WHY MaRTI?
For Greater Christchurch to be successful it needs a better spatial plan
Back in September 2019 I took part in a presentation about an integrated rapid transit and housing scheme which we called MaRTI. You can read the executive summary here to get the overview of what was being proposed.
There is a debriefing paper here, including links to the video of the presentation.
My job for the presentation was to describe why Christchurch needs a better spatial plan that integrates housing with transport.
The following is my slide presentation and speaking notes.
Hi my name is Brendon Harre. It is my job tonight to explain the Why of MaRTI.
For awhile now I have been thinking that
Christchurch is an Apple
becoming a Banana
But it needs to be a Hand
I will explain what I mean by that.
The official spatial plan for Greater Christchurch is for it to become a banana.
55% of future growth is planned to be outside the apple and inside the banana.
A group of us believed that Christchurch could do better.
We got to work, formed the CHAT club, had discussions, wrote articles, had public meetings with the likes of you good folk. We did workshops.
The result of those workshops was strong support for integrating housing and rapid transit on rail corridors.
The two most favoured rapid transit corridors was the existing rail corridors going north and south-west. The next two favoured corridors were light rail down Lincoln Road to Halswell and a line out to the Airport via Riccarton and the University.
Conceptually to me these spatial plan preferences looked like a cartoon hand.
So as you can see that is what I drew.
Providing rapid transit using existing heavy rail corridors and light rail street corridors is technically possible.
Here are some pictures from Karlsruhe Germany depicting exactly that.
Heavy rail on the left, light rail on the right and the same Tram/Train vehicle using both corridors.
Note Karlsruhe had the same problem as Christchurch that the original rail corridor did not connect with the city centre.
Karlsruhe fixed this in 1992.
Christchurch’s Hand was also inspired by Copenhagen’s very successful Five Finger spatial plan.
Many of you will be aware of how successful Copenhagen has been at creating a cycling city, an environmental city and a successful productive city.
MaRTI can be Christchurch’s first step towards building the hand.
MaRTI has three main benefits. It can benefit inequality, productivity and the environment.
When I grew up in the 1970s and 80s modest three-bedroom one-bathroom homes with an external garage was the norm.
Since then NZ housing has become too focused on producing large high-end houses.
This is the meaning of the shown graph.
New subdivisions have private covenants which prevent smaller entry-level housing being built. We see them sprawling around Christchurch -Preston’s, Longhurst, Farringdon etc.
In these subdivisions where are modest entry-level houses? Where are the terrace and townhouses that are 120 sqm? Where are the 60–80 sqm apartments? There aren’t many.
Middleton can be different — homes can be fairer.
Middleton can be master planned not for the top of the market but for the middle, with different housing typologies -townhouses, terrace housing, apartments…. with different ownership and tenure types –build to rent, rent to buy, state housing, public housing provider housing, affordable owner occupied housing.
The range designed to satisfy the different segments of demand that the market and public housing is currently missing.
If Middleton builds lower valued housing will it be a lower valued suburb?
Not at all and the secret is density done well.
CHAT Club attendees will remember the talk given by Mark Fraser from HLC who was part of the team that master planned Hobsonville Point in Auckland.
Hobsonville as shown here has densities of up to 100 houses per hectare, which is five times greater than a typical Christchurch sub-division.
It is this density. The large number of ratepayers in a small amount of space, that can pay for high value public amenities, not least contributing towards the cost of building a tram/train network.
The success of Middleton will in large part be determined by learning how to do ‘density done well’.
It is about building a community, master planning and placemaking –the next speaker will explain further.
I moved back to Christchurch in 2012 after selling a 2 bedroom Helsinki apartment that was yards away from Tuomarila train station.
It was a fantastic apartment –walls this thick, high ceilings, triple glazing, central heating, hourly ventilation air exchange.
The picture on the screen shows a view from the platform of Tuomarila train station. My old apartment had a very similar view.
All the apartments you can see on screen were built between 2006 and 2012 and they are only about 10% of the housing built in Tuomarila at that time.
We sold our apartment for the market price of $NZ 300,000.
Finland can build to this price and quality because they build whole suburbs of medium density housing around good public transport.
As the saying goes ‘practice makes perfect’.
The rail suburb model is popular and common overseas.
Another inspiration for the MaRTI proposal is Bahnstadt, a 5000 passive home development on an old rail shunting yard in Heidelberg, Germany.
NZ can learn this integrated housing and rail model too.
In Christchurch we can start learning at Middleton.
Edward Glaeser, the economist and author of “Triumph of the City”, says that “cities are the absence of space between people”.
What he means by this is that people get enormous benefits from co-locating together.
They share ideas, they organise, they work, they shop, they play, they search for partners, have families and so on.
Economists boringly label these sort of benefits –productivity or agglomeration.
Because this type of productivity is about ‘people interacting with people’. I am going to call it “accessing the people”
Cities can and frequently do have a dark side though.
Their attractiveness and closeness makes them susceptible to problems.
Problems such as, disease, crime, unaffordable housing and congestion.
Historically, when many people moved to the city they risked catching some pox and dying.
Obviously, this discouraged moving to the city to ‘access the people’.
Fortunately modern sanitation fixes this problem.
Christchurch’s dark side is a very high dependence on the private motor vehicle.
Motor vehicles are expensive and increasingly as Christchurch becomes the banana the only transport option is the car.
Price Waterhouse Cooper’s Cities Institute found when they studied Australasian cities that for Christchurch:
“The median household now spends $83 more per week on transport than in 2008, equal to approximately half of all real gains in income growth for Christchurch over the period.”
I know that economic statements like this for the layperson can be hard to interpret.
Basically it means rising transport costs are an impediment for ‘accessing the people’, much like poor sanitation impeded cities in our forefathers day.
MaRTI would give newcomers attracted to Christchurch more affordable options.
Because it is centrally located and would be part of a growing rapid transit network.
Environmentally too, Christchurch has a problem with dependence on car ownership and driving.
The resulting CO2 emissions are arguably our biggest environmental disaster.
The numbers are worse than the other major cities of NZ. Our red line of kilometre driven per capita is going up and Auckland’s and Wellington’s blue and yellow lines are going down.
It is fact that Canterbury’s car dependency statistics are worse than the US.
If declaring that Canterbury and Christchurch is in a climate emergency is to be meaningful, we need to act on transport.
CHAT Club organisers believe that people do not want to harm the environment.
That if people are given a genuine choice they will choose the less environmentally damaging option.
Auckland per capita is investing in public transport at five to six times the rate of Canterbury.
This is having a dramatic effect. Aucklanders own less cars, drive shorter distances and make more multi-modal transport choices.
There is plenty of evidence in New Zealand and overseas that when good quality public transport is provided. People use it.
We believe the people of Christchurch are starved of this freedom.
This choice should be delivered and we believe MaRTI can help provide this option.
In conclusion;
Christchurch the Apple
Doesn’t have to become a Banana
It can become a Hand
Because Homes can be fairer
Accessing the People can be more affordable
And the people can be Free not to harm the environment
Thank you for listening to my talk on “Why Marti”
