civic squares?  About the need for more space, not less.  The centre of Christchurch is still relatively open, and perhaps that has saved some lives.  It was possible to take refuge in the streets, the squares, and the parks. 

This event must surely erode planners’ resistance to the decentralisation that is the mark of a prosperous, modern city, that makes it that little bit more liveable, and so much more resilient in the face of disaster?  Perhaps we should be thankful that a diminishing share of Christchurch’s people actually works in the CBD – today just 26% of the total.  And that not too many dwellings – and residents -- had been crammed into retrofitted buildings or high rise apartments assembled in inner city precincts.

We might also need to rethink infrastructure and network utilities in vulnerable settings.  Do the economies of scale associated with large, integrated networks and single source headworks for water supply and wastewater treatment offer the resilience and recovery that dispersed or local plant might do?  Do we have the redundancy built into our energy networks that permit selective shut off and rapid recovery?  How vulnerable are our communication networks, and how easily overloaded?  Where are our fuel supplies?  Are they safe, accessible in an emergency?

Are we overloading old networks with new demands?  What are the costs of building resilience into infrastructure and what are the gains in terms of recovery and continuity of service in the face of destructive forces?

This has been and will be a life changing event for many people – life shattering in far too many cases.

 Out of tragedy people look for blame and for meaning to ease the grief.  We need to acknowledge the former and try to get past it in the interests of the recovery and healing that the city and its citizens must go through. 

But we owe it to the victims of the Christchurch earthquake to look hard, deep, and wide at how might we better shape our cities to cope with the unexpected and the unwanted.