In recent years, gravel carparks have become a particularly pervasive presence within the central city. Land that was previously used for homes, offices, restaurants, schools and shops is now used to store vehicles. If you have ever wondered why this is the case, or if the buildings will ever return, you could come to the Tuesday club this week.
Brendon and Nick will be talking about the shape of the central city and exploring what is encouraging such a large proportion of land to be given over to carparking. The genesis for the talk came from a recent blog post Brendon wrote exploring underlying urbanism lessons on land wastage.
We will touch on some high level urban economic principles, explore some of the perverse incentives, and some levers we could pull to build a better central city so that Christchurch can achieve its strategic goals of 20,000 residents living within the four Aves and a built environment consistent with its climate change objectives.
Nick Lovett is a transport and policy planner who worked at the Christchurch City Council for the past five years. Brendon Harré is a psychiatric nurse with an interest in land-use, affordable housing, and transport.
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