Last Friday I spent a couple of hours wandering around some of the eastern suburbs of Christchurch (Woolston, Phillipstown, Linwood, Avonside, South Brighton) with my friend Michael, looking at and taking photos of the resources available in public parks. Resources which communities could have made better use of in the recent earthquake emergency, or could develop further so as to make life more pleasant now, and more bearable in emergencies. I was checking out my notion that an 'eco retrofit' of the city's parks would be the cheapest and most effective thing the city could do to ensure that every community has a safe and sanitary 'emergency centre' to use whenever built infrastructure and reticulated services fail – with the added bonus that making parks into stronger community centres now would improve community cohesion and capacity and increase resilience at all times.
In Woolston we saw that a large tank of water had been placed in Woolston Park near the existing little community centre. This centre has a water fountain in front of it, full of safe, drinkable water (I drank it) coming from a bore which has probably been there for over one hundred years (the park is over a century old).
There was a large industrial water tanker outside the Phillipstown community centre next to Phillipstown school. The school site dates from the nineteenth century, and it would have had its own well then. The next park we came to, Beverley Park beside the Avon River, has also been there a long time, and the water from its fountain was clean and clear.
A little further along the river we passed the entrance to Avonside Drive, now closed to all but residents of the one of the most badly affected areas. Just along from that corner is the Wilding Park Tennis Centre, where community showers were being offered – presumably with water from the centre's own well.
The water fountain in Woodham Park next door was working, but the toilets were not. They had signs on the doors saying that they had yet to be inspected.
At South New Brighton Park the toilets were boarded up for safety reasons, but there was fresh drinking water, and a gas barbecue and picnic table.
So if one had food one could safely cook it and eat it there, and wash it down with safe water. However, as none of these parks had food gardens, there was no food on hand to cook. The next day I went to a birthday party in Addington, and on the way back I stopped to take photos of the tranquil and productive little community garden in Strickland St, which is one of the very few community gardens in Christchurch to be on publicly-owned (council) land.
Although the roads all around were very humpy and bumpy (and had been very silty) and the nearest shopping centre in Selwyn St was totally cordoned off, in the garden seed was being saved, winter veges were coming on, and compost was being made. Tons of it – this garden processes a phenomenal amount of kitchen waste from nearby houses.
I thought about how water and land are currently being neglected or misused, and how - with very little extra effort and money - much more could be made of these existing urban resources if they are valued for what they are truly worth, and further developed as community assets.
I have put my thoughts up on The Eco-City page on this blog, and welcome your comments on this subject.
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