Prototype City Introduction DRAFT 120830 Camia Young Background A group of six thesis students from the University

of Aucklands School of Architecture and Planning have pooled their individual thesis and are engaging in a collective design project for the future rebuild of Christchurch. The brief for this project stemmed from two critiques on the Christchurch Central City Draft Plan, which was released in December 2011. During the consultation phase an International Speaker Series was held in Christchurch and the invited guests were asked to critique the plan. The general consensus was two fold, that the plan was limited in scope due to the mandate to look only at the CBD, and it lacked a financial strategy to realize the plan. It was from these critiques that the aim for this groups project emerged, which is to consider the entire Christchurch legal boundary and any factors effecting it, i.e. regionally, nationally and globally. As well the group set out to research the local economies to find drivers for proposed urban strategies. The recently released Christchurch Central Development Units Blueprint to rebuild the Central Business District underscores the importance of taking the economy into consideration; while the students offer different proposals the intention to foster a healthy economy is shared. Further to these two critiques is the added ambition to develop an appropriate strategy for Christchurch, one that paves the way for its future. This requires understanding what makes Christchurch unique, while at the same time reflecting on 20th Century planning so as to learn from it and develop a 21st Century approach. Cities like nature evolve and adapt to changing trends, technologies and economies. In the late 20th Century it was common for large areas of cities to be developed as new financial centres, like Canary Wharf in London or La Dfanse in Paris, but once completed they lacked the character and qualities of urban space that the older parts of these European cities offered. These developments were 15-20 yearlong construction projects, and were conceived of as large-scale modern developments with a fixed end result. Because of the nature of how these projects were designed, they were unable to adapt to change, which involves a certain organic responsive quality like that found in older areas of European cities. This meant that these areas once completed already felt dated, as they were often designed a decade or more earlier. Further, we live in an age where the future is unlikely to be like the present, and given the exponential rate of innovation the future is rather unpredictable. The students proposals aim to build on these understandings and anticipate the inevitable nature of change and its inherent unpredictability. To do this they are approaching planning not from an end result but rather from a starting point. Prototype City Each student started the year by researching a unique economy in Christchurch with the aim to tease out possible catalysts for growth and stimulate investment in the city. The six economies are: Innovation, Energy, Housing, Creative, Experience and Transportation. There is a strong overlap between the individual projects, recognizing that economies are not independent from one another, rather they intimately coexist. At the students midyear review we hosted a conversation with planners and architects to discuss how the different project could come together and establish a shared concept. Following the conversation we found that a common thread among the thesis projects is the notion of starting with a small project and allowing it to be tested, improved and then propagate, this gave rise to the idea of a Prototype City. There have been examples from Gap Filler and other pop-up venues showing how these urban interventions can lead to innovative projects. In Foreign Policy (December 2011) Saskia Sassen and Edward Glaeser sited Christchurch as one of the top 10 cities shaping the next century. On this list are cities like Singapore, Cairo and London, what makes Christchurch unique on this list is that: it is the smallest of the cities with a population of 360,000 people, it is surrounded by abundant natural resources including fresh water and arable land, and because of the massive rebuilding effort following the earthquakes there is a unique opportunity to rethink urban form. One way Christchurch could capitalize on this opportunity is by recognizing these inherent traits and building on them; with these three variables Christchurch is uniquely positioned to test ideas at the urban scale and export them, becoming a prototype city. This would move Christchurch from following trends to setting them, to do this it would require a subtle but important shift in the agenda towards projects that aimed to create something.

In each of the theses there is an intention to draw on this concept of the prototype city. In the Innovation Economy, Alex Haryowiseno recognizes that Christchurch is undergoing a typical evolution where low value manufacturing is being replaced by high manufacturing. Alex is developing a strategy that promotes dynamic zoning along the rail corridor, which aims to attract investors from various innovative research and development companies to populate this under-utilized area in the city. In the Energy Economy, David Wong is proposing a transition from a fossil fuel dependent economy towards a renewable energy based economy; to do this he is proposed an green energy precinct. Biran He has approached the Housing Economy by developing housing that can adapt to trends and transform over time to meet changing demographics. In the Creative Economy, Praveen Karunasinghe explains the value of providing a creative education vs. a productive education, and develops a strategy to distribute alternative learning centers throughout the city which promotes a mindful society and life long learning. While Erica Austin addresses how to shift from an event city (static venues) to an eventful city (transformational venues) in the Experience Economy by designing a centralized events hub with satellite structures that populate the city at different times of the year. And lastly to tie the group together, Jacky Lee has developed a proposal for the Transportation Economy that transitions Christchurch from a city congested with single occupant vehicles towards a multi-modal interactive city that can efficiently move people and goods. Together each of these projects in their own way taps the potential of being a prototypical city by building on inherent traits found in Christchurch.