Media release – July 21, 2011

First steps to set up first village inside Christchurch CBD

The first steps have been taken in a bid to set up the first community village inside Christchurch’s quake-hit central business district.

A Peterborough village community meeting will be held in front of St Mary’s Church, 375 Manchester Street, at 1.30pm on Saturday.

This is the second meeting in the area as residents and business owners look at the concept and needs for a landmark new community village.

One of the organisers, Di Lucas said that after that well-attended meeting with Peterborough businesses and residents, they had discussed the concept with the Christchurch City Council.

The village would be bordered by Colombo, Salisbury and Barbadoes Sts and the Avon River area that included the badly damaged Peterborough and Manchester Streets.

``This is our first chance to together envisage transforming the devastation and rubble from the earthquakes into a lovely safe, sustainable village,’’ Lucas said today.

``We want to have street friendly development, not great car parks. We want off-street greenways and pocket parks and medium density housing built around courtyards to respect the need for personal space. We do not want tall blocks of faceless flats. We want a lively mix of business and residential to sustain a vibrant village.

``We want slow traffic; less traffic and a priority for foot and bike for people to get easy access to the grocer, the fish shop, the bakery, cafés, wine bars and other shops. We want to use the Avon River as the spine. We want more plantings and we want to explore daylighting streams that are currently piped along Manchester Street.

``This village will be a beautiful place, where people work and live with a good mixture of ages, babies, young, middle and older people around friendly spaces.’’

Lucas said the village concept might include fruit trees lining communal space, a village green, high use of solar power, community gardens, sculpture and children’s playgrounds. She said they had discussed that people might combine land to enable comprehensive developments.

Another organiser Jane Quigley said the aim of the village was to ensure that everyone had an in-put into the concept and plan.

``We are also exploring the idea of setting up a community society. This would provide the Peterborough Village with an organisation to formally represent the community,’’ Quigley said.

A draft strategy by Tim Taylor is being sent to interested parties for discussion at Saturday’s meeting, where plan development will be progressed.

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