Marsden is Here

After all I am one of the lucky ones; not only did I not lose anyone directly in the quakes I even benefited materially from the "repairs" to my home*. My life and work were mostly unaffected and since have continued on a generally upwards trajectory.

*( Like many the assessment was questionable, the workmanship left something to be desired in places and the scope was "tightened" several times between assessment and implementation meaning some things which probably should have been done rather than others were not. But my claim was acted on (un)fairly quickly and my home was still in better condition when they finished than before the quakes.)

If I only paid attention to my own situation or that of people like myself that might leave me content. But my social circles contain many who were not so fortunate. Their homes, lives, families, studies, health ... have been massively disrupted and I do not choose to disregard their experiences and those I read of from further afield. For so many people the past five years have been one battle after another; not all quake related but certainly quake-exacerbated, and so much of it seems to have been unnecessary.

~~~
In some ways the February 14th aftershock this year was beneficial. Some people might have been in danger of believing the platitudes which will have been spouted today about how well we are all doing; how well the rebuild is progressing. Instead as PTSD kicked in and "old" responses rose sharply to the surface there was an up-swell of awareness that no, everything is not all right; yes, we still need help.

In the last five years we have seen proof (if there had been any doubt) that the insurance industry is more interested in holding on to its money than in meeting it's contracted obligations. We've seen the one locally owned insurance company which was by nature overexposed to the risk "bailed out" by the government then promptly chopped up; the "good" bit sold off to one of the same overseas re/insurance companies which fights determinedly to not return the money they have taken from other insurees in premiums over the years (IAG) and the "bad" bit put into limbo (Southern Response, which can only progress so far without the goverment actually stumping up some money to cover the work that needs doing).

We have seen that we have a government who are more interested in bottom lines and doing deals with those same insurance companies than in standing up for the rights of the people they purport to represent. More interested in a magical accounting "surplus" than in the wellbeing not only of Christchurch but of the entire country. Only interested frankly, to all intents and purposes to improve the lot of "people like them" no matter the cost to anyone else. Quick to promise financial relief but very slow to spend any money which would not already have been spent.

We have learnt that our EQC disaster recovery fund had already been plundered by the government (through simply directing it to put the money into government-issued bonds), and there is no indication this government has any plan to rebuild it against future need.

We have seen control of "Christchurch's Recovery" taken away from Christchurch from the word "help". Hijacked by people who are more interested in vanity projects (which they then turn around and demand the people of Christchurch make ourselves responsible for paying for) than in the places people live. More interested in cutting costs and corners than in the human cost or actual repair. More interested in being "in charge" than in delivering what a broken city needs.

Today, the 22nd, is a day for reflecting on what we have lost in and around Christchurch. Not just people and buildings but well-being, dignity and agency. So much of which has not been taken by the quakes themselves but by the deliberate actions and inactions of those who claimed the people of Christchurch would be "looked after".

For those outside Christchurch it might be worth thinking about, "if a major disaster struck where you are, what would you lose?"

Emma summed up neatly why in her earthquake anniversary post so I am going to borrow her words to finish. "Because this isn’t about the past, five years on. Things are still happening."

This afternoon I attended a CERA community workshop on the Greater Christchurch Recovery Strategy. This was along the same lines as the CCC's Share an Idea workshops but looking at the "Greater" Christchurch area.

At least that was the theory. From what we heard from a couple of other tables as the facilitator asked around for a sampling of the topics that had come up some people missed the "Greater" bit and focused on the "CBD".

The Recovery Plan is divided into 5 areas<
- Community wellbeing
- Culture and heritage
- Built environment
- Economy (I sat with this group, which seemed to have attracted less interest that the others)
- Natural environment

The workshop suffered for the process not being clearly explained - so we were asked to do stuff with no clear context, no understanding that there was a next step, an the commiserate confusion of some of the participants, time wastage on the first pass and lack of time on the later. (For the record the workshop was facilitated by staff from ESR.)

First we were asked to individually write on sticky notes what signs would tell us in 5 years time that the Recovery Plan was working. The next step was grouping these notes into themes or clusters. The answers focused on economic indicators and clear reporting from CERA. We picked the top 3 to continue with - Unemployment at or better than pre-September levels, the number of tourist beds back up to pre-quake levels and the tourists coming back, and reporting from CERA showing how the region's Economic recovery was matching or exceeding the targets in the Recovery Plan.

For each of these we then looked at
- what needs to be done to achieve this (me for unemployment was about identifying opportunities and needed skills ASAP, -publicising them- and getting training organised)
- what challenges and hurdles stand in the way (politics was a common theme here)

Unfortunately as mentioned above the time we had available was not made clear which meant spending far to much time on the first and then rushing through the last two as we discovered actually we only had 15 minutes left to do -all the rest- not 15 minutes left to finish the first one.

We then went through this process again for the question "What can we use this opportunity to do much better than before". This time we only had to pick one of our clusters, explain what it was about, and why it was so important. Unfortunately by this time people were becoming unfocused and kept making suggestions for specific outcomes, which wasn't what either of the questions was asking for.

We picked Transport as being important for getting resources (including labour) to and from new business locations in a timely fashion and supporting a decentralised industry (future disasterproofing).

(My initial ideas were around getting a range of industry/residential distributed around the hinterland settlements connected to Chch as a central hub by light rail. This would let people live further out of the city but commute easily, or live/play in the city but commute out to work. Or a bit more out there - "Make Christchurch the Silicon Valley of the South Pacific")

Finally we each got to write down one piece of advice we'd like to give CERA. Mine was "Be completely transparent and listen to / act on the feedback this garners you". There was also a feedback form on which I left the same criticisms I mentioned above.

~~~
There was one woman at the table who couldn't stop talking, didn't quite seem to get the point of the exercise and generally rubbed me up the wrong way. Most of the others I was on the same wavelength with to some degree. I take that as an indication that there was a good range of viewpoints and personalities present :-/

Although looking around the room I did feel that my age group and younger were ... under-represented. Still there are a number of workshops being held across the city, hopefully the average will work out.

Met up with shenya to wander around the expo this afternoon. First time I've been into the [whoever the sponsor is now] arena. It was busy, but not crowded although there were a lot of people listening to the speakers, possibly as many as were making their way around the stands.

It didn't take too long to wander around the displays and whack some sticky notes up. Mostly versions of suggestions I've already submitted online, but it eventually occurred to me the value of having other people there read them as well as whoever ends up making the plan - or at least whoever gets to sort out all the suggestions and report up on the themes.

A lot of the trends I'd already seen on the website/twitter stream were strongly evident - a clean green city, bike lanes, fewer cars in the city, good public transport, boutique shops, restaurants, inner-city living. One trend I hadn't noted before can be summarised as "keep the yoof out" - I didn't agree with that so I whacked up a note suggesting graffiti parks, skateboard arenas, places for youth to congregate.

[pops over to the suggestion site to add]

A city has a future because of it's young people. Don't "keep the yoof out" - give them places to be active in the way of their generation

I brought the feedback form home with me to write up longer-form answers to the questions as "homework", then I'll hand it in at the local service center.