Is it cricket?

The Prime Minister, John Key, has come out in favour of a “world-class covered stadium” for Christchurch.

At the time of writing, opinion on the accompanying stuff poll is split 52% in favour and 48% opposed (485 votes). It has to be added, though, that the comments were running overwhelmingly against the idea.

Of six options put forward by the Christchurch City Council, a 35,000 seat capacity covered stadium is the most expensive, at $144m. John Key favours it, apparently in his heart of hearts: “I really believe that Christchurch can support a world-class covered stadium.“.

Meanwhile, in what amounts to an interesting pincer movement – whether by accident or design – Key’s Deputy, Bill English, apparently favours Christchurch following the government’s lead and part-selling its assets to fund its expensive recovery.

The Prime Minister does state that “In the end, what’s built and how it’s paid for is largely a matter for Cantabrians,” but putting the Prime Ministerial weight behind one option is, at best, imprudent and, at worst, mischievous.

As a lot of the comments on the article reflect, there’s an already inflamed context into which this opinion has been dropped like a still burning fag-end onto a tinder-dry roadside.

The reason the Prime Minister supports a covered stadium is that “There’s a long and proud sporting history in Canterbury, and Christchurch needs a stadium that reflects that.“ All the previous – uncovered – stadia used in Christchurch (i.e., Lancaster Park under its various names) presumably didn’t reflect this “long and proud sporting history” in quite the way that a covered stadium would.

In another reported comment, Key goes further:

John Key is pushing for what he calls a decent stadium for Christchurch.

$30 million was spent on transforming Rugby League Park in Addington into the new AMI Stadium, after the one in the city was damaged in the earthquakes.

The Prime Minister says while the city can limp along with a temporary stadium, Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island and where all the growth is set to take place.

“Link it in with high performance sport and all those other things. Whether they have the roof or not well I guess they have to go through those numbers, but I reckon Christchurch can support that.”

John Key says it’s also important Christchurch has a decent stadium because the culture of the city is all about sport.

Where to begin?

How about Christchurch “limp[ing] along with a temporary stadium”? Certainly, the Crusaders’ recent form has not been great so I guess they are “limping along” and they probably need a better place to play their “crap rugby” but it’s a stretch to say that Christchurch is “limping along” with a temporary stadium.

A few weeks ago, at the open day of the Addington AMI stadium it was all about how great the rapidly built stadium was. But, sadly, all those naysayers were right – it’s a “limp along” kind of a place, barely enough solace for rugby fans and, according to Key, obviously not a “decent stadium”.

And, it used to be the place – the ‘home’ – of Rugby League – as a few disaffected letters to the editor in The Press (and comments on the link above) indicate. There’s also more than a few people disgruntled at the finger-snapping quickness with which the stadium was built and the handover of $30m, no questions asked, to smooth the process.

All, of course, set against a Christchurch backdrop of frustration, physical destruction and dereliction of infrastructure and lack of money for so many other general – and rebuilding – needs.

Then there’s another sporting hotspot that has incited heated debate in the letters columns of The Press. Sports bodies are targeting the ‘spare’ land in Christchurch’s sacrosanct Hagley Park.

First, there are plans for an international cricket ground on the Hagley Oval:

The plan is being driven by Canterbury Cricket, headed by former Black Cap Lee Germon. Essentially, it involves converting Hagley Oval, in South Hagley Park, into a ground capable of hosting international cricket.

But, as one prominent opponent of the plan, former Wigram MP Jim Anderton points out:

“There has been a certain amount of secrecy surrounding things that does nobody any justice. It’s not just the plan – the physical works proposed have not been clearly spelt out.

“None of it is out there for public discussion.”

Now, lack of transparency and having decisions foisted on them is becoming a very familiar feeling for Christchurch residents, and Cantabrians further afield. Even before the earthquakes, the main complaint about Mayor Bob Parker was about the lack of transparency of decisions (Dave Henderson’s bailout, the Ellerslie Flower Show purchase, etc.) and the way councillors were often given remarkable short notice of the documentation needed to make those decisions.

Then there was ECAN.

Now there is CERA.

That people feel it happening over the proposed cricket ground is simply one more blow on a bruise.

But wait … there’s more. Hagley Park is also now being eyed up for, you guessed it, a sporting hub. Sport Canterbury believe the Park is just ideal for siting a replacement for QEII stadium which now has a demolition order hanging over most of it.

[It's another - vexed - story, but the loss of QEII from the eastern suburbs has been fought by residents and its two councillors - Glenn Livingstone and the newly elected, ex-Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Peter Beck - both want a stadium retained in the east. Yet more bad blood.]

Apparently, the reaction to Geoff Barry’s (of Sport Canterbury) suggestion has been ‘hot and frothy‘, according to Greg Ford. But in the kind of ‘join the dots’ exercise that will confirm many Christchurch residents’ feelings of powerlessness, Ford notes:

The day before The Press splashed his ideas in our sports section Barry met Warwick Isaacs’ team.

Isaacs is the boss of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority’s Christchurch Central Development Unit. They will make all the major decisions on the future of Christchurch.

Isaacs has less than 90 days to present his plan to Gerry Brownlee and will in all probability adopt Barry’s impressive and comprehensive Places and Space strategy to save time.

That doesn’t mean the bulldozers will roll into Hagley Park in late July. But it does mean the concept of tinkering with this jewel in our city is being talked about and is very much in the minds of the people who matter.

Yes, here in Christchurch we may not have much ‘bread’ but we have more than enough sport ‘circuses’ to keep us occupied many years into the so-called earthquake recovery.

Then there was that last comment from John Key to the effect that: “the culture of the city is all about sport“. All about sport?

At the same time as the $30m dollar Addington stadium is being toted for an upgrade to become a ‘decent stadium’, Hagley Park as an international cricket venue and ‘sporting hub’ there’s a couple of other cash-strapped projects, of a decidedly non-sporting kind, that have at least some Christchurch residents concerned.

The first is the obvious one – the demolition of Christ Church Cathedral. As I’ve noted previously, it may well have been a different story = perhaps – if something like $30m were on offer (not to mention $144m). There’s also innumerable heritage buildings – - demolished because of the costs of earthquake upgrading and more recent buildings such as the Christchurch Town Hall that could probably do with a cash injection along the lines of the ‘limp along’ stadium in Addington.

There’s another building, though, that shows that Christchurch isn’t ‘all about sport’.

The Isaac Theatre Royal – an historic, heritage theatre that has hosted plays, ballet, opera, concert and public events – is in need of substantial funds to be restored and strengthened. A concert just raised $10,000 and support has been coming in from high profile actors and entertainers. The general manager, Neil Cox, explains the approach and contributions so far:

The collective fundraising efforts of Margolyes, Martin, McKellen, and the Flight of the Conchords, were likely to raise about $300,000.

The creator of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O’Brien, had also personally donated $55,000, he said.

“Across the next year we are looking to raise anywhere between $5 million and $6 million and we are a way down that track already.”

No-one seems to have told them that Christchurch is ‘all about sport’.

But wait, help might be at hand – Has anyone told John Key about ‘theatre sports’?

"The building aims to create a gateway to the square"

It was meant to be the ‘City in a Park’.

But, according to a Press editorial, a lot of people in Christchurch have taken a look at the future and they don’t like what they see:

The artists’ impressions of buildings planned for Christchurch, published in last weekend’s Press, have produced an overwhelmingly negative response.

Almost nobody writing to the editor likes them. Brutal, unimaginative, banal are words commonly used, and many think the prospect of a beautiful new Christchurch has been shattered.

What they’ve been looking at is this. The site was apparently set up to excite and reassure people that. as the editorial puts it, “we could construct a gleaming future from out of the grey rubble“.

But what most people are seeing in these images is less a ‘City in a Park’ and more a ‘City in a Box’.

And they’re right – but not just in the obvious design sense.

Peter Townsend, Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce chief executive got the message last year at the ‘Share an Idea’ expo in Christchurch:

Officials who were in charge of the earthquake recovery needed to make “radical” decisions as the city rebuilt, Towsend said.

“If we just go back to doing what we did before, if we just build tilt-slab carparks, we will be cursed by future generations.“

And he also got what might have to be done to make sure that ‘business as usual’ approach didn’t happen;

Another possible scenario, one that Townsend said he would prefer to see, is property owners relinquishing control over land in exchange for a pooled ownership arrangement where they could effectively be shareholders in reconstructed subdivisions.

He said a block-by-block redevelopment (similar to what was employed in Kobe, Japan after a 1995 earthquake) would potentially be more attractive to locals and businesses that wanted to remain viable in the area.

“I think there’s an opportunity there for Christchurch. I think we could do that block by block or maybe the whole of the Red Zone which has been effectively destroyed. We need to look at this from a different perspective.”

“It may be better for property owners to take a share in some sort of entity that will take the city forward rather than to have a 1/4 acre of land with a tilt-slab on it that doesn’t fit into an overall plan that has little value.“

The “People’s Plan” – the Central City Plan submitted to Minister Brownlee by the Christchurch City Council after community consultation – quite explicitly held out this promise of a “gleaming future from out of the grey rubble“:

Buildings will be well-designed, creating an attractive, safe and functional environment, with an emphasis on lower rise, resilient and sustainable development.

And;

Buildings will be designed to interact with the surrounding street and neighbourhoods, helping to make the Central City a safe, accessible and welcoming place day and night.

So why are people reacting to the designs so negatively?

There’s a few reasons.

One is that, at first blush at least, the overwhelming majority of the buildings appear to be variations on the tilt-slab, concrete and glass boxes that filled many Christchurch residents’ nightmares when they considered the outcome of any rebuild.

Even with omnipresent long, vertical flutings, “[d]ecorative glass screens“, a complete covering in “stainless steel metal mesh” to provide “solar shading” (along with a seemingly ejectable “yellow box [that] will be a boardroom“) and a keenness “to replicate the laneways found in Melbourne” many people see a design desert of boxy blandness.

That’s not entirely the case, of course. At least one building is “designed to new engineering codes and four-star Greenstar principles“.

Two of the buildings – here’s one – will be “built of Expan, a post-tensioned laminated veneer lumber (LVL) building system that makes lightweight, seismically safe multi-storey timber buildings commercially viable“.

The problem is that – despite their environmental credentials – they still look like featureless, ‘bland’ boxes. Why?

There’s a second, more fundamental, reason underlying people’s reactions.

In several ways, this was not a good time to have an earthquake. The time of day for the February quake was bad enough timing (the middle of a workday). But it was also not a good time in history for this to happen.

As the editorial states:

What we are getting are buildings designed in the style prevailing today in this country – a bit Modernist, Brutalist, not much particular to New Zealand.

But what is ‘pushing’ that design? Mere ‘fashion’?

No. The “style prevailing today in this country” is one primarily based on the cheapest methods of construction. Architects, presumably, are left to work with modern materials and methods that have been filtered and selected by, ultimately, the ‘bottom line’.

Boxes are cheap. They always have been.

In past years, though, those blank sidewalls and backs of boxy buildings would have been built out of individual bricks and weatherboards not seamless concrete. The materials provided – no doubt accidentally – the kind of detail and texture missing in today’s boxes.

And the ‘decorative’ facades, in the past, were not just ‘stuck on’ large, mass-produced flutings or glass sheets. The brick window ledges had to be put in, brick by brick which allowed, at little extra cost, variation and detail since even boringly arranged bricks had to be put in one at a time.

Associated with the cost-driven designs of today is another feature of modern New Zealand society. The ideology of the market is ascendant in commercial and political circles. In particular, the right of individual property owners to do what they so choose with their property is increasingly the default position.

That means that each building or land owner is more or less free to go their own way in making rebuild decisions (insurance issues notwhithstanding).

Once again, the Press editorial makes this clear:

 dispute about the quality of Christchurch’s new buildings is inevitable because architects can produce to the order of their client but not to meet the tastes of all people.

Architects work for individual property owners – not for the community as a whole. Most clients – especially given the insurance expenses and uncertainties – will be looking for cheapness in design (I suppose I should use the euphemism ‘cost effectiveness’).

The Central City Plan was assumed by many to have at least imposed some kind of ‘vision’, guidance and rules to achieve the ‘vision’:

The shared vision was of a green Christchurch central business district built to a human scale and expanding on its old virtues of parks, open spaces and charm, with walking not driving as the means of getting around.

But, while “[t]he people’s vision has not entirely faded”,

it has been eroded as the practical realities of the rebuild came into play. Exemptions for some high-rises were made, more parking provided, light-rail postponed and the city-to-the-sea park put in doubt.

Now the already modified plan is in the hands of the Christchurch Central Development Unit, whose powers to make more modifications are unclear [sic].

One of the “practical realities of the rebuild” is, simply, that property owners are being left to their own devices so far as building design is concerned (as already posted, the design rules are in Volume 2 of the Central City Plan – the volume that Minister Brownlee has put to one side while the 100-day blueprint is produced by the new CCDU.).

And, despite Peter Townsend’s suggestions (quoted above), so far there has been very little coalescence of property titles or cooperative approaches taken to rebuilding.

Interestingly, two rebuild options have involved a more coordinated effort. The first is the container-based ‘pop-up’ Re-Start mall in Cashel Street. The other is the restoration of the New Regent Street development.

The Cashel Street Re-Start mall was a single development and so provided a coordinated ‘mini-precinct’.

I’ve been there and can understand why it is popular with people. Despite being made of modular boxes (containers), the arrangement provides ‘alleys’ and nooks and crannies to explore, the colours are bright and it has an overall coherence and interconnectedness.

It shows that the issue is not about ‘heritage’ styles and modern designs. Modern design is perfectly capable of incorporating the sorts of features that restore and regenerate people and, so, encourage them to linger.

My one criticism is the relentlessly ‘high end’ retailers (mostly fashion boutiques) in the stores. The choice to do this was presumably to maximise rental returns for the land area.

Importantly, the development was a unitary one – it wasn’t composed of many ‘individual’ developments. In fact, the main problem with this example of unitary, ‘planned’ development is that it is also planned to bulldoze it – in favour of this development.

It was a ‘stop-gap’ until a building that, presumably, would be more ‘commercially viable’ was built. (The design of the Re-Start mall’s replacement shows that enticing people into the city and providing them with human scale experiences will not be the primary aim in future – a pity.).

The New Regent Street example is even more revealing: “About 30 landowners on the street have united to restore the street.” Because there was already a coherence to the street it was actually sensible for the owners to cooperate in the restoration.

They knew, presumably, that the ‘whole was greater than the sum of the parts’ and that their distinctive style set them apart as a location and ‘destination’ in the city. Having half of them rebuild with tilt-slabs and the others trying to restore the original facades would have killed the Golden Goose.

The paradox in all of this is fascinating. The two examples of the outcome of a coordinated and coherent approach to development couldn’t be more different in terms of building designs – modern, modular, container-based development; heritage-based development.

That is, the coherence (some would say ‘homogeneity’) at the ‘mini-precinct’ level has produced a remarkable diversity at the Central City level.

Contrast that with the remaining developments that are largely based on the decisions of individual owners – what results is a remarkable homogeneity across the city. All the individual decisions result in a stunning conformity of style. Once again, the reason is obvious: All the decisions are being made on ‘the (bare) financials’.

As the commentary even on the Victoria Street building that will use the innovative, wood-based ‘Expan’ technology emphasised:

Expan buildings can be constructed quickly, at an equivalent cost to steel or concrete …

“Commercial property owners – and insurers – are now demanding buildings that are not only safe in a major event, but can be rapidly reoccupied afterwards and therefore minimise business interruption.”

Left to individual property owners, Christchurch will be rebuilt almost entirely in the same, uniform style – “a bit Modernist, Brutalist, not much particular to New Zealand.”

This is where the Press editorial gets it wrong. It states that,

The positive side is that Christchurch downtown will be vibrant by way of the diversity of its buildings, every corner offering something new. Like it or loathe it, the experience will be stimulating.

I suppose “diversity” is relative. After all, even the ‘boxes made of ticky tacky‘ came in different colours.

The design of the rebuild of Christchurch’s Central City is being boxed in by the powerful inevitability of cost calculations combining with modern building methods and materials.

That’s why we’ll have an entire ‘City in a Box’.

Universal Male Suffrage in France - A bad day for economic efficiency

All those years ago – you know, way back when John Key wasn’t the Prime Minister – the populace, so we found out, was getting restless.

Its main complaint about the government of the day was that it was ‘off the leash’ and ‘out of touch’ – doing things that ordinary New Zealanders didn’t want done: The repeal of Section 59; decriminalising prostitution; legislating for civil unions; replacing the Privy Council with the Supreme Court; ‘banning’ food from school tuck shops; suggesting regulating for energy-efficient light bulbs; suggesting regulations on shower-heads, etc..

Yes, the ‘bad old days’ when government didn’t care what ordinary kiwis wanted and just pushed through what some small, ‘non-ordinary’ clique wanted.

I’m tempted to say that it’s “déjà vu all over again“, but that’s not quite right.

This time – with this government – public opinion is being over-ridden not for ‘social’ and ‘environmental’ reasons (e.g., protecting children, human rights, national sovereignty, public health, lower energy use, etc.) but for ‘rational’ economic reasons (e.g., economic efficiency, foreign investment, reducing debt, etc.).

I guess someone needs to ‘keep their head’, assert a bit of economic rationality and ‘make the tough decisions’ (1984 redux anyone?). Here’s some of those tough decisions.

According to a TV3 Reid poll, 72% of New Zealanders don’t like the ‘pokies for Convention Centre’ deal. But, apparently, we just don’t understand that the economic benefits outweigh the social costs – presumably because we’re ‘ill informed’ or economically irrational.

Well, at least Phil O’Reilly of Business New Zealand implies as much when he points out that:

the Sky City deal is “reasonable… from a New Zealand public taxpayer perspective”, with no public funds required for the centre’s construction.

A bit sad – and strangely paradoxical – that so many New Zealand taxpayers seem unable to adopt the “public taxpayer perspective”.

New Zealanders also oppose the ‘mixed ownership’ version of state asset sales by at least two to one.

Our irrationality, according to John Key, is dissipating on the issue and, by the time the full float of Mighty River Power happens we’ll “feel more comfortable with it” – a fait accompli tends to have that affect, of course.

The rise in support for the sell-off from 26% to 30% (from the previous tvnz poll) Key sees as evidence that we are “starting to ‘think through the issue’“.

That’s fortunate. We’re starting to get rational – just in time, though possibly not quite fast enough for John Key’s liking. Imagine what an immense mistake we’d be making if we had a referendum on it – luckily our Prime Minister is dead against that.

Sadly, however, Maori seem particularly reluctant to “think through the issue”. An extremely disappointing 88% of Maori haven’t put a lot of thought into this important issue.

The bad news for the economic rationality of the public keeps coming.

Despite an admittedly small sample, a New Zealand Herald Digipoll found 64% in favour of the Michael Fay-led consortium’s bid to buy the Crafar Farms – despite it being a full $40m less than the Shanghai Pengxin deal (and that was after the government’s latest decision – perhaps the public will “feel more comfortable with it” once the new owners take possession?).

Fran O’Sullivan has pointed out that:

What is interesting about this latest OIO decision summary is a clause noting it will advance the NZ Inc China Strategy (a significant government strategy), one of the aims of which is to “increase bilateral investment to levels that reflect New Zealand’s growing commercial relationship with China”.

For those New Zealanders who aren’t au fait with the government’s “significant” ‘China strategy’, O’Sullivan sees an opportune moment to relieve New Zealanders of their xenophobic economic irrationality. In fact, according to O’Sullivan, the “political management” has already begun:

the time is ripe for a domestic sales pitch to support increased foreign direct investment (FDI) in New Zealand. Some thought is obviously going into the political management of the issue.

Unlike in January, when the ministers had little support from influential players for their initial approval for Shanghai Pengxin to buy the farms, this time round Federated Farmers and various business voices have supported their decision.

We might be irrational, but at least help is on its way.

Then, of course, there’s the Christchurch rebuild and the ‘people’s plan’ for the Central City. As new Central City Development Unit head, Warwick Isaacs concisely puts it:

“At the end of the day, the plan was always going to be the minister’s. They [the Christchurch City Council] understand the role now for the minister is to decide what he likes and what he doesn’t.”

As I argued previously, the Central City rebuild is just too important for the potentially economically irrational and ill-informed people of Christchurch to determine the outcome.

The pattern is plain: This government thinks that the New Zealand public is too economically illiterate for its own good. En masse, New Zealanders just don’t know what’s good for them when it comes to economics.

Enough of the sarcasm and satire (well, not quite – more coming below).

The view that ‘the masses’ are irrational has a long intellectual history. The reason Plato placed ‘democracy’ only just above ‘anarchy’ (at the bottom of the table) as a desirable form of government was because of a lack of trust in the capacity of the demos to “think through the issues”. The problem with democracy, to put it bluntly, is that it is government by the people, and people are ignorant:

Democratic self-government does not work, according to Plato, because ordinary people have not learned how to run the ship of state. They are not familiar enough with such things as economics, military strategy, conditions in other countries, or the confusing intricacies of law and ethics. They are also not inclined to acquire such knowledge. The effort and self-discipline required for serious study is not something most people enjoy. In their ignorance they tend to vote for politicians who beguile them with appearances and nebulous talk, and they inevitably find themselves at the mercy of administrations and conditions over which they have no control because they do not understand what is happening around them.

Millenia later, discussions around the formation of the United States – at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 – revealed the same concerns about ‘the people’. Michael Parenti’s description of some of the discussions and comments is instructive:

“To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction [i.e., the "propertyless multitude"],” wrote James Madison in Federalist No. 10, “and at the same time preserve the spirit and form of popular government is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.” … The framers of the Constitution could agree with Madison when he wrote also in Federalist No. 10 that “the most common and durable source of faction has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society” and “the first object of government” is “the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property” (that is, acquiring wealth).

The framers were of the opinion that democracy was “the worst of all political evils,” as Elbridge Gerry put it. For Edmund Randolph, the country’s problems were caused by “the turbulence and follies of democracy.” Roger Sherman concurred, “The people should have as little to do as may be about the Government.” According to Alexander Hamilton, “All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the wellborn, the other the mass of the people. . . . The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.”

It’s an old idea, then, that, because of our general ignorance, we can’t be trusted to make significant decisions in a rationally ordered society.

Times have changed, but it seems that this same attitude continues – though obviously how it is expressed requires some ‘updating’. A good example of this approach was a recent editorial in The Press concerning the proposed Local Government reforms, especially as they will affect votes on amalgamation.

The trigger for the editorial was a vote by ratepayers in both the Nelson and Tasman local authorities. The Tasman electors voted against amalgamation. Irrespective of the arguments over the rights or wrongs of amalgamation it is interesting to examine the rhetoric used.

The editorial concedes that the outcome of this vote “maintained a New Zealand tradition” of opposing amalgamations. Apart from the vote to amalgamate Banks Peninsula with Christchurch City “Voters are disinclined to let their councils be absorbed into bigger entities“.

Apparently, this has always been so in New Zealand which is why, the editorial explains, central government has ‘had’ to repeatedly intervene and reform local government:

Almost all this change was brought about by instructions from Wellington rather than by local initiatives. Regional fiefdoms had to be forced to suspend their operations.

It’s that time again, ‘it seems’:

It seems that the Government will have to again exercise its authority if local bodies and their constituents are to embrace the needed reforms. The regularly occurring inadequacies are showing but, if Nelson’s example is anything to go by, voters are not interested in removing them. It is therefore welcome that the Minister of Local Government, David Carter, is progressing change.

Once again, the voters just don’t understand what has to be done. So how will what ‘has to be done’ get done?

Proposed is a lowering of the hurdle that amalgamation must jump. Councils will be able to join if a majority of their combined electorates agree, rather than, as is the case now, a majority in both electorates being needed. This will prevent a veto being exercised in the fashion of Tasman voters at the weekend.

Notice that ‘amalgamation’ – the poor soul – is having ‘hurdles’ – aka ‘red tape’ and regulation – put in front of it.

And what is the ‘hurdle’?

It amounts to having those affected by it, agree to the amalgamation. When you start to look around I bet you’ll find all sorts of these ‘hurdles’ in modern democracies. Makes you wonder why we put up with them.

Despite the obvious risk with these sorts of ‘hurdles’, “The Government is keeping a large dose of democracy in its plan by still allowing amalgamations to go to the ballot“. The Editor, however, is well aware of the risk and sternly notes that “more forceful measures will be necessary if boundary change continues to be rejected“.

And what, at base, is the Editor’s objection to democratic ‘hurdles’ (i.e., the affected voters) and also the reason for recommending “more forceful measures“?

Well, it turns out that the Editor is merely performing the next, predictable iteration of that age old pattern I’ve pointed out:

Inefficient local government is too costly an imposition on national and regional economies to be sustained by voters with a sentimental attachment to their councils.

It’s those irrational, sentimental, economically illiterate voters again.

Will they (aka ‘we’) never learn?

Epilogue: The push for amalgamation is one of those forces that is bound to succeed – not least because of the apparent determination of those with influence and power to over-ride the objections of ‘voters’.

Those who know about these complex things (i.e., the ‘experts’ on the economy, local government, etc.) can’t afford to waste time persuading and ‘educating’ the population, it appears. The issue is just too urgent to wait for the voters to understand.

There was, for example, no referendum on the ‘Super-City’ amalgamation in Auckland – though those less well informed citizens organised their own “People’s Referendum” on it.

The issue in the Christchurch region is the same. As the same editorial concludes:

Christchurch, Mid-Canterbury and Central Canterbury are approaching a test of these issues. The city’s natural boundary is steadily expanding into Selwyn and Waimakariri as the suburbs expand – a process increased by the spill of population caused by the earthquakes. Local-government boundaries will soon have to be altered to encompass the changes. It is a necessity that will provide a useful chance to consider the future of Environment Canterbury and the possibility of Canterbury unitary government.

I think it’s important to realise that many – though possibly not all – of the people who are pushing for these and other ‘economically rational’ policies and ‘reforms’ believe that it is not a political matter. Many of them see it as a ‘merely technical’ matter, which is why they are frustrated by the recalcitrance of the voting public. I’m sure that, for them, it is a frustration that such technical economic matters currently rely on democratic processes.

Why might they think this way?

In his book Questioning Technology, Andrew Feenberg makes some pertinent comments about this question when he focuses on the notion  of economic ‘efficiency’ in discussing ‘cognitive-instrumental rationality’.

 In his essay on Weber, Marcuse argues that the apparent neutrality of the cognitive-instrumental sphere is a special kind of ideological illusion (Marcuse, 1968). He concedes that technical principles can be formulated in abstraction from any content, that is to say, in abstraction from any interest or ideology. However, as such, they are merely abstractions. As soon as they enter reality, they take on a socially specific content …

Efficiency, to take a particularly important example, is defined formally as the ratio of inputs to outputs. This definition would apply in a communist or a capitalist society, or even in an Amazonian tribe. It seems, therefore, to transcend the particularity of the social. However, concretely, when one actually gets down to applying the notion of efficiency, one must decide what kinds of things can serve as inputs and outputs, who can offer and acquire them and on what terms, what counts as discommodities, waste, and hazards, and so on. These are all socially specific, and so, therefore, is the concept of efficiency in any actual application. And insofar as the social is biased by a system of domination, so will be its efficient workings. As a general rule, formally rational systems must be practically contextualized in order to be used, and as soon as they are contextualized in a capitalist society, they incorporate capitalist values.

In other words, any actual, real world, practical ‘calculation’ of efficiency – or inefficiency – is inherently political.

More generally, whenever they are applied, the abstract theories and principles of economics and economic analysis are also irreducibly political – no matter how ‘merely technical’ they might appear.

I think the same is true of science, in general – hence the title of my blog.

I think that members of this government, business ‘leaders’ and, if the editorial discussed above is any indication, ‘opinion leaders’ in the media in New Zealand either hold to this idea that the economic sphere is simply a technical sphere (i.e.,  is just a matter of ‘cognitive-instrumental rationality’); or, rather cynically, adopt the rhetoric of the ‘technical’ to persuade the rest of us to fall in line with policies that simply serve their interests.

Either way, democracy comes to be disdained*.

Finally, and returning to my opening comment, I suspect that the reason people were less willing to go along with having their ‘will’ overridden by the Labour-led government than they appear to be by the current one, is that they, then, held to the belief that they did, indeed, have sufficient knowledge and intellectual capacities to be the ones who should decide over child discipline, the desirability of civil unions, the legal status of prostitution, etc.. Talk of ‘experts’ in these areas simply irritated people.

By contrast, economics hides behind the arcane veil of numbers, which, for many people, immediately makes them feel less sure of their opinions on economic matters. So, while the majority may oppose measures such as city amalgamations, selling assets, selling land to foreign investors, etc. opposition to those policies is not – at the ‘ordinary kiwi’ level – as indignant as it was pre-2008.

Just a thought.

*The title of this post is a take off of Chomsky’s book ‘Deterring Democracy’.

The City of SLO

If the future form of Christchurch’s central city now hangs in the balance, the outcome will depend upon the weightings given to two quite distinct sets of ‘instincts’ about how to create a vibrant, sustainable, thriving city centre.

One set is clearly being backed by the government – at least in its rhetoric. It amounts to a belief in a ‘business-led’ recovery in which individual property owners and businesses are given as much leeway as possible to make decisions about their land and buildings.

It is for this reason that, as I posted previously (here and here), Volume 2 of the Central City Plan developed by the Christchurch City Council has been “put to one side” while the Central City Development Unit develops its ‘blueprint’ over the next ninety-odd days.

Specifically, what are being put aside are the proposed regulations that would affect building heights, designs and parking options as these may be “a barrier to achieving the objectives of that [Central City] plan” (Minister Brownlee on CTV’s ‘One on One’ interview, 19 April). Also being set aside – this time from Volume 1 – are the ‘visions’ around transport options and financing.

The other ‘instincts’ are that it is the people of Christchurch, not just the business and property-owning community, that will, collectively, know how best to create a city that will have the kind of human vitality and vibrance to both draw people here – to visit – and keep those here, to live and flourish.

That was the ‘philosophy’ presumably underpinning the very idea of developing a ‘vision’ (Volume 1 of the Central City Plan) that arose out of community consultation.

The critical question, then, is “Does ‘business’ or the community know best what needs to be done and how to ‘lead’ a recovery?”

More simply, what will shape Christchurch’s city centre – the market or democracy?

On the cover of the document “Central City Plan – Business Overview“, Mr Doug Ahlers, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, is quoted as saying:

Communities that build investor confidence recover better and faster.

But, is that the first priority when it comes to the form of the central city? Should, primarily, investors be given what they want/need or should all the people of Christchurch get to decide what they want, implement that – and only then see how investors react?

In terms of the two sets of ‘instincts’ mentioned above, are recoveries from disasters most successful when they are ‘business-led’ or when they are ‘community-led’?

Time for a bit of ‘California Dreaming’ around a community-led future for Christchurch.

I’ve spent the sum total of 3 days in California – one of those days spent in Disneyland. It was the classic ‘stopover’ back in 1978 en route to the United Kingdom. I still remember the vast, wide roads, the featureless yet never-ending built environment, the frenetic sense of everyone scrabbling for your money.

I remember clearly the last day, when we were due to catch the shuttle back to the airport.

Being reasonably independent, self-sufficient types, my father, brother and I lifted our suit cases from where they had sat in the hotel lobby – while we had whiled away a couple of hours – and started to walk them out to the shuttle in front of the hotel. On our very short journey we were practically rugby-tackled by three or four hotel porters, apparently in a frenzy to help us with our onerous ‘load’. Sadly, it was less a case of ‘service quality’ than ‘tip-trawling’.

But that isn’t the ‘California Dreaming’ I have in mind.

Further up the coast from Los Angeles is San Francisco. My wife went there on a family holiday in 1987 and she fell in love with it. The beautiful old buildings – at least in the area where they stayed – the vibrancy, the community.

But that isn’t the ‘dream’ I’m thinking of either.

My dream (for Christchurch) starts at a smallish town in between: San Luis Obispo.

Dan Buettner’s book “Thrive: Finding happiness the blue zones way” has a chapter in it titled “San Luis Obispo: A Real American Dream“.

[As an aside, notice the 'praise' quotations on the website. Three of those quotations come from pre-eminent researchers in the field of subjective well-being ('happiness'): Ed Diener; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; Sonja Lyubomirsky. While not a researcher himself, Buettner has clearly impressed leading researchers with the foundations of his insights.]

San Luis Obispo (SLO) County has 260,000 (approx) residents in the metropolitan area (of which 64,000 are involved in volunteering), 44,075 in the ‘city population’ and is midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, on the coast.

A 2008 Gallup-Healthways study, found the city residents to have “stratospheric levels of emotional well-being” (p. 178) ranking number 1 in the US. They have “much higher rates of satisfaction with their local government than citizens of other municipalities” (p. 179). They also ranked number 20 in terms of mental and physical health.

According to Buettner;

The desire to live here [SLO] by any means necessary may spur a special brand of creative entrepreneurship: SLO has far more self-employed people per capita than the average community in the United States.

Between 1969 and 1979 the mayor (elected for five consecutive two-year terms) of the town was Kenneth Schwartz, now professor emeritus of architecture at the nearby California Polytechnic State University.

When he arrived in SLO in 1952 he described it as “Anyplace, U.S.A.” “a non-descript western community of 14,000 controlled by a few powerful property owners and conservative business leaders“. It “had all the trappings of a postwar California boomtown, choked with neon signs and power lines, without any of the graceful towering trees that you see downtown today.”

He was offered a place on the city’s planning commission and ran successfully for mayor in 1969. According to Buettner:

Under Schwartz, the downtown area became visually attractive and more pedestrian friendly. More important, Highway 101 – the coastal freeway … no longer passed by the front of the mission and cut through the center of town. What used to be a central artery was completely blocked off to traffic, with a central mission plaza constructed in its place … The plaza has now become the sparkling crown of what is now recognised as one of the happiest cities in the United States.

(p. 178)

What was the process, beginning under Schwartz, that led to this “Sea Change” (p. 188)? One small matter is that business signs, by law, “must be small and unobtrusive“. Pierre Rademaker, resident of SLO, owner of a design company and the person who designed the original ‘Gap’ sign, approves: “Signs just beget more signs.”

More importantly, Rademaker believes that one reason for what he sees as the general happiness of SLO residents is that “it’s so easy to feel connected“, mainly because “It’s easy to be involved … [t]o feel like you have a voice.”

And the important point?

Rademaker traced this feeling of empowerment back to Kenneth Schwartz. “It was that mission plaza that changed everything,” he said. “Businesspeople opposed it hugely, but it turned out to be a bonanza for them.” They didn’t know they needed it, Rademaker said. “They wanted to stick to their agenda of keeping all the parking spaces and the highway…”

By contrast, the mission plaza that was constructed was the main tourist drawcard and, as Rademaker continued to explain:

“It created the space we use for concerts in the plaza. Every Friday during the summer there’s a free concert with hundreds of people. Afterwards, the restaurants fill up.”

So, was this just a case of heavy-handed central planning that just happened to strike it lucky?

the most important thing the mission plaza changed was the way people thought about their own city. “If you look at our business community, it went from staid to progressive,” Rademaker said. “But even better: After the referendum to close that street, [won by a vote of 2 to 1] people felt empowered to make change themselves.”

The community made the decision and then supported the planning changes that enforced it.

The process began in 1967 with a student project (‘Mission Gardens’) that involved closing the main street while “most of the downtown merchants and the council majority favored keeping the street open.” Apparently as a result of the controversy that ensued, “Schwartz wasn’t reappointed to the planning commission.” But, the struggle that culminated in the citizen’s referendum on the mission plaza turned the whole democratic process on its head:

the legacy of the mission plaza struggle was not only that council meetings became well attended, with a portion of each meeting devoted to public comment … It was also that city government became more transparent and approachable, and SLO’s citizens became galvanized for constant progress.

(p. 195)

And;

Since the mission plaza referendum, they have consistently pushed their representatives to push for two key indicators of happiness according to the Gallup data: public health and access to outdoor recreation and the arts.

(p. 195)

For example, SLO was, Buettner claims, the first municipality in the world to ban smoking in workplaces, including bars, in 1990. Since the ban, smoking rates have dropped to 13.4 percent, fifth lowest in the U.S.. Shortly after, drive-through fast-food restaurants were banned.

They “demanded more biking and hiking trails“, “put in place a strict one percent growth limit that discourages megadevelopers” and “negotiated with existing real estate holders to maintain a ‘greenbelt‘” with the city having “acquired 3,000 acres of open space” since 1994 (p. 196).

Despite its small size, the city has its own orchestra, 1,289 seat concert hall, an art gallery, a small amphitheatre …

Meander through the city’s website and notice the continuing legacy of transparency and community engagement. Have a look at some of their policemen:

SLO Police Officers on bike patrol

The comment quoted above from Pierre Rademaker keeps coming back to me: ”Businesspeople opposed it hugely, but it turned out to be a bonanza for them.”

Business-led or community-led?

There’s a very interesting issue lurking under the surface of that question, and it’s one that Buettner has thought about.

Being American, Buettner seems to understand something of the tensions between ‘planning’ and individual freedom, especially in the economy. Quoting Tolstoy’s famous line from Anna Karenina that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” he notes that “being happy in America is a funny thing“. Why?

As he puts it;

We value freedom to pursue happiness over any sort of planned happiness, even if the latter is a better guarantee of actual happiness. Our founding documents promise us that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, but there’s no plan to actually achieve it. Maybe our happy cities are like Russian happy families and they’re all alike, but it seems that Americans feel a need to figure out happiness for themselves.

But, to my mind, the conflict isn’t between some imposed ‘central planning’, on the one hand, and individual freedom on the other. It’s between two different ways in which people can exercise freedom – through ‘the market’ and through democracy. It’s about two ways to, in Buettner’s terms, “figure out happiness for [our]selves“.

The Central City Plan was developed in one of the more consultative, transparent and participatory processes that Christchurch has seen for some time. Under those conditions, each one of us could at least feel that we had exercised some influence over the decision. And, for any recovery, that sense matters.

It was imperfect, of course, but as an exercise in participatory democracy it was better than most others I’ve seen in New Zealand (e.g., through Citizens Initiated Referenda). And, importantly, each voice had a roughly equal say – until, of course, business lobby groups pressured the council to redraw its rules and regulations.

Sure, markets are ‘free’ (let’s assume that for now) but the freedom is primarily at the level of how you employ ‘capital’ and is not about reflection, consideration, discussion and debate between people as equal citizens over decisions that matter to – and affect all – of us.

For me, then, when it comes to this question there’s no competition: The recovery – in the Central City and beyond – has to be community-led, not business-led.

I know – I’m dreaming.

Jo Kane on CTV’s ‘One on One‘ interview programme nails the important point – the rules and regulations have been looked at by CERA – and Brownlee – and the conclusion (already) is that, in the Minister’s own words, they need to be “finessed to make sure that they aren’t going to be, of themselves, a barrier to achieving the objectives of that [Central City] plan” (about 9mins55secs in the video).

The interesting stuff – in terms of the rules and regulations – starts at around 7min45s into the video.

A very good interview and very direct style of interviewing.

Well done Jo Kane.

A Cassandra moment

Allow me a Cassandra moment.

Like the Trojans in the midst of a decades long war, living in Christchurch is, for many people, an experience with precious little long-term hope.

Many people have, however, invested a good deal of hope in the Central City Plan as a sign that a positive post-quake future is possible, much as the Trojans wanted to think that that nice wooden horse out on the plains was a sign of peace in our time.

When CERA was established, the Christchurch City Council was given responsibility to develop the ‘Draft Recovery Plan’ for the central city and deliver that plan to the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery.

After having the plan in his possession for four months, Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister, Gerry Brownlee, now appears to have endorsed the plan.

Certainly, the shoppers interviewed by Charley Mann are told, categorically, by Mann, that the government has accepted the Central City Plan.

But, as John Hartevelt correctly notes, if you read the full transcript of the Minister’s speech,

Half of it [the plan] has been set aside and chunks of the other half also put on hold.

And;

The job of implementing the bits the Government has accepted rests squarely now with – wait for it – the Government.

My ‘Cassandra moment’?

Well, you don’t get a full, pungent ‘whiff’ of it until you look more closely.

The Central City Plan – or, more correctly, the process by which the Christchurch City Council was given the job of developing the Central City Plan – has been the Trojan Horse for full government control of the renewal of Christchurch’s Central Business District.

That government control is being imposed to ensure that – despite rhetoric to the contrary – the ‘vision’ in the Central City Plan will take a back seat to so-called ‘market forces’.

Note the different terms I used in the paragraph above – ‘Central City‘ versus ‘Central Business District‘. That difference explains why the CCC had to be given the initial job of consultatively developing a plan that Christchurch residents would support and, then, why the government had to take charge. It was a classic ‘bait and switch‘.

Which explains why business leaders in the city are so happy:

Christchurch business leaders are applauding the Government’s move to set up a new unit to lead the development of the central city.

And;

Canterbury Business Leaders Group chairman Don Elder said the announcement was “a very positive step forward” for the central city and “an opportunity to be bold”. … ”everything is up for discussion”, he said. … ”As we have said many times, the successful recovery of the city will rely on a number of organisations working together and may include options such as public-private partnerships [PPPs],” he said.

”Were very pleased to hear that everything is up for discussion and that the new unit will ensure these options are investigated and considered.”

Canterbury Employers’ Chamber of Commerce chief executive Peter Townsend was equally enthusiastic:

Peter Townsend said it was a good sign for the future of the recovery.

”It’s reassuring to know that there will be clarity around anchor projects such as the convention centre,” he said.

”We have one opportunity to create an iconic city and we now have a way to do this. The business community is committed to playing its role and working in partnership with the unit,” Townsend said.

The plaudits from business keep on coming, largely because, as this article makes clear, the establishment of the Central City Development Unit involves giving business what it wanted and emphasising “market forces”.

In lay terms, that is a polite way of saying that Volume 2 of the Central City Plan has been, as the Minister states, “put aside for a period“.

Volume 2 outlines all of those ‘boring’ rule and regulation changes that would have allowed the City Council to enact the vision in Volume 1 (Green City, Transition City, etc.) through imposing height restrictions, building design requirements and car parking regulations. Now it’s going to be a free for all.

No wonder business leaders are over the moon. They’ve got what they wanted. Way back when the initial draft of the Central City Plan came out the one loud dissenting voice came from business who were complaining about the restrictions which, they said, would discourage investment.

It was also business ‘leaders’ who called for the Council to be replaced by commissioners last year:

Independent Fisheries director Mike Dormer, who leads a largely anonymous group of business leaders opposed to Marryatt’s reappointment, said he had sent a letter to Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee and Prime Minister John Key asking them to appoint three independent commissioners at the council.

Dormer said the commissioners could co- ordinate work among the council, the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority and the business community as they planned the city’s rebuild.

In return for their complaining they were given a ‘Central City Plan – Business Overview‘ which updated the restrictive nature of the regulations. (Have a read of the six ‘top issues’ and the compromises made for property owners and businesspeople from the original draft – four years to rebuild a building of the same height; higher hotels near the convention centre; relaxing car parking regulations, etc..).

But, obviously, that wasn’t enough. The government’s announcement of the CCDU now gives them real ‘confidence’. Mike Dormer now has his wish.

Good luck with that ‘low rise’, ‘green’, ‘safe’, ‘sustainable’ city Christchurch. It’s now only going to happen to the extent that ‘market forces’ – heavily backed by a no-opposition-brooked, central government bulldozer – determine it will.

Yes, we’re allowed our little dreamtime in the soma of artists’ impressions and inspirational future-talk of Volume 1. But, by the time we wake up from our dreamy sojourn we’ll find that the CCDU – acting on behalf of business and the government’s national agenda for the economy – will have established all the literal ‘facts on the ground’ required to make sure those artists’ impressions become little more than chip paper.

Yet surely I’m being too cynical? What about all the Minister’s fine words? Here they are:

I’d like to take this opportunity to recognise Bob’s work leading the council through the massive consultation phase and development of the draft plan.

He deserves great credit for so swiftly engaging in such an extensive and democratic exercise, which has produced a very good result.

I also want to acknowledge the thousands of Canterbury people who gave their time, ideas and commitment to the plan.

That plan is the basis for the way forward because it has such widespread community support.

When you have a good idea, which the draft plan is, you need a vehicle that can deliver the required result in the most cohesive and efficient manner.

But Hartevelt and Vernon Small have at least looked beyond the fine words to the political reality that the Minister was actually communicating.

The praise for Bob Parker was, for Hartevelt, hiding a “less charitable interpretation” that would have “Parker now officially cast as town jester – an amiable knave useful for relating with the plebs but without much of a clue or any real power“.

Small said the praise “borders on the condescending“. More fully,

Mayor Bob Parker comes in for his share of praise, but in a way that borders on condescending. Yes, he is a fine ambassador for the city. But Brownlee suggests the mayor would be best deployed selling the sizzle while the new unit, headed by Cera operations manager Warwick Isaacs, gets on with cooking the sausage.

One of the saddest sights in this is to see the Mayor of New Zealand’s second largest city being publicly humiliated in such an obvious way while maintaining he’s all for what has been announced.

And what’s this the Minister mentions in his speech about a “redevelopment blueprint within 100 days“? Have another look at the Final Draft Central City Plan - from page 135 on where ‘Implementation’ is explicitly discussed – and notice what ‘blueprint’ it indicates:

The Central City Plan will be achieved through partnerships, both existing and those yet to be formed. International experience, such as the terrorist bombings in Manchester in 1996 and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, has shown it is critical to have a shared vision, shared commitment and shared ownership of a plan such as the Central City Plan. This requires a high level of communication and information sharing. The Council can help to make this happen in the Central City. The Central City Plan is a blueprint for what we all need to do.

Hartevelt picks up on this in his concluding paragraph:

But as Brownlee plainly realises, the council, despite its failings, is closer to the people of Christchurch than central government could ever hope to be. It cranked through an impressive and genuine consultation process before emerging with a popular blue-print for the CBD. Today’s announcement risks taking the recovery effort too far away from that.

Now, we apparently need a new blueprint – written, this time, by Warwick Isaacs in 100 days.

There is, of course, talk of ‘collaboration’ between the Council and the CCDU but, once again as Hartevelt points out, the ‘collaboration’ amounts to cherry picking council staff with the needed expertise and having the Mayor as a ‘marketeer’, “an amiable knave useful for relating with the plebs“.

If that’s ‘collaboration’ then I suppose the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are also in a ‘collaborative’ relationship with the Israeli government.

The Minister’s announcement – despite the soothing rhetoric – amounts to a proclamation of one deeply political and ideological point: It is too risky to leave the wrong people with the decision making power.

For the government, we – the people of Christchurch – are the wrong people.

And what rough beast?

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last

Slouches toward [Christchurch] to be born?”

The ground is now being prepared for the future incarnation of Christchurch. What comes our way will bear the marks and influences of the quality of that preparation – for good or ill.

From almost any social, political, community or individual vantage point the ‘soil’ now being prepared for Christchurch’s rebirth looks increasingly toxic.

Demolition orders and red zone designations descend from on high like the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments – immutable, unchallengeable, unreviewable and their origin unknowable (or, at least, unrevealed).

This weeekend, Roger Sutton (CEO of CERA) confirmed that there will be no review of red-zoning decisions while, at the same time, more red zone residents – ordinary people – are realising they’re up against a kind of unbridled power they never thought could be exercised on such a scale in New Zealand.

There’s little accountability for – and therefore understanding of – the decisions being made as part of the so-called Canterbury earthquake recovery.

This is a recipe for producing a disaster rather than for recovering from one.

The powers that CERA and the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery have been voted ensure that.

In fact, even the supposed checks and balances provided by the Community Forum and the Review Panel appear to have had little impact, and shed even less light, on the decision making process.

Only one of the recommendations from the Review Panel, for example, involved a change to an Order in Council (concerning inclusion of the need for the Lyttelton Port Company to consult with the Lyttelton-Mt Herbert Community Board and for a summary of the Board’s views to be included in any application to a consenting authority).

And, please, put your hands up if you can list the contributions and focus of the input from the Community Forum? Me neither. (That is not to be dismissive of the people involved – I have absolutely no reason to doubt that they are doing their very best to represent citizens’ interests. The issue is whether or not this body was ever meant to have real influence.)

Further, once a Section 38 (i.e., an order to demolish a building) has been received, the owner has 10 days (not ten working days) to respond with a demolition plan (if they plan to do it themselves). The timeframe for the demolition must be seen as ‘realistic’ by CERA. There is no appeal, in law, to a Section 38 order. It’s ‘bring it down’, no questions asked (or answered).

And now, it seems that the central city recovery plan will be taken out of the Christchurch City Council’s hands and placed firmly under the control of CERA.

As buildings fall apart, it seems we cannot even hold on to our centre.

Lianne Dalziel, MP for Christchurch East is not impressed:

“But we, the residents of Christchurch, don’t deserve to have our future dictated to by an earthquake tsar; one who is ignoring international best practice and making it up as he goes.”

Dalziel said Brownlee was making the “hard decisions” behind closed doors.

“What buildings will and won’t come down, where we can and cannot rebuild our homes and now what our [central] city will look like in the future, and all the while he refuses to engage with anyone in a meaningful way,” she said.

Minister Brownlee has called it a “crazy rant” but refuses to rule out a government takeover of the planning of the central city. Business leaders and the Council – and very likely most of Christchurch’s citizens – do not want it, but that means less and less in Christchurch these days.

Any Christchurch – or New Zealand – citizen who harboured hopes that they would have some say over what type of Christchurch would emerge from the aftermath of the earthquakes will now have been given a little lesson in realpolitik - 21st century, neo-liberal, New Zealand-style.

That lesson is very simple: You have no say; and you won’t be told why things happen – except in the most general and vacuous terms (e.g., to ‘ensure a rapid recovery’).

The irony of a government supposedly aiming for less government now spreading its powers wider and wider in Christchurch is breathtaking in its crude obviousness.

There is something coming, or emerging, in Christchurch as a result of all of these opaque, unchallengeable decisions – and it doesn’t look good.

Whatever is coming is already “moving its slow thighs” as it emerges from the desert of this city’s rubble. And, so far, its face is no better described than with Yeats’ line “A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun“. It’s as indifferent to the humanity – let alone the wishes – of the people of Christchurch as the ‘pitiless sun’, or the ‘pitiless earthquakes’.

Yet, it shouldn’t be. The structures that are making the decisions about Christchurch’s future are not like massive forces of nature, beyond our control. They involve people, just like the rest of us and, more significantly, they are meant to be part of a democracy – isn’t that what New Zealand is?

Can a democracy vote away democracy and still call itself one?

So, who does have a say in the ‘recovery’? And what are those people mainly concerned about?

Sometimes it takes a (friendly) outsider to point out the obvious. Ian Maxwell, an Australian married to a Cantabrian and a frequent visitor to Christchurch, has given us a no-nonsense reality check when it comes to what’s motivating the ‘recovery’.

It’s possible to argue with some of his points (e.g., over MMP) but there’s far more than a grain of truth in his analysis.

Here’s a few telling quotes:

A visit to the suburban malls highlighted that many of the residents spent their lives entirely in the suburbs of this tiny city, in some sort of consumer frenzy.

And;

The very strange thing about Christchurch, and maybe New Zealand on the whole, is the apparent total focus on money above all other things that one can focus on in life.

And;

Kiwis in general seem to be very focused on the dollars; and the houses, cars and lifestyle than can be realised with the dollars. They are prepared to both sell and pollute their country for short-term gain. And there seems to be scant public debate about, or political control of the “problem”, primarily because it is not recognised as one.

And;

New Zealand also seems way too happy to forge ahead into policy directions untested elsewhere.

When it comes to the response to the earthquakes, Maxwell continues in his refreshingly frank way;

Since the earthquakes, some interest groups have coalesced in a process that will largely result in the removal of the built heritage of the city. The Government is trying to rebuild the city at lowest cost since it is funding part of the bill. Building owners are trying to take the insurance money and run; they can do this most effectively by having their buildings knocked down.

A large fraction of the population, in shock over what has happened, have been conned into thinking the heritage buildings are at fault and can’t be fixed, or ever made safe; a scapegoat has been made.

And;

Add it all up and there is a large fraction of the population for whom the prevailing mood is to just pull it all down and move on. And overriding all of this is the serious desire to rebuild the city at the lowest possible cost. The assumption therein is that any money left over is more likely to end up in the pockets of those supporting such a view.

The common denominator that links Maxwell’s view of New Zealand and his view of the ‘recovery’ is, of course, the centrality of ‘money’ and, therefore, of those who have it and/or desire it.

The ‘recovery’, that is, is not the recovery of Christchurch; it’s the recovery – as rapidly as possible – of economic activity and the generation of money. But isn’t that good? Doesn’t that mean ‘jobs’?

The Canterbury Development Corporation estimated last year that, in a worse case scenario, some 24,000 tradespeople would be needed for the rebuild, including 6,000 painters. But many of these people may well be ‘imported’, as the link suggests. So, there is no guarantee that this rush to economic activity will benefit the current citizens of Christchurch – or even New Zealand – as much as some might hope.

The point that needs to be understood, is that the rebuild is not about ‘us’, the citizens and residents of Christchurch and Canterbury in our entirety as personal, social, political and natural beings. Get business humming is the mantra. Everything else will – supposedly – flow from this simple imperative.

It’s about making money, for some, and generating economic activity for business in general. The beneficent effects of this rush to pull down so that we can get up and running again will, presumably, trickle down to the rest of us – all in good time, no doubt.

Evidence of this is in the government funding for an ‘innovation hub’ in Christchurch on the corner of Manchester and Tuam Streets. In explaining the funding, the Minister for Economic Development (and much else), Steven Joyce said:

Joyce said businesses needed encouragement to stay in Christchurch.

”[It's] about providing security and continuity for Christchurch businesses affected by the earthquakes in ensuring they have the opportunity to stay in the city and retain their staff.”

Government support was crucial to the project’s success he said.

Fine, but what about “providing security and continuity” for everyone else in Christchurch? Instead, we have demolitions apace, government buyouts that are driving people away from the city (unable to afford anything here) and a lack of democracy that makes people feel powerless and out of control of their own lives.

I guess the decision makers are hoping that ‘Man’ does, indeed, live by bread alone. Pump up business and the rest follows. Clear the decks of Brownlee’s ‘old dungers’ and cheap,  tilt-slab heaven will resurrect business activity.

It’s time to be honest about what’s happening here in Christchurch. It’s not a process that takes seriously the kind of Christchurch ‘we’ may want or the kind of city that will ensure the sustainable flourishing of community, population health, personal well-being and an effective and robust democracy.

It’s the opposite.

The evidence is now overwhelming.

When W.B. Yeats penned his poem ‘Second Coming’ it was immediately after the First World War. He could not, of course, predict the details of what was being set in motion – the horrors of economic crisis and the foul blossoming of fascism (the coalescence of state power and corporate interests, as Benito Mussolini described it).

But he could sense that how things were, the actions being taken – the Spiritus Mundi (spirit of the world) – could produce nothing good. Here in Christchurch there is the same sense.

There is a ‘rough beast’ forming in our city, gathering its power as it slouches its way towards us. It cares little for us as citizens; its eyes are intent on a future generated through, and for, money.

But there are signs in Christchurch – letters to the Editor, movements of citizens in the red zone and even a recent editorial cautioning against a government takeover from the normally conservative The Press – that ‘the best’ are gaining some conviction and moving against what is coming.

Epilogue: For those interested, here’s Yeats in full prophetic mood …

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Nevertheless, many commentators seem convinced that at least one, if not both, of the two politically incorrect ‘C’ words applies: ‘Corruption’ and/or ‘Cronyism’.

But isn’t New Zealand perceived as one of the least corrupt societies on the planet? In fact, aren’t we number one ? (Even, for once, ahead of Denmark and Finland!).

Obviously there’s more to this debacle – and to corruption – than immediately meets the eye.

Perhaps it needs to be put in a broader – and subtler – perspective.

Doing things primarily in your own interests – and being proud of so doing – is the mantra of the age. We are exhorted to admire the wheelers and dealers who accumulate personal fortunes for their cleverness in advancing their own self-interest.

Also, the term ‘Tall Poppy’ – strangely enough – tends to be reserved for people who, primarily, have done well for themselves rather than for others.

We have, that is, elevated personal success (i.e., ‘greatness’ – see below) as the pre-eminent raison d’être in life.

In that kind of social soup the temptation to use power to advance self-interest receives an added boost. As the rewards for pursuing self-interest increase – and social sanctions diminish – corrupt uses of power will increasingly become the norm rather than the exception.

They will become ‘normalised’ and simply ‘the way things are’ in a faint echo of Hannah Arendt’s explanation of the operation of evil in Nazi Germany.

In a word, corruption has become ‘banal’ – until, of course, it enters the public world.

It’s worth reflecting on how far we’ve come on this issue, and in what direction.

In April, it will be 125 years since John Acton (Lord Acton) wrote to Mandell Creighton over the proposal, in the Catholic Church, to establish the doctrine of papal infallibility. Acton was against it.

It was in that letter that two of his most quoted comments were penned – one immediately following the other:

I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority, still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.

Power – authority – tends to corrupt those who wield it. But there’s two linked processes here as the second famous quote (“Great men are almost always bad men …”) makes clear. Certainly, power will tend to corrupt but, also, those who achieve ‘greatness’, according to Acton, are overwhelmingly ‘bad men’.

But, of course, the reason for discussing political corruption at the moment is the aftermath of the resignation by Dr Nick Smith from his ministerial portfolios.

Writing a reference for his friend Bronwyn Pullar was the crucial ‘error of judgment’ committed by Dr Smith. At least that’s what almost all commentators appear to agree upon despite John Key claiming that it was the second unearthed letter (actually written and signed earlier than the ‘first’ (reference) letter) that tripped the switch of Smith’s resignation.

But discussion of Dr Smith’s ‘errors of judgment’ and whether or not they amounted to ‘corruption’ or ‘cronyism’ seems to me to have missed a point so obvious, so banal – and so likely – that I think that omission says something significant about just how ‘corrupt’ our everyday responses have become.

The focus of discussion and criticism has been that, by providing the reference, Dr Smith inevitably exerted influence over deliberations that officials within his portfolio of responsibilities were carrying out in relation to one of his friends. As Vernon Small put it:

Her [Bronwyn Pullar's] ability to work before her accident was clearly a key element in her claim, as ACC saw it. That was the very issue Smith addressed. So if his reference was used to promote her argument, there was an obvious inference he was trying to influence a decision within his own portfolio … it is difficult to see what Smith’s reference would achieve, other than to flex political muscle and indicate she had friends in high places.

Interestingly, the reference and other letter were signed by Dr Smith even though he had apparently, on several occasions refused to go in to bat for Ms Pullar. As Small once again notes:

It is simply gob-smacking that Smith would let his guard down and provide the reference after so staunchly and correctly refusing to intercede on her behalf before.

The question, that is, has been whether or not he helped a friend. But, as Bryce Edwards pointed out:

‘Corruption’ is generally defined in political science as the use of power by government officials or politicians for illegitimate private gain.

“Private gain” – not gain for a friend. So, technically, is it ‘just’ cronyism? As John Armstrong claimed:

It was not as if he was doing it [writing the reference] for any apparent financial or personal gain.

So it wasn’t corruption? Well, look again at that word ‘apparent’.

There is a multitude of ways in which we might personally gain from our actions – not all of them financial. In fact, John Armstrong points out a paragraph or two later the obvious gain for Dr Smith in using the power in the way he did – yet, despite directly describing it, Armstrong seems unaware of the ‘personal gain’ that was most likely involved.

Correspondence released this week shows Smith was perfectly well aware of the conflict of interest. His mistake was to think he could minimise it to a point where people would think it was not that big a deal in the grander context of his contribution as a hard-working minister and MP.

He might get into some minor trouble over it, but it would stop Pullar pestering him to intervene in her case.

“It would stop Pullar pestering him.” Now, of course, MPs get ‘pestered’, I imagine, on a reasonably regular basis by many of their constituents and they are not always prone to ‘giving in’ to those constituents.

In this case there may well have been additional factors that bore on how best to deal with the ‘pestering’ just because she was a friend of Dr Smith’s (of whatever kind). Friends are harder to disappoint than others for many reasons. One reason is mentioned by Bryce Edwards (in the link above) when he alludes to the possibility of a particularly emotional entanglement:

Clearly if the relationship was an intimate one, then this might go some way to explaining how Smith might have acted so inappropriately. People don’t always act rationally when strong emotions are involved.

We can ignore the unfortunate counterposing of ‘rationality’ and ‘emotion’ in this way – current research suggests that emotions are, in fact, intrinsically rational and they evolved as means to ‘move us’ to action in settings in which our long evolutionary history has ‘done the thinking for us’. They are a fast – admittedly broad-brush – but certainly rational set of processes.

But, in addition to any emotional element to friendships, we are also often mixed up with them in a complicated set of social and practical mutual obligations and networks that span some years. Friends often know – and can talk to – other people we know, for our good or ill. Friends know details about us that we might not wish others to know. Friends can also be a burden so far as we feel some moral need to commit to the adage ‘a friend in need is a friend indeed’.

Friends, in short, come with risks and responsibilities.

The likely, and most banal, feature of Dr Smith’s actions is that they were certainly done for private gain – just not the gain we might expect (or the gain Dr Smith might prioritise once he views his decisions from a distance – as he seems to have now done). But ‘private gain’ it was.

And this is the point. Dr Smith, like so many others, has used his power to get himself off what can seem, from the outside, to be a very small hook. In some ways, it would have been easier to understand if he stood to gain in a huge way from his actions. The risk would then seem balanced with the potential reward.

But the reward is great, at a personal level. Being the kind of social being that we are, we are most vulnerable to the most (inter)personal of discomforts – that someone close might feel ill of us, that a friend we pity might make themselves a pest and, by doing so, put us in a bind.

“Who will rid me of that troublesome priest?” is as much a psychologically motivated exclamation as it is a politically motivated question.

Once we reach that point we can convince ourselves that using the power we have to remove the (inter)personal discomfort will do no harm. As Armstrong said, “His mistake was to think he could minimise it to a point where people would think it was not that big a deal”.

And how often have we seen ‘Great’ men and women brought low by seemingly trivial acts of corruption?

This is how our world produces a perfect recipe for corruption:

(1) It encourages us to think that our self-interest and personal convenience is a legitimate goal; (2) it implores us to admire those who have worked the world to their advantage; (3) it creates roles of considerable power; (4) it tends to excuse ‘small errors of judgment’.

You’d be hard pressed to design a better society-wide system for encouraging corrupt, self-serving behaviour.

When Lord Acton said “Power tends to corrupt” and, also, that “Great men are almost always bad men” I’m not sure if he connected the two or saw them as separate processes. But they are the same.

Positions of ‘greatness’ – in Acton’s sense – are positions of power. The extent to which a society honours and exalts ‘greatness’ is the extent to which it makes space for the accumulation and concentration of power – via influence or, directly, through authority. And, as he claimed, power corrupts.

We are all – more or, usually, less successfully – seeking and accumulating power to ourselves. As a society, when we admire ‘Tall Poppies’ we are admiring ‘greatness’ and providing social enticements to become ‘great’.

One reason we do this is that our society is relatively – and possibly increasingly – individualistic and so tends more and more to honour the individual in isolation from their connection to the social or collective good. Ever since Adam Smith, in fact, there have been more and more people willing to tell us that by pursuing our own good we contribute to the common good.

In all our lives the tendency, then, is to use what power we might have to pursue our private gain, almost as of right. In short, our individualistic focus leads us to seek power, and what power we gain then has fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of corruption.

Mix this general socially sanctioned tendency to strive for the power to achieve private gain with formally-acknowledged, institutionalised roles and the result is pretty predictable. In all sorts of ways, we will seek to gain from those roles – if only to use the power the roles give us in order to stop someone from ‘pestering’ us.

The canary in the mine of our corrupted society is the willingness to act corruptly for relatively small ends, or gains. We perhaps hope that, by acting corruptly at such a small scale level, others will let us off, forgive – or even support – our corrupt acts.

In that regard, I’m sure that when John Armstrong mentioned the supposed lack of private gain in what Dr Smith did, he intended to minimise the condemnation of Dr Smith’s acts by others. David Farrar has proposed the argument that it was Dr Smith’s underlying kindness and sense of guilt at being unable to help a friend that led to his downfall:

I suspect Nick felt guilty that he had been unable to assist Bronwyn, despite her multiple requests.

At some stage she must have proposed to him, that okay you can’t intervene with ACC but how about you just write me a reference for the doctors stating what I was like before the accident.

Nick managed to convince himself that as it was not directly to ACC, and that as it was not taking a stance on compensation, that would be an acceptable compromise, and that perhaps finally he could have helped his friend.

But it is the acceptance of small, yet corrupt, acts – to alleviate personal annoyances or discomforts – that we need to be watchful over. (What was all that fuss from John Key over the ‘teapot tapes’ all about, by the way?).

Large scale acts of corruption, after all, are probably too obvious to hide (unless they are called ‘policy’, of course). So, it’s the small ones we are more likely to allow ourselves. Especially so in a society that honours the pursuit of self-interest.

The way to a corrupt society is as banal – as ordinary, as seemingly inconsequential – as the one that leads to an evil society, as Hannah Arendt argued.

But, as critics of Arendt have argued, perhaps there is more to evil (and corruption) than the ‘thoughtlessness’ of ‘following orders’ – perhaps we also must subscribe to an ideology.

The ideology that provides the most nourishing environment for corruption is the ideology of self-interest. An ideology – and society – based on private gain is an incubator for corruption, no matter how decent, as individuals, we might consider ourselves. (Great cruelty can of course come from other ideologies – in which the ‘greater good’ can be used to justify it – but corruption is always about private gain.)

That ideology of self-interest has become pervasive.

Perhaps it’s time we acknowledged that we also have pervasive corruption – so banal as to pass, habitually, beneath the radar?

If we did that then we also might cease to adhere to what Acton called the “favourable presumption that they ['Great' men and women] did no wrong“.

There are many ways to gain power and leadership.

One way, famously described in Robert Graves’ novel I, Claudius, is to try your best not to offend people and stay (or be kept) out of the way of others’ machinations.

Once everyone else has ‘killed’ each other off, you’ll be the only remaining option for those capable of putting you there.

It is also apparently useful to appear ineffectual – and to stammer.

It’s tempting to see similarities between Claudius’ journey to the laurel crown of a Caesar with David Shearer’s reluctance to offend anyone, his hesitancy in interviews and the general air of vagueness and uncertainty he’s cultivated in the public’s mind, intentionally or not.

Perhaps Shearer is on to a – surprisingly unlikely – winning strategy, given Claudius’ success?

Maybe. But despite how tempting it is to draw the analogy, such a strategy is not guaranteed to succeed.

[And the word 'Caesar' literally means "a fine head of hair". Perhaps not the best omen for Shearer.]

One particular advantage Claudius had that does mirror Shearer’s rise to Leader of the Labour Party, however, is that the Roman citizenry had almost no idea who he was prior to him gaining the crown.

Pretty soon, tomorrow in fact, we’ll all know Shearer – and what his potential ‘rein’ might signify – a lot better. He is due to deliver a series of speeches that will set his political course for the next while – and perhaps also set in concrete his political destiny.

Despite potentially being overshadowed by a major policy announcement from John Key, with tomorrow’s speech Shearer has the opportunity to establish a clear direction and emphasis for the Labour Party under his watch.

His best bet is to make those signals very clear. No ambiguity, fudging or attempting to have your left-wing support and eat the centrists too. No inherent contradictions either.

And definitely no contradictions in trying to appeal to both. We’ve seen enough of that.

The lasting impression from his positioning in relation to the Ports of Auckland industrial dispute that people will have gained from the media coverage, is that he tried to appeal to centre (right?) voters by saying he wasn’t taking sides and then tried to appeal to Labour’s union supporters by taking sides.

I know, as Shearer tried to argue, ‘the situation changed’.

Management showed ‘bad faith’ by sacking workers when mediation was in the offing. But that explanation for the shift in Shearer’s position just throws him back into ambiguity since it suggests that, if there was no mediation on offer, he would have stayed on the sidelines while nearly 300 port workers lost their jobs – or would he have?

Trying to please everyone by rapidly contradicting yourself is not the way to clarify your leadership direction.

The way to show leadership is to draw a clear line in the sand of the political spectrum (Yes, that spectrum remains a ‘left-right’ one. Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated.)

The art of leadership – at least for a Labour Party leader in New Zealand – is to draw that line just at the point in the spectrum where both those in the centre and those further left find themselves deciding to move a bit and put in their lot with you.

At the moment it is hard to know quite where Shearer would draw that line – or if he’s even aware of the nature of the sand in which it is drawn. But a clear line must be drawn.

The worst thing he could do tomorrow is to mark the sand with a broad, shallow and meandering line that every wisp of political wind could obscure, cover up or completely wipe out. The line has to last – preferably till the next election.

One more word of unrequested advice I have for Shearer: Claiming that the line will be drawn incrementally over the next two years and, worse still, that it will be done in some ‘problem solving’, ‘moderate’, ‘non-ideological’ way would only waste tomorrow’s opportunity.

That’s for three reasons:

First, Key remains the bearer of the Mr Moderate role – though that might change as the policy direction continues to veer undeniably rightwards.

Second, if United Future’s result at the last election is anything to go by, there are precious few voters left in the ‘non-ideological’, ‘problem-focused’, ‘common sensical’ hinterlands.

Third, Shearer is already being questioned over his reluctance to show his hand – showing it slowly, digit by digit, over the many months ahead will ensure that the answer to the question ‘Who is David Shearer and what does he stand for?’ will forever be answered by the public rolling its eyes and shrugging its shoulders.

Clear direction, once again, is the only way forward.

Shearer has one, important, ace up his sleeve at present. In having a public image of being a reasonable, likable person, Shearer could ride that reputation to shift centrist voters leftwards, even if only ever so slightly.

Successfully grasping that opportunity would first require rhetorical skills to present a more left-leaning agenda in ways that show it to be entirely compatible with many more New Zealanders’ views of themselves and their country. More crucially, it would also require a clarity within Shearer himself that that is what he actually wants to do.

That could be the real test awaiting him tomorrow – is he content to move rightwards to meet what he believes is a centre forever drifting to the right or does he have a clear enough commitment (in himself) to the correctness of a broadly left analysis of the modern world to want to pull the centre  slowly back towards the left?

Just what are Shearer’s political commitments and what is his analysis? Tomorrow – I hope – we may find out.

On the assumption that Shearer does, indeed, have broadly left political commitments, there is one final point of comparison – and caution – that may exist between him and Claudius.

In Graves’ sequel to I, Claudius – called Claudius the God – he explores the theme of the balance and oscillation between ideals of Republican freedom, on the one hand, and the peaceful, but dictatorial, atmosphere of Imperial Rome. Claudius, himself, had Republican commitments but, nevertheless, found himself attempting to express them from his Imperial position (as Caesar).

If we imagine that Shearer, and the Labour Party in general, is attempting to ‘square the circle’ of his left analysis within increasingly right-wing structures, strictures and perceived realities – just as Claudius tried to ‘square the circle’ of his Republican sentiments with the realities of a set of Imperial institutions – then at some point he may find himself echoing a modern version of Claudius’ rather sad and self-defeating conclusion about his own efforts:

‘by dulling the blade of tyranny, I reconciled Rome to the monarchy’

But, then, that’s been the Labour Party’s dilemma for some time now.

Bringing the Cathedral down to earth

Who would have thought that, in the saga that is the ‘recovery’ of Christchurch, it would be the Anglican Church that would give us the clearest example of the emptiness of modern expressions of ‘community’?

When push came to shove – which, quite literally, happened to the Christ Church Cathedral – citizens of Christchurch were given a clear message: Butt out, it’s not yours so you don’t have a say. The wording, of course, was more diplomatic than that – but the sense, ultimately, was the same.

There have been signs for some time that the decision was going to be taken ‘in house’:

Former Christchurch mayor Garry Moore has joined calls for cathedral leaders to be more open about the building’s future.

“A small number of people are making a big number of decisions that we all need to participate in,” he said.

“We need to have this debate in public. The church is an institution and, as a member of our society, they need to be open as well.

“I think for buildings like the old post office and the cathedral … discussions need to be held out in the public. They are part of the heritage fabric of this city.”

So much for ‘our’ Cathedral.

The veil has been ripped, and revealed behind it is a thoroughly modern corporate entity operating on bottom line principles, led by a new CEO (in all but title). (As with all new CEOs, there has also been a bit of restructuring.)

Yet the decision to demolish the Anglican Cathedral is bad for the Anglican Church, whose worthies are presumably too bent over the bottom line to look up and notice just how bad. They have just managed to undermine their influence in whatever kind of Christchurch manages to survive.

Let me be clear: I don’t mean that they have ‘upset’ a lot of ordinary people in Christchurch and the bad ‘PR’ will hurt their ‘brand’. I mean something far more materially significant that no amount of time or spin will counter.

Their own decision not to restore but to build some completely different building will ensure, on its own terms, that the Anglican Cathedral will not occupy the role the old Cathedral did. And that means that the Anglican Church will also not occupy what role of influence it used to.

I would have thought this was obvious but, as I said, bottom line considerations have a habit of making ‘decision makers’ take for granted that everything else stays the same while they are busy making their ‘optimal’ decision. Problem is, everything else doesn’t stay the same.

The social dynamic changes and some decisions – such as this one – manage to move you away from that dynamism and leave you becalmed in a backwater with few concerned about you or your fate. That’s what this decision will do for the Anglican Church in Christchurch. It amounts to a decision to forego the opportunity to continue to be identified with the city, and to be identified by its citizens as a special part of Christchurch.

Why?

Shorn of its historical significance as the quintessential expression of the efforts of the early settlers, any new Cathedral will simply become one of many new, post-earthquake buildings. Christopher Moore opines, hopefully, in The Press that:

Christ Church Cathedral’s story now enters a new, as yet unwritten chapter. But in whatever form it reappears, let’s pray that it will generate as much love, respect and pride as the church which occupied a central place in Christchurch’s heart for so long.

Sorry Christopher. That’s not going to happen, no matter how many PR efforts the Anglican Church puts in or how many fashionably ’21st century’, quirky design features the new (budget) Cathedral sports.

The vast bulk of Christchurch’s citizens are not Anglicans – and most of those who call themselves Anglicans are just ‘nominal’. (Figures for New Zealand religious affiliation are here and here.) There’s no reason for the rest of us to hold a new Cathedral more dearly to our hearts than any number of other new buildings – and, if the Catholic Cathedral is restored in full, my guess is that that will be the Church we’ll all be taking our visitors to see (it was always a far more beautiful building anyway).

No, the Anglican Church has just decided its way into irrelevance.

But there’s another, more general, aspect to the decision: it sends out a huge symbolic message to everyone in Christchurch: If ‘we’ can’t restore the Cathedral then what hope does any other building in Christchurch have?

In a word, the decision pronounces loudly and clearly that the Christchurch that was is completely gone and, what is more, that there is no recognition (by those who will have the power to decide) that some continuity is required amongst the imposed carnage of change (imposed as much by numerous entities’ ‘bottom lines’ as by the earthquake).

No, it will all come down to the money and to the accounting of individual property owners. This decision should make all Christchurch citizens acutely aware that not only is the Cathedral not theirs (and never was) the same is true of the central city. It is not their city, it is owned by a series of private owners who will not be required to consider the views of ‘the community’ of Christchurch.

The neo-liberal chooks have well and truly come home to roost and we can say bye-bye to any notion of an actual community that is able to make decisions in its own interests.

The background to this decision and the way it was announced are object lessons in how talk of ‘community’ in today’s world is a snow job of alpine proportions. If a so-called ‘community’ has no real power to save its most ‘iconic’ building, used so extensively to define itself, then to what extent is it really a community worthy of the name? – and why isn’t it? (more on this later).

It also needs to be emphasised that the Anglican Church in Christchurch is one of the institutions most prone to talking about ‘community’  and its importance (probably second only to the Mayor). And, irrespective of religious affiliation – or lack of – the Anglican Cathedral has always been assumed by people in Christchurch to be an expression-in-stone of that level of ‘community’ commonly called a city.

Here’s how that building fitted into our sense of ourselves as a community – in very ordinary, non-religious, non-official ways.

I have climbed the concrete spiral stairs up the Cathedral spire at least twice in my life (probably more times but I can’t specifically remember when else). Once – around about 1971 – I was taken up there by a schoolfriend and his white-haired father.

I remember looking out of the west balcony and being told by his father that if you dropped a penny from there and it hit a passerby on the head it would be travelling so fast that it would go right through them to the ground. That impressed me in a schoolboy kind of way.

We spent maybe twenty minutes looking out at all the sides – seeing the Port Hills down Colombo Street, the clear sky above and any number of buildings. I remember the United Services Hotel was still there (now the ANZ building – well, that’s right now, but who knows in a few months time?).

The second time I was with some family members visiting from England in the 1980s. My brother and I were showing them the landmarks from the balcony, showing off the city as so many locals have done.

When Bishop Victoria Matthews made the announcement she mentioned the

“high level of community interest and sense of ownership” in the cathedral as an iconic building and a place of worship for many.

‘Sense of ownership’? I’m sorry Bishop Victoria Matthews but that was not a ‘sense’ of ownership – it was ownership, in a far more fundamental ‘sense’ than legal title.

And that is what your Church had always encouraged us to believe and it is one important reason why the Anglican Church retained an influence and prominence in this city far beyond the size of its diminishing congregations. It was also the reason it received constant support and, I suspect, funding from our city.

As a brochure (that can be downloaded from here) puts it:

It is a church for the city, open to all, and its programmes are supported by people of many different beliefs.

For those of us who climbed those stairs to stand looking out over our city or to show, proudly, those things that were ‘ours’ to our guests, the Cathedral was not just some private building (like a showy ‘Sky Tower’ or the reception foyer of a classy Hotel) that we thought we could get away with sneaking into.

No, for us the Cathedral was more like the Town Hall, the Provincial Chambers or the Arts Centre – it was a public building in the full sense of the term. It was ‘ours’.

But this decision has shown us, quite plainly, that we were wrong. It was not ours and, more significantly, the very Church that encouraged us to embrace it as ours was there to remind us, in the end, that it most definitely wasn’t.

With that decision, we – the rank and file people of Christchurch – have been turned from a ‘community’ for whom this Cathedral existed into an emotional, skittery herd in need of careful rhetorical massaging as we get let down gently into the ‘realities’ of the situation.

While ordinary people are often encouraged to think of themselves as part of a community (e.g., Christchurch or New Zealand) and to participate in the sentiment and emotion of that connection the reality is clearly that, when there are decisions to be made, the door will be closed to us.

As a result, the power to make decisions about the very things (e.g., the city’s Cathedral) which we were told symbolised the reality of our ‘community’ is denied us. It is telling that the Mayor, Bob Parker, made the suggestion to the Bishop that the Cathedral could move into public ownership in order for it to be restored. The offer was rejected.

Apparently, there was too much of an “emotional link” for the Church to what must be – even now – a valuable piece of inner city real estate. Bishop Matthews went on

“That is not a possibility for the church. The cathedral needs to sit on Anglican land because of the whole notion of consecration. That is not the way we want to proceed,” she said.

I hadn’t realised that a private property title was required for a church to be consecrated – quite a curious legal stipulation for a spiritual matter – but presumably she knows better than me what God requires. Further,

“This site is very important to Christchurch and the Anglican church. That has been a place of prayer for all those years. One-hundred-and-thirty years for that building.

“Prayer has soaked into the walls and earth. You can’t walk away from that.“

Well, it appears that, on the one hand, you can, indeed, walk away from the prayer-soaked walls, but, on the other hand, the dirt – which presumably collects the prayers as they seep earthwards down the walls – is another matter. That is far too special.

But perhaps there’s, in fact, a more positive lesson about community to be had from all of this, and one that applies to other issues in New Zealand such as land and asset sales.

When push does come to shove, we need to realise that all that rhetoric we hear (from all sorts of institutions – political, commercial and religious) about how we are all part of a ‘community’ is, as I said, a snow job. Yet there was one very real expression of community that has been noted constantly during these earthquakes and the recovery.

Many of us found our community in the same street and in the faces of people who came to bend their backs to the heavy tasks we had before us. Underpinned by the mountain of practical and material difficulties we all faced we generated connections and, more importantly, a sense of social ‘common fate‘. We ‘moved together’ to do what needed to be done.

This is the basis of community. It requires a collective project, performed together in a coordinated way (determined by all members of the community) and towards an end that all benefit from and contribute to.

What made us think that the Cathedral was an ‘expression-in-stone’ of our community and collective existence was the notion that it was ours and that we, together, could use it for our collective goals. But now we know we can’t.

No community exists when everything is held privately – that social condition is merely an association of substitutable, property-owning individuals who have, by definition, no ‘common fate’ (or none that they wouldn’t like to be able to avoid). We are seeing in Christchurch the result of that social condition every day.

The challenge, then, is obvious. If we wish to be an actual community then we need buildings, projects and resources (capital) that are ours, collectively, that we can employ- put to work – for our ‘common fate’.

That applies as much to New Zealand as a whole - its land and its ‘assets’ - as it does to this broken city I call home.

Our community – and that proportion of the material and practical ‘capital’ that is an utter prerequisite for its existence – must be held in common; in all of our hands.