On Dec 8, 2011, at 8:29 PM, Bob W wrote: > it must be a weird feeling to be in the position of rebuilding an entire > city in that way.
As we don't have access to much of the central city, and our area of town is OK, the whole situation seems a little distant. If I hadn't spent the past 5 years working in the CBD then I'd barely notice any day-to-day difference. Brian's right that it's going to be a very long haul. I think the biggest problem at the moment lies with insurance companies dragging the chain. Ansvar, who insure 75% of the country's churches, has pulled out from NZ entirely in the wake of $700m in claims. Our local university's insurance bill went from $2.5m to $6.5m (NZD), and I'm not sure if our city council can even buy insurance (I seem to remember hearing that nobody would touch them after their policies came up for renewal a few months ago). Our household insurance has gone up by 20%. The insurance for my partner's work building has doubled and that is a very new building which was undamaged by the quakes. The term "fair weather friends" keeps popping into my head :) The city is functioning surprisingly well. I forgot to mention the other day that they've just stopped treating our drinking water because the wells are clean again. I'm very happy about this as I expected it to taste of chlorine for years to come so the council has done an outstanding job of patching up the water and sewer systems. (There goes that excuse for drinking wine.) >> Personally I think the best approach is a dictatorial one. And my vote >> for dictator-in-chief goes to Kevin McCloud. But that'll never happen. >> Maybe at least he could do an episode of Grand Designs on a grand scale >> during the next decade or so. > > Be careful what you wish for. > > Historically, the dictatorial approach has rarely been successful. :)) I was of course thinking of benevolent, clueful dictators. Yes, I'm dreaming. > Paris may be the one exception. Otherwise you have to think of Albert Speer > and his > dreadful fantasies, or Brasilia, East German tower blocks, or the dreadful > stuff we put up here after the war. What is important is to have controls > which limit the craziness of developers. My worry is that they're going to try and hurry it. The reason I mentioned Kevin McCloud is because he did actually visit recently, but it wasn't publicised beforehand which annoyed me. I saw some news footage from his visit and he had some very good things to say about making a city that's people-friendly. It was very refreshing after hearing so much whining from property developers. > After each rebuild the > multitude of property owners and other vested interests ensure that street > plans remain the same, even if buildings change. That is what has happened > each time London has been rebuilt and is part of the reason why it has > charm, and why you can still walk the streets that the Romans, and Chaucer > and Shakespeare, and Dickens walked, with the same names. Cities don't have quite that amount of history in these parts. European colonisation started here in the mid 19th century and our cities were surveyed and planned in detail before being built. I think it was Dunedin that was drawn up back in the UK with a nice grid pattern for the streets... a plan which they had to tear up and redo when they came out and saw the hills :) Cheers, Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
