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Visualation of Manchester St under the An Accessible City plan. Credit: Jasmax
Visualation of Manchester St under the An Accessible City plan. Credit: Jasmax

SocietyApril 18, 2017

Parking nightmare! How the car lobby is hijacking the Christchurch CBD rebuild

Visualation of Manchester St under the An Accessible City plan. Credit: Jasmax
Visualation of Manchester St under the An Accessible City plan. Credit: Jasmax

Plans for post-quake Christchurch promised a focus on transport alternatives and a compact, pedestrian-friendly core. But media generated hysteria over car parking – and the meddling of Gerry Brownlee – is threatening to send the city back to the 60s, writes James Dann.

Since his appointment as the head of CERA, Gerry Brownlee has often been called the “rebuild tsar”, but perhaps a more appropriate Soviet sobriquet would be “Rebuild General Secretary”. The Bryndwr Brezhnev has ordered the construction of pointless concrete monuments, used the powers of the state to acquire property against the owners will, and exercised his iron will to suppress dissent whenever he sees fit. His most recent edict has seen him take aim at the free-wheeling free loaders who choose to ride cycles in Christchurch. For too long they have had it easy, riding on unprotected roads, periodically being hit by cars and trucks. No more, says Comrade Brownlee. No more!

Visualation of Manchester St under the An Accessible City plan. Credit: Jasmax

The accessible city plan – developed by CERA then handed off to the council, is “about upgrading the travel network to provide a compact, people-friendly core and about supporting the economic, social and environmental recovery of the Central City.” Sounds awful. Brownlee said “I think it’s a laudable idea that we become a pedestrian city, but you’ll get a pedestrian economy as a consequence.” Given Simon Wilson’s description of what removing cars did to Fort St, I think Christchurch would kill for a pedestrian economy right now.

“Claustrophobic” St Asaph St

Cycles aren’t even the real problem, but have been made into one by a minister who wouldn’t know one if it was deep-fried in tempura batter and placed in front of him. Over the past couple of weeks, The Press has made a cycle-shaped piñata, then given politicians like Brownlee, Cr Deon Swiggs and Labour’s Christchurch Central candidate Duncan Webb a free swing with the bat. Parking nightmare! screamed the front page on Monday. An editorial called St Asaph St “claustrophobic”, saying:

“Doing nothing to encourage cycling on our post-earthquake streets would have been negligent in the extreme, but carving off so much space to demarcate a cycle lane seems just as deleterious. Instead of reducing a safety risk on a key city route, it shifts the hazard from one group (cyclists) to another (motorists trying to exit their cars).”

Sorry, if you think getting out of your car is as dangerous as riding a bike in Christchurch then … I worry for you. Here’s a simple guide for getting out of your car safely. Look in your mirrors, and turn your head, to see if there are any cars coming. If there are no cars coming, get our of the car. If there are cars coming, wait approximately 10 seconds until there are none, then you can again attempt to get out of your car. Now you are outside your car – please look up wikihow to learn some other basic life skills that appear to have completely bypassed you.

Catarina Gutierrez counting bikes

In one of the busy cafes on “claustrophobic” St Asaph St, Catarina Gutierrez takes her morning coffee at a leaner, looking up to notch another dash on her tally chart. She’s monitoring the number of cyclists that use this stretch of road, one of the separated cycleways that the council has started rolling out. On the morning I join her, our conversation is constantly punctuated as she records another rider. 110 people bike past in an hour. Gutierrez is doing this to try and get some data on the number of people using the cycleways, ammo to try and combat the concerted campaign against the “accessible city”. This back-of-an-envelope survey is supported by the most recent council work, which showed a “21% annual increase in the number of people cycling into the City Centre”. So how have the cycleways become the target? Are they they victim of their own success?

Catarina’s bike parking map of the Christchurch CBD

The source of all this anger is carparks – or the perceived lack of them. However, there are plenty of car parks in central Christchurch. In the east of the centre city, from Manchester St to Barbadoes St and beyond, there is nothing but carparks, endless expanses of uneven gravel, patiently waiting for the the Brighter Future that never comes, meticulously policed by the Wilson’s enforcement team. In fact, figures from the council would suggest that there are in fact more carparks in central Christchurch than there were before the quakes. No, the issue here is free car parks.

There is of course no such thing as a free car park. Someone always has to pay. The developer lobby, frequently given uncritical coverage in the Press, want the Council and ultimately the ratepayer to pay. One of the most brazen attempts to fleece the ratepayer came from Calder Stewart’s Kevin Arthur, who wants someone else to pay for a carparking building next to the movie theatre he’s constructing:

“[Arthur] said paying $4 an hour was likely to “frighten off” movie-goers, who would instead patronise suburban theatres with free parking. “We’re hoping it will be about $1 an hour. We’d love to see the council step in and provide a subsidy for that because it brings people back into the city.”

If your business model requires a 75% subsidy from the ratepayer, then frankly, your business model sucks and you should think about doing something else with your life. We know how much parking costs. There are plenty of studies into it. If you can’t factor it into your planning, then don’t try and blackmail a cash-strapped council for it. Notorious left-wing rag The Economist has a fascinating piece about the cost to cities of car-parking, with a stern warning for developing countries to avoid making the same mistakes made in the West. Of course, totally absent from these discussions is any forward thinking about the effects of climate change, or moving away from carbon-emitting modes of transport – though that isn’t too much of a surprise given Gerry “sexy coal” Brownlee’s skeptical take on global warming.

On this very website, Simon Wilson has been writing thoughtfully and provocatively about Auckland’s transport woes, including floating the idea that the CBD could go car-free. While that might be unlikely, it’s at least a debate that befits a city that sees itself on the world stage. The debate down here shows that the limit of our ambitions is to create a bustling 1960’s agricultural service town – Timaru, but with a university.

Christchurch in 2017 is a town that will entertain a $25,000-per park subsidy for a car, but says “leave it to the market” when it comes to residential accommodation. It’s a city where the vision is as transparent and thin as the glass cladding each dull new building, where the opposition is on the same side as the minister, where the main news outlet is complicit in the takeover. There is some hope – if there was one person who wasn’t going to put up with Brownlee’s shit, it’s Mayor Lianne Dalziel, who has already called this needless meddling out for what it is.

Cycling isn’t for everyone – and it will never be. But motorists need to remember that every cycle means a car that isn’t occupying a carpark. The more people on bikes, the fewer people that you’re competing with for your precious carpark. Motorists already get a disproportionately large amount of money from local and central government. The future of our city’s transport network shouldn’t be dictated by a man who probably orders a Crown limo to take him from his office to the bathroom and back. We need politicians who are looking out 10, 20, 50 years into the future, not just looking for a cheap shot and 60 minutes free parking.


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BASTOY ISLAND, HORTEN, NORWAY – APRIL 12:  The corridor of the wooden cottages that host the prison administration’s offices is seen in Bastoy Prison on April 12, 2011 in Bastoy Island, Horten, Norway. Bastoy Prison is a minimum security prison located on Bastoy Island, Norway, about 75 kilometers (46 mi) south of Oslo. The facility is located on a 2.6 square kilometer (1 sq mi) island and hosts 115 inmates. Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, governor of the prison, leads a staff of about 70 prison employees. Of this staff, only five employees remain on the island overnight.  Once a prison colony for young boys, the facility now is trying to become “the first eco-human prison in the world.” Inmates are housed in wooden cottages and work the prison farm. During their free time, inmates have access to horseback riding, fishing, tennis, and cross-country skiing. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Reportage by Getty Images)
BASTOY ISLAND, HORTEN, NORWAY – APRIL 12: The corridor of the wooden cottages that host the prison administration’s offices is seen in Bastoy Prison on April 12, 2011 in Bastoy Island, Horten, Norway. Bastoy Prison is a minimum security prison located on Bastoy Island, Norway, about 75 kilometers (46 mi) south of Oslo. The facility is located on a 2.6 square kilometer (1 sq mi) island and hosts 115 inmates. Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, governor of the prison, leads a staff of about 70 prison employees. Of this staff, only five employees remain on the island overnight. Once a prison colony for young boys, the facility now is trying to become “the first eco-human prison in the world.” Inmates are housed in wooden cottages and work the prison farm. During their free time, inmates have access to horseback riding, fishing, tennis, and cross-country skiing. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Reportage by Getty Images)

SocietyApril 14, 2017

‘Inmates behave because they actually like being here’: what I learned at a Norwegian prison

BASTOY ISLAND, HORTEN, NORWAY – APRIL 12:  The corridor of the wooden cottages that host the prison administration’s offices is seen in Bastoy Prison on April 12, 2011 in Bastoy Island, Horten, Norway. Bastoy Prison is a minimum security prison located on Bastoy Island, Norway, about 75 kilometers (46 mi) south of Oslo. The facility is located on a 2.6 square kilometer (1 sq mi) island and hosts 115 inmates. Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, governor of the prison, leads a staff of about 70 prison employees. Of this staff, only five employees remain on the island overnight.  Once a prison colony for young boys, the facility now is trying to become “the first eco-human prison in the world.” Inmates are housed in wooden cottages and work the prison farm. During their free time, inmates have access to horseback riding, fishing, tennis, and cross-country skiing. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Reportage by Getty Images)
BASTOY ISLAND, HORTEN, NORWAY – APRIL 12: The corridor of the wooden cottages that host the prison administration’s offices is seen in Bastoy Prison on April 12, 2011 in Bastoy Island, Horten, Norway. Bastoy Prison is a minimum security prison located on Bastoy Island, Norway, about 75 kilometers (46 mi) south of Oslo. The facility is located on a 2.6 square kilometer (1 sq mi) island and hosts 115 inmates. Arne Kvernvik Nilsen, governor of the prison, leads a staff of about 70 prison employees. Of this staff, only five employees remain on the island overnight. Once a prison colony for young boys, the facility now is trying to become “the first eco-human prison in the world.” Inmates are housed in wooden cottages and work the prison farm. During their free time, inmates have access to horseback riding, fishing, tennis, and cross-country skiing. (Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Reportage by Getty Images)

There are plenty of lessons for New Zealand’s criminal justice system to be drawn from the Scandinavian approach, writes Max Harris in this edited excerpt from his new book The New Zealand Project.

An increasing number of New Zealanders accept that our criminal justice system – and our approach to imprisonment – is broken. Bill English famously called prisons “a moral and fiscal failure” in 2011. But in recent years our imprisonment rate has increased, and the already disgraceful over-representation of Māori has gotten worse. How, if at all, can this be changed?

Looking to Norway’s experience is helpful. Norway’s imprisonment rate is one of the lowest in the world, around a third of New Zealand’s. Its rate in early 2017 was 74 per 100,000, compared with New Zealand’s 208 per 100,000. Norwegian prisons are known for being humane. As well, Norway has advanced victim support, including state compensation for victims of crime. With the financial support of the New Zealand Law Foundation, I travelled to Norway in late 2015 to explore how it has built this criminal justice system.

I’d made inquiries about trying to visit a prison while in Norway, but with little luck. Then, after sending a message while in Oslo to a generic Norwegian public sector email address, I received a phone call out of the blue. A kind employee of the Norwegian Correctional Services Department, Ellen Bjercke, introduced herself. The good news, she told me, was that I’d be able to visit a prison in Norway during the week I was there: Bastøy Prison. The bad news? It was a few hours away, and would require a long car trip and a ferry ride. Just as I began to worry about whether the journey was possible, though – in an act of extraordinary trust and kindness – Bjercke said she’d be happy to drive me.

Once I’d arrived at Bastøy, I was briefed by Tom Eberhardt, the prison governor. Not a tall man, Eberhardt looked tough but friendly. He told me and several other visitors that Bastøy has a high staff to inmate ratio: 72 staff for 115 inmates. Inmates there can work in agriculture, maintenance and buildings, on the ferry, in the prison’s kitchen, in the library, in carpentry, or on labour and welfare issues. One was doing a PhD in criminology. As much as 30 per cent of the prison’s food is grown on the island, and working with animals is seen as a way to teach inmates empathy. I took a walk around later to see the housing on the island and to have lunch. The inmates live in flats of different sizes. Inmates are placed carefully in flats to teach skills: prisoners with reduced hygiene or social skills are placed alongside those known to have greater abilities in these areas.

Tom Eberhardt explained a little bit of the philosophy that underpins the prison’s operation. A key tenet is “the principle of normality”, he said. “Everyday life in prison isn’t meant to be different from everyday life outside of prison … Inmates behave because they actually like being here.”

Another principle is “creating good neighbours”: the prison aims to highlight that inmates are dependent on others, and that they need to be sensitive to the needs of others. When released, they “will have to deal with other people’s mindsets”, he noted, so why not prepare them for this interaction within a community while in prison? He also observed, “If you treat people badly, they will become bitter, angry – not be a good neighbor.” Bastøy is a “human ecological prison”, too, based on the idea that we can take “responsibility for ourselves by taking care of nature”. Care was clearly central to Bastøy’s functioning: if you have no care for nature, Eberhardt said, you can’t take care of yourselves.

Bastøy is clearly a successful prison, and the Norwegian Correctional Services Department – and Tom Eberhardt – are justifiably proud of it. There has been no violent episode there for the past 30 years. The prison helps to reintegrate its inmates into society. Eberhardt attributed this to the fact that “they’re not released with hatred towards society”. As well, he told me, “We haven’t taken their hope away.”

Eberhardt rejected the idea that justice should be about revenge. That cold day in December, he looked me in the eye and said: “Revenge [in criminal justice] is like pissing your pants in Norway. It feels good. But then you start to freeze.”

The administrative offices at Bastøy Prison, Norway. Photo by Marco Di Lauro/Getty

How has Norway developed a criminal justice system with prisons such as Bastøy? Eberhardt: “The culture in Norway is a forgiving culture.” In addition, he discussed the role of empathy, saying that policy-makers in Norway have asked, “What kind of prison facility [would] you want for your son?” The point about empathy was echoed by Kari Henriksen, a Norwegian MP with a deep interest in criminal justice, who told me that she could imagine herself being violent or becoming a criminal, and that such empathy was essential to policy-making. I can’t imagine a New Zealand politician being similarly brave.

After returning to Oslo, I met with four representatives of KROM (the Norwegian Association of Penal Reform) to explore further Norway’s distinctive approach to criminal justice: Thomas Mathiesen, Ole Kristian Hjemdal, Sturla Falck and Kristian Andenaes. Thomas Mathiesen is a well-known Norwegian criminologist now in his 80s, the author of books such as The Politics of Abolition.

Norway has not always been progressive in its criminal justice policy, they underscored. Key changes were made in the 1970s, and Mathiesen, Hjemdal, Falck and Andenaes emphasised three factors as being central to these shifts.

First, the climate of the 1960s and 1970s was important. “We are children of our time,” one said. 1968 was a year of protest, especially in Europe, and the decade also brought a sense of hope and imagination to political debates. Criminal justice reforms in Norway were hence “part of a larger change of values and basic policies”.

A second factor was the work of the Norwegian Labour Party politician Inger Louise Valle. Valle pushed hard, they told me, to introduce legislative changes in the criminal justice field that had a far-reaching effect on Norway’s low prison population.

Third, I heard about the “long-term insistence” of groups like KROM, campaigning to entrench a greater spirit of forgiveness in Norwegian society. It was clear, from this conversation and the off-the-record remarks of others, that KROM had made a significant difference: including through its almost 50-year history of annual conferences bringing together inmates, the public sector, lawyers, academics, students and judges.

As Tom Eberhardt indicated to me, justice means more than revenge. And to build a justice system that truly honours the word “justice”, we will need more than mere tweaks to our existing system. We need “decarceration” in the sphere of criminal justice, to use Angela Davis’s phrase: a stepped process of moving away from incarceration as the default response to offending, drawing on a values-based approach to politics. The Norwegian approach – developed in a country of similar size to New Zealand, with its 5.2 million people – offers some guidance about how we might kickstart that conversation.

The New Zealand Project is published by BWB.


The Society section is sponsored by AUT. As a contemporary university we’re focused on providing exceptional learning experiences, developing impactful research and forging strong industry partnerships. Start your university journey with us today.

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