Dovedale Village, recently completed but yet to be occupied as temporary office and lecture spaces.
Dovedale Village, recently completed but yet to be occupied as temporary office and lecture spaces.
The inside of one of the temporary classrooms in the Kirkwood Village, ready for students.
A kitchen for the staff inside one of the temporary buildings in the Kirkwood Oval.
The inside of one of the temporary classrooms in the Kirkwood Village, ready for students.
Dovedale Village, recently completed but yet to be occupied as temporary office and lecture spaces.
Dovedale Village, recently completed but yet to be occupied as temporary office and lecture spaces.
A crane lowers the roof onto one of the temporary classrooms on the Ilam Oval.
A worker pouring contrete into the foundation of a temporary classroom on the Ilam Oval.
Dovedale Village, recently completed but yet to be occupied as temporary office and lecture spaces.
Lines of nails used in the construction of temporary classrooms at the College of Education.
Dovedale Village, recently completed but yet to be occupied as temporary office and lecture spaces.
A crane placing the roof onto one of the temporary building in the Ilam Oval.
A crane placing the roof onto one of the temporary building in the Ilam Oval.
A crane lowers the roof onto one of the temporary classrooms on the Ilam Oval.
A worker working on the roof of one of the temporary classrooms on the Ilam Oval.
Wayne Youle's mural 'I Seem to Have Temporarily Misplaced My Sense of Humour' (2012), in Sydenham.
A staff member at work in temporary office space in the Central Library after the earthquake.
Workers laying insulation into the floor of one of the temporary classrooms in the Ilam Oval.
The study contributes to a better understanding of utilisation and interaction patterns in post-disaster temporary urban open spaces. A series of devastating earthquakes caused large scale damage to Christchurch’s central city and many suburbs in 2010 and 2011. Various temporary uses have emerged on vacant post-earthquake sites including community gardens, urban agriculture, art installations, event venues, eateries and cafés, and pocket parks. Drawing on empirical data obtained from a spatial qualities survey and a Public Life Study, the report analyses how people used and interacted with three exemplary transitional community-initiated open spaces (CIOS) in relation to particular physical spatial qualities in central Christchurch over a period of three weeks. The report provides evidence that users of post-disaster transitional community-initiated open spaces show similar utilisation and interaction patterns in relation to specific spatial qualities as observed in other urban environments. The temporary status of CIOS did apparently not influence ‘typical’ utilisation and interaction patterns.
In recent work on commons and commoning, scholars have argued that we might delink the practice of commoning from property ownership, while paying attention to modes of governance that enable long-term commons to emerge and be sustained. Yet commoning can also occur as a temporary practice, in between and around other forms of use. In this article we reflect on the transitional commoning practices and projects enabled by the Christchurch post-earthquake organisation Life in Vacant Spaces, which emerged to connect and mediate between landowners of vacant inner city demolition sites and temporary creative or entrepreneurial users. While these commons are often framed as transitional or temporary, we argue they have ongoing reverberations changing how people and local government in Christchurch approach common use. Using the cases of the physical space of the Victoria Street site “The Commons” and the virtual space of the Life in Vacant Spaces website, we show how temporary commoning projects can create and sustain the conditions of possibility required for nurturing commoner subjectivities. Thus despite their impermanence, temporary commoning projects provide a useful counter to more dominant forms of urban development and planning premised on property ownership and “permanent” timeframes, in that just as the physical space of the city being opened to commoning possibilities, so too are the expectations and dispositions of the city’s inhabitants, planners, and developers.
In recent work on commons and commoning, scholars have argued that we might delink the practice of commoning from property ownership, while paying attention to modes of governance that enable long-term commons to emerge and be sustained. Yet commoning can also occur as a temporary practice, in between and around other forms of use. In this article we reflect on the transitional commoning practices and projects enabled by the Christchurch post-earthquake organisation Life in Vacant Spaces, which emerged to connect and mediate between landowners of vacant inner city demolition sites and temporary creative or entrepreneurial users. While these commons are often framed as transitional or temporary, we argue they have ongoing reverberations changing how people and local government in Christchurch approach common use. Using the cases of the physical space of the Victoria Street site “The Commons” and the virtual space of the Life in Vacant Spaces website, we show how temporary commoning projects can create and sustain the conditions of possibility required for nurturing commoner subjectivities. Thus despite their impermanence, temporary commoning projects provide a useful counter to more dominant forms of urban development and planning premised on property ownership and “permanent” timeframes, in that just as the physical space of the city being opened to commoning possibilities, so too are the expectations and dispositions of the city’s inhabitants, planners, and developers.
Creative temporary or transitional use of vacant urban open spaces is seldom foreseen in traditional urban planning and has historically been linked to economic or political disturbances. Christchurch, like most cities, has had a relatively small stock of vacant spaces throughout much of its history. This changed dramatically after an earthquake and several damaging aftershocks hit the city in 2010 and 2011; temporary uses emerged on post-earthquake sites that ran parallel to the “official” rebuild discourse and programmes of action. The paper examines a post-earthquake transitional community-initiated open space (CIOS) in central Christchurch. CIOS have been established by local community groups as bottom-up initiatives relying on financial sponsorship, agreements with local landowners who leave their land for temporary projects until they are ready to redevelop, and volunteers who build and maintain the spaces. The paper discusses bottom-up governance approaches in depth in a single temporary post-earthquake community garden project using the concepts of community resilience and social capital. The study analyses and highlights the evolution and actions of the facilitating community organisation (Greening the Rubble) and the impact of this on the project. It discusses key actors’ motivations and values, perceived benefits and challenges, and their current involvement with the garden. The paper concludes with observations and recommendations about the initiation of such projects and the challenges for those wishing to study ephemeral social recovery phenomena.
Members of the Senior Management Team read briefing documents inside the a temporary building on the Ilam Oval.
Members of the Senior Management Team are let inside one the temporary building work on the Ilam Oval.
Members of the Senior Management Team read briefing documents inside the a temporary building on the Ilam Oval.
Members of the Senior Management Team read briefing documents inside the a temporary building on the Ilam Oval.
Members of the Senior Management Team read briefing documents inside the a temporary building on the Ilam Oval.
Members of the Senior Management Team photographed in front of the temporary building work on the Ilam Oval.
Members of the Senior Management Team read briefing documents inside the a temporary building on the Ilam Oval.