Dear Christchurch ...
I love you. I think I've always loved you, but my love has changed as I grew and changed. When I was a kid I loved you as the fascinating, mature auntie of sleepy little Invercargill. I was always madly excited to be coming to visit for the summer holidays despite the horrors of the all-day drive each way. You were seductive then, filled with promise and the allure of exotic things to do. Things like Orana Wildlife Park with its lions, and QEII with its hydroslides. I thought you were really sophisticated and amazing back then.
Then I became a teenager and you were still cool, but you morphed into an older sister - the one who takes you out and gets you drunk whenever you're around and who you look up to, thinking she knows it all. Even though I had been to bigger cities overseas and eventually lived in Dunedin, which was itself much more exciting than Invercargill, I still thought you were the coolest place to hang out. I was visiting you more often than once a year because my parents and several of my friends had added themselves to your number and I still found you wildly exciting, but for different reasons. I discovered your nightlife and your cultural life. I started visiting your museum more often and remember being entranced with your art gallery even before it was housed in its stunning new building.
My love changed again when I became one of your citizens. At first I was as wildly excited as I'd always been and scurried here and there doing the things you were known for but soon enough that excitement turned to normality and I started treating you as part of the furniture. You were just always there and I'm afraid I started taking you, and all the things you offered, for granted. I wore you like an old shoe - you were a bit ragged round the edges maybe, and not the most sophisticated thing around, but I found you really comfortable and homey. I stopped exploring you and all your opportunities because I always thought I'd get around to it later. I didn't stop loving you, but my love changed and became more about your people and the community I discovered when I moved to the New Brighton area.
My love changed again two years ago, on September 4th, 2010. That day was almost a blessing for our relationship because I realised quite quickly that I had been taking you for granted. I was pushed to go out and explore you in more depth. You became kind of cool again - you were like an eccentric grandmother, doing your own thing in your own way and enjoying it. Of course, there was always the moaning about your boy racers and the well heeled old boys' network never did approve of the quirkiness hiding in your midst. I had barely started to find and enjoy those quirky things that made you so much fun when February 22nd 2011 arrived and many of those things I loved about you were destroyed forever.
Now I love you in another different way. I feel like you've now become one of my closest friends and what I see happening to you upsets me. Your adopted parents (Bob and Tony) and your new foster parents (Gerry, Roger, CERA, CCDU and the central government) don't seem to want to let you grow up. After February 22nd you stepped up, your citizens started organising themselves and some amazing things happened. You really let your quirky side out to play. You had a tough time of it, no-one will deny that, but although you kept getting knocked to the ground you kept standing up again and carrying on. You persisted and, in some ways, you even prospered. In many ways you've grown up a lot over the last two years. Unfortunately, instead of letting you be a more grown up city your parents want to make you just like you were before, only flasher. They've created a nice plan for you but it's all about what they want for you; they haven't really taken on board what you want. Like over-protective parents all over the world, they don't want to let you risk hurting yourself again. You've been hurt so much already, their theory goes, that you need to be wrapped up in cotton wool and insulated as much as possible from things that might hurt you more, including your own vision of yourself. I don't doubt that they love you too, but unfortunately their plan to keep you safe will stifle you and could lead to a teenage tantrum. I kind of hope you do throw a tantrum; it would be glorious to see your parents' faces if you do tell them an emphatic NO.
But don't worry, Christchurch; they won't be able to keep you safe forever. One day soon you will adopt new parents and in a few years your foster parents will have to give you back to those adoptive parents, whoever they may be. In the meantime I'm sure that their big plans for your 'heart' won't have the effect they want it to. It will please those who disliked the creative, fun side you showed in your shabbier areas and will be nice, shiny and expensive to show off to visitors but if they stay in there, none of those visitors will be in on your real secret. They won't know where your real heart is; the one where your citizens, the everyday people, come to play with you. I don't know where it will be, either, but I know you'll have one. It could be Sydenham, so close to the old heart and trying so hard to reinvent itself already. It could be Riccarton, where those cut off from your centre currently congregate. It might be Addington with its new crop of bars and its sports and theatre focus. It may even be somewhere further out like Hornby with its TC1 growth boom or Woolston with its attempt to reinvent its old industrial self into a funky area of bars and retail. Wherever it is I'm pretty sure of one thing - it won't be 'the core' inside its frame. The high rentals on the retail spaces in there will ensure it's not a space for your ordinary people, the people who are your true heart, the people who made you quirky and gave you character.
But I wouldn't worry, Christchurch. Your people will find a way and a place to have their fun and it will be that area or areas of natural, organic growth which will shape and define your future, not the straightjacket your parents are all trying to push you into. Maybe, like all good teenagers, you should let them have their fun but just ignore it and do your own thing anyway. After all, your foster parents' time is limited and in three and a half years you'll be out on your own and then you can do whatever you want. In the meantime, just make sure you keep your heart beating somewhere. That's all you need to survive and from where I sit you're doing a pretty good job of survival.
In fact your survival is why I think I love you more now than I did as a child, teen or young adult. I love your spirit, I love your people and I love the places you have left even more now that we've been reminded how transitory man-made structures can be. I love sitting in your botanic gardens watching my kids run around; I love that it's a place of such peace so near to so much destruction. I love that in there we can lose the sounds of demolition in the city and just relax. I love walking on your beaches; I love that even on that side of the city, which still looks bruised from the beating you took, the beaches are there, beautiful as ever and a reminder that while nature can be so devastating, it can be healing too. I love your Re:Start container mall; I love that it was a group of your people who made it happen and that people continue to have ideas like this to keep you revitalised. I love your citizens, the ones who created Gap Filler, Greening the Rubble, local community gardens and all the other little bright spots that make you such an interesting place to be right now. I love your communities which are supporting the people who have been struggling for two long years. I love the way your art community has taken to the streets now that gallery space is so limited; I love that the art of your talented people is accessible to so many more now. I especially love how many people are passionate about you; those people may have different ideas about how best to help you recover but they all have one thing in common: they want to see you thrive and return better than ever. Whether they want your cathedral to stay or go, whether they are enlivened by your new central city plan or not - whatever it is that stirs them to passion - the one thing they all have in common is that they love you. They still love you, despite everything you've been through.
Christchurch, I still love you, other people still love you, and with enough people loving you and doing their best to reinvigorate you, you'll do just fine.