A PROVOCATIVE AND INSIGHTFUL EXPLORATION
OF REBUILDING OUR HOMES, COMMUNITIES
AND CITIES AFTER THEIR DEVASTATION.
Where are we? How did we get here?
Where do we go now?
From nineteenth-century attempts to create Utopias to America’s rustbelt, from Darwin’s study of worms to China’s phantom cities, this work ranges widely through history and around the world. It examines the evolution of cities and of Christchurch in particular, looking at its swampy origins and its ongoing reconstruction following the recent destructive earthquakes. And it takes us to L’Aquila in Italy to observe another shaken city.
Farrell writes as a resident caught up in a devastated city in an era when political ideology has transformed the citizen to ‘an asset, the raw material on which … empire makes its profit’. In a hundred tiny pieces, she comments on contentious issues, such as the fate of a cathedral, the closure of schools, the role of insurers, the plans for civic venues. Through personal observation, conversations with friends, and close readings of everything from the daily newspaper to records of other upheavals in Pompeii and Berlin, this dazzling book explores community, the love of place and, ultimately, regeneration and renewal.
For Alseia, Eleni, Huia and Ngaio
And everything was shaken into a
hundred tiny pieces …
Title Page
Dedication
The Map
ONE: THE FLYOVER OF HOPE
TWO: THE BOULEVARD OF SPLENDOURS
THREE: SOME PARTICULARS
FOUR: THE PRESIDENT’S PALACE
FIVE: BRAIDED
SIX: TE MAURU E TAKI NEI
SEVEN: GUNTER’S CHAIN AND THE HEIRESS
EIGHT: THE ART
NINE: THE LUMPER
TEN: LIGHT’S VISION AND SYDNEY SCROGGS
ELEVEN: BUMBLEBEES
TWELVE: THE CALF
THIRTEEN: THE KIWI MINIMAP
FOURTEEN: THE GARDEN CITY
FIFTEEN: FIREWOOD
SIXTEEN: LIKE LAMBS
SEVENTEEN: COLLAPSE
EIGHTEEN: THE CONTEXT
NINETEEN: TIN TOWN
TWENTY: EQC
TWENTY–ONE: UNLESS–JESUS–CHRIST–HAD–DIED
TWENTY–TWO: TWO TOWERS
TWENTY–THREE: RED/GREEN/ORANGE
TWENTY–FOUR: SEVEN SECONDS
TWENTY–FIVE: AN IDEA
TWENTY–SIX: 100 DAYS
TWENTY–SEVEN: MILLY–MOLLY–MANDY
TWENTY–EIGHT: GANGBUSTERS
TWENTY–NINE: POP–UP
THIRTY THE: CATHEDRAL
THIRTY–ONE: THE STADIUM
THIRTY–TWO: THE CITY OF SPORT
THIRTY–THREE: THE PLAYGROUND
THIRTY–FOUR: THE RIVER
THIRTY–FIVE: THE CONVENTION CENTRE
THIRTY–SIX: THE LAST OF ENGLAND
THIRTY–SEVEN: BIG
THIRTY–EIGHT: STORIES
The Loop
THIRTY–NINE: WHIZZ BANG
FORTY: THREE CHEERS
FORTY–ONE: THE PICKLE MANUFACTURER
FORTY–TWO: CHARACTER
FORTY–THREE: THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL
FORTY–FOUR: APPLE CRUMBLE
FORTY–FIVE: LEISURE AND BUSINESS
FORTY–SIX: THE LITTLE HOUSE
FORTY–SEVEN: LESSONS
FORTY–EIGHT: CENTRAL CITY SOUTH
FORTY–NINE: FADE
FIFTY: A LOT OF FUN
FIFTY–ONE: TIGHT–KNIT
L’Aquila
FIFTY–TWO: SAME/DIFFERENT
FIFTY–THREE: TRAIN
FIFTY–FOUR: NINETY–NINE
FIFTY–FIVE: PLATES
FIFTY–SIX: LAVORI IN CORSO
FIFTY–SEVEN: IL FORTE SPAGNOLO
FIFTY–EIGHT: TUBES
FIFTY–NINE: ESCHER
SIXTY: THE GRAND PARDON
SIXTY–ONE: GAS
SIXTY–TWO: SOTTO I PORTICI
SIXTY–THREE: ENTERPRISE
SIXTY–FOUR: G8
SIXTY–FIVE: THE MOBILE EARTH
SIXTY–SIX: BREATH
SIXTY–SEVEN: GO BRAVELY
SIXTY–EIGHT: CUPS
SIXTY–NINE: TROUT
The Villa at the Edge of the Empire
SEVENTY: PHANTOMS
SEVENTY–ONE: RIVER ROAD
SEVENTY–TWO: THE SCARF
SEVENTY–THREE: THE HYPOCAUST
SEVENTY–FOUR: EMPIRES
SEVENTY–FIVE: STURDY PEOPLE
SEVENTY–SIX: THE TYPHUS BELT
SEVENTY–SEVEN: FREE MILK
SEVENTY–EIGHT: THE FOX TERRIER
SEVENTY–NINE: GOOD VIBRATIONS
EIGHTY: BUBBLES
EIGHTY–ONE: GRASS
EIGHTY–TWO: UTMOST GOOD FAITH
EIGHTY–THREE: ARGOT
EIGHTY–FOUR: ALL RIGHT
EIGHTY–FIVE: FRESH PAINT
EIGHTY–SIX: RAG RUG
EIGHTY–SEVEN: TERRA NOVA
EIGHTY–EIGHT: WHERE IN MY POLICY …
EIGHTY–NINE: HOME
NINETY: THE PETRI DISH
NINETY–ONE: THE BADGE
NINETY–TWO: THE POT OF GOLD
NINETY–THREE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA
NINETY–FOUR: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
NINETY–FIVE: LULLABY
NINETY–SIX: UNBOXING
NINETY–SEVEN: THE GOOD CITIZEN
NINETY–EIGHT: DECLINE AND FALL
NINETY–NINE: WORMS
ONE HUNDRED: GRAINS
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About the Author
Copyright
MIDWINTER, 2012.
The dark heart of the year.
But in the city, a new sun is rising.
There is music, a swelling of violins, a sonorous chorus of male voices. It could be the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings, that moment where Bilbo catches sight of Mordor, when all chaos and pain will pass and order will be restored to Middle Earth.
There is an image of a wide green plain. There’s a ring at its centre. From above it looks a bit like Stonehenge, some ancient site of ritual worship, but is more likely the circle left by an irrigator, rendering the stony soil fit for pasturing a thousand thousand dairy cows. Then there’s a little jetboat racing upstream between beds of shingle, heading somewhere and heading there fast, and the music swells and a voice-over announces ‘an unprecedented opportunity in the South Island of New Zealand’. A couple spin by on a tandem, a white boy on the front, a brown girl behind, both pedalling unsteadily through green trees, both laughing with delight at the prospect of their opportunity. Earthquakes have destroyed their beautiful city, 70 per cent of its major buildings have been or are about to be demolished. But 106,000 of the city’s residents have risen to the call! They have submitted their vision for a new city and here is the synthesis of their dreams, a ‘flyover of their hopes’.
The music changes to something more percussive, the tempo accelerates and we begin to fly. We swoop over the city like supermen, up one street and down another. Over a Green Frame that will sweep away the vestiges of a Victorian mercantile past beneath twenty-first-century grass and trees. Over the blue and yellow rectangles that are to be new precincts. Health will be dispensed from a Medical Precinct around the existing hospital, justice from a Legal Precinct a little further east, just past a Sports Precinct, whose facilities will cater for all ages and levels of ability. We fly north and there’s the Performing Arts Precinct and a Cultural Centre and next to them, dwarfing all else, a Convention Centre, ‘purpose-built’, ‘state of the art’, the city’s throbbing cultural heart.
> We fly above it all. It’s so easy. Like those dreams of flight that are supposed to be something to do with sex. Weightless, effortless. The city lies beneath us in its shining geometry. There’s the tiny brown rectangle that will be the new public library, there’s the oval that is to be a new cricket ground, making proper, profitable use of the Victorians’ dull and undeveloped city park.
We wheel unnoticed over the heads of all the people gathered to party in the Entertainment Precinct before a vast screen broadcasting a rugby match. Tracers of light race and dazzle, and what is that, rising in the east? That vast illuminated pleasure dome? Why, it’s a new Rugby Stadium, miraculously teleported here from its previous location on the light industrial periphery and come to rest like some alien spacecraft at the city’s core. And the voice repeats the invitation. Come! Be part of this opportunity! This vision that will inspire the world! It’s achievable! It’s affordable! And it’s ready to fly!
The blueprint flashes across the television screen, three minutes and twenty-two seconds of glittering promise, product of 100 days (well, 103, actually) of frantic planning. It’s a video game with all its glitter and zing. Like some Deus Ex 3 vision of the city as futuristic wonderland, ablaze with light. Some bitchin’ imagery of a home fit for heroes blessed with heavy stubble, curious anatomies that are part flesh, part nano-tech augmentation, and in possession of a wide range of imaginative weaponry.
Except that this is a design for the distinctly unaugmented. It is a plan for a small city on the edge of a narrow island at the foot of the Pacific. A blueprint for concrete, tarmac and cement.
A map to an everyday future.
WHEN WE BEHOLD A MAP we become, for just a second, God, surveying an orderly creation. Here’s a coastline, wriggling through lines of latitude. Here’s the blue squiggle of a river. That black dot is home to millions in a maze of motorway and slum alley, high-rise glitter and cardboard shanty. That red line traces a frontier between bare brown mountains, fiercely contested.
Down there it’s a racket of rifle fire and the tinkling of silver service, the wailing of sirens and the murmur of lullaby, the rush of clear water where salmon leap and the click of keys downloading, deleting. There’s howl and roar and argument, the longing and the losing, the getting and spending and the not caring much one way or the other, frankly. There’s history and manners of speech and ways of being and ways of not being, there’s the skitter of microscopic billions and the roar of engines rising through thin blue air or plunging down to the submarine vent where it all bubbles up. Gas. Life.
And here it is, reduced to dot and line and pastel tint and we have the eye of God. Unchanging. North is at the top, south at the bottom, west to the left, east to the right. The point of view preferred by a Christian God in possession of a compass back when the world was first being mapped, its tiny arrow pointing steadily due north. The Muslims’ God preferred a different angle, placing south at the top, like those tourist-shop mapmakers who design a world where New Zealand flies upside down, like a little errant seabird, above everybody else and all that blue.
Everything on a map is manageable. That mountain pass is no more than a tiny bracket, rather than the heart-stopping barrier encountered in real life. A map can possess a logic that becomes less visible on closer inspection. Of course that city should be located at just that point where a great river empties itself into the sea! It seems obviously placed for trade and navigation and access to the interior, when on the ground it is a miserable morass of mud, mosquitoes and frequent inundation.
Or a map may seem to contradict logic. Why is there a line across that square box of an island floating off the coast of Europe? The great continental bulk has run out, the babble of a thousand tongues faded to wind and wave and the keening of gulls. Nothing ahead but the wash of the Atlantic. The island is as simple as a full stop. So what’s that line from Carlingford Lough to Loch Foyle? The line that has been shorthand for the bomb on the high street and the marches in memory of dead children? The line that is shorthand for the smuggling of cows and each November, of fireworks, for it’s legal to set a match to a skyrocket on one side of the line and illegal on the other.
A map bears little hint of the muddle of emotion down on mucky human ground. But looking down, we presume order. We’re God. We’re omnipotent. We’re Hitler in the photograph contemplating the tabletop model that will transform messy old Berlin into the snowy perfection of Germania, capital of the empire that will rival Rome or Babylon.
Its architect was young — not yet thirty — and very eager. Speer and his assistants took only a little longer than 103 days to plan the re-creation of Berlin. The entire project — design, demolition, reconstruction — was under urgency, for speed, Hitler said, would no longer be the preserve of the Americans. The ‘American tempo’ he so admired, the frenzied rush to construction, would henceforth be the ‘German tempo’.
‘I like to think,’ he said, as despots everywhere, no matter how grand or tinpot, like to think, ‘that I accomplish more than other statesmen in the so-called democracies.’ There would be no place for the cautious experts Hitler dismissed as ‘dusty bureaucrats’. When Berlin’s city government seemed a trifle anxious at the prospect of demolishing large swathes of their city to implement his grand design, he overrode them. ‘There is nothing to be done with the Berlin City Government,’ he said to Speer. ‘From now on, when you have something ready, show it to me.’ The mayor, Julius Lippert, he dismissed as ‘an incompetent, an idiot, a failure, a zero’, and when he continued to be a nuisance, Goebbels was instructed to find a more compliant replacement. (Lippert was lucky, given the management style of the time. He went without fuss and had a comfortable war producing anti-Semitic propaganda in Belgrade, followed by a little post-war hard labour, then a pleasant existence as a university lecturer till his death in 1956.)
So here it is, the vision, laid out upon the table, a thing of orderly geometry. There’s the central avenue, the Boulevard of Splendours, stretching 7 kilometres between the dome of the hall that will be the largest enclosed space in the world, and the triumphal arch that frames the opposite end with the names of the 1,800,000 German dead in what was then called The Great War. Transport will be reconfigured. Railway stations will be re-sited, airports — including one for seaplanes, which at this point in history seem like the future — are placed strategically around the perimeter. Slums have been cleared and their inhabitants moved to suburbs of hygienic housing. The city’s parks have been cleansed of alien plants and reseeded with native species typical of the region in the eighteenth century.
And everything is BIG. Having designed one vast stadium to house the 1936 Olympics, Speer plans another even larger. It will seat 400,000 and be so big that he worries those in the upper levels might not be able to see what is going on in the arena and could experience ‘psychological disturbance’ at their great height.
Also in doubt is the Earth’s capacity to support the city’s new structures. Berlin is built upon a swamp. A test pillar, the Schwerbelastungskörper — the ‘heavy weight-bearing body’ constructed on the site for the triumphal arch — sinks immediately into the sandy soil.
In the calm of Spandau Prison, where Speer spent twenty post-war years so detached from the technology he adored, unable to do so much as turn on a light switch, that the arrival of an electric floor polisher aroused in him intense rapture, the architect had time to think about such things.
‘This love for vast proportions,’ he concluded, ‘was not only tied up with the totalitarian cast of Hitler’s regime.’ It was also the expression of ‘an urge to demonstrate one’s strength on all occasions … characteristic of individuals with recently acquired wealth’. He mentions as an example the architecture of ancient Greece, where the largest buildings were built not in the democratic classical heart but in the newly wealthy satellite states of Sicily and Asia Minor, in cities ‘generally ruled by despots’.
So all this size and grandeur, the piles of rubbl
e through which people scrambled after bombs and mortar had taken on the task of demolishing the city, was in the end a failure of taste.
Speer’s memoir is a curious blend. On the one hand he seems almost embarrassed at having been caught up in some business of nouveau riche self-aggrandisement. But tugging against that is an unmistakable pride and excitement, a barely suppressed longing for the speed, the power, the soul-stirring imagery of the temple of light he created at Nuremberg, where anti-aircraft spotlights sent their beams soaring into the heavens. Ah! The thrill of planning the capital of the empire that would last 1000 years, of giving expression to a political idea through a city’s buildings and the arrangement of its thoroughfares, the abstract speculations of philosophy made manifest at last in concrete, stone and tarmac. Ah! The pleasure at the prospect of the blank canvas, that carte blanche that also entranced Le Corbusier, contemplating the replacement of Haussmann’s Paris with his Radiant City of towers each inhabited by 40,000 people, living radiant and perfect lives above streets devoid of the hotchpotch of clutter and clang.
Ah! The map — as teasing and evanescent as a temple of light.
THE BLUEPRINT ON THE SCREEN is just the latest in the long catalogue of maps that have attempted to draw this country, to reduce its bewildering complexity to something comprehensible. To translate its multi-dimensional reality into something that can be sketched on paper or, via some latest variant of the technology of light, shown on a television screen. To use mathematics and geometry to create an image of where we are and how we yet might be.
In his magisterial A History of the World in Twelve Maps, Jerry Brotton describes a map as ‘an ultimately imaginative representation of an unknowable object’ — this Earth — that ‘offers a spatial understanding of events in the human world’. Maps are products of ideas and beliefs and never purely objective documents, detached from human passions. They are, he argues, driven by impulses that are as much ‘personal, emotional, religious, political and financial, as geographical, technical and mathematical’.
I’ve always loved maps, right from the start, walking my fingers from Milly-Molly-Mandy’s house down the lanes to the village shop, a process that, without my knowing it, was laying down some image of an ideal world where it would be safe for me, small and insignificant, to move about confidently between recognisable landmarks, built to an intimate human scale.
The Villa at the Edge of the Empire Page 1
