Photograph by Jocelyn Kinghorn 2217
Images, UC QuakeStudies
Palm tree standing in the grounds of The Pump House. In front is a bin of corrugated iron.
Palm tree standing in the grounds of The Pump House. In front is a bin of corrugated iron.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Looking from Lichfield Street across cleared land to the Twisted Hop. The statue of the banana palm can be seen".
A photograph of a section of a mural on the corner of Byron Street and Colombo Street. The section contains a palm tree. A horse is also partially visible. On the left there is the message, "Occupy love and light right here and now. We'll all meet up on Equality Street anyhow. Love light power." Below the message are a variety of hearts in red, white, and different shades of pink.
Within four weeks of the September 4 2010 Canterbury Earthquake a new, loosely-knit community group appeared in Christchurch under the banner of “Greening the Rubble.” The general aim of those who attended the first few meetings was to do something to help plug the holes that had already appeared or were likely to appear over the coming weeks in the city fabric with some temporary landscaping and planting projects. This article charts the first eighteen months of Greening the Rubble and places the initiative in a broader context to argue that although seismic events in Christchurch acted as a “call to palms,” so to speak, the city was already in need of some remedial greening. It concludes with a reflection on lessons learned to date by GTR and commentary on the likely issues ahead for this new mini-social-environmental movement in the context of a quake-affected and still quake-prone major New Zealand city. One of the key lessons for GTR and all of those involved in Christchurch recovery activities to date is that the city is still very much in the middle of the event and is to some extent a laboratory for seismic and agency management studies alike.