Visiting an evolving Christchurch

Surprisingly, even though we were in Christchurch for several days and found the city to be pretty fascinating, we didn’t take many photos – not even enough for an album! I guess we were feeling camera-ed out or something. (Scott: It was also sprinkling a bit.) We had a really fun time exploring the city though – we were there for New Year’s Eve and found a pretty hip little section of town having a party that we could join, took lots of walks through various sections of the city (more on that below), and got to meet up with our friends Matt and Christine, who are living in New Zealand for a few months.

You may know that Christchurch was hit by a series of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011, and it is striking how the aftermath of those quakes is still visible in the city. So much of the city needed to be demolished and rebuilt after the earthquakes that they are still working on doing so, and much of the city center remains in a demolished state, making it feel unusually empty. There are still ruins to be seen, empty lots, blocked off areas, and many construction sites; but there are also murals and street art that have popped up in the vacant spaces, transitional buildings and a young, rebuilding vibe that reminded us at times of Berlin. For us, it was hard to do anything in Christchurch without thinking about the earthquakes – their effects are everywhere. We visited “Quake City”, a museum about the 2010-2011 earthquakes, and learned a lot about what they had been like, what the city had done following them, and what the scope of the damage was. It certainly hit home for us SF-dwellers, and we’ve got it on our to do list to re-examine our earthquake plans and kit when we get back. It would be interesting to come back to Christchurch in 10-20 years to see how the downtown landscape has changed; we saw plans for a very forward-looking, modern-world city that would be pretty unique, given their opportunity to start from scratch on so much of the city center.

In any case, we really enjoyed our time in Christchurch, and if you want to know more about it, you’ll have to have us tell you about it, since our photos certainly don’t tell that great of a story!