Editorial: Chance to reinvent a broken city

The Pyne Gould Corporation building. Photo / Simon Baker

As the dust settles - metaphorically if not literally - over the battered and bruised city of Christchurch, the really hard work begins.

As the formal expression has it, the rescue has become a recovery. But beyond that, it is a rebuilding - and the country must confront the challenge of putting our second-largest city back together again.

It would be wrong to try and find a silver lining in the dark cloud that is hanging over Canterbury. But as architects and planners have noted, the destruction creates the opportunity to re-invisage the city centre, in some cases literally from the ground up.

Christchurch has long been noted for a higher-than-average proportion of heritage buildings. By definition, they were built before the development of earthquake-proofing and the retro-fitting of seismic protection was mostly no match for last week's quake.

Now reconstruction provides the opportunity of re-imagination: new buildings can be not simply quakeproof but also inspired pieces of urban design, adopting the principles of energy efficiency and sustainability. It will require Cantabrians to look at their city in a whole new light - but that's been happening since September 4.

This will be a massive financial undertaking and it comes as the economy is under greater pressure than at any time in recent memory. The foresight of those who established the Local Authority Protection Programme Disaster Fund (LAPP) after the Napier earthquake is welcome now.

But there is room for a tax levy as well, such as the Gillard Government in Australia has imposed to deal with the damage done by the Queensland floods, Cyclone Yasi and bushfires in Perth.

The Australians' larger tax base means that the levy amounts to only $5 a week for people earning over $100,000 and $1 a week for those on incomes between $50,000 and $100,000. The figures will be higher here, but the burden must be made to fall disproportionately on high-income earners.

They have enjoyed the benefits of tax cuts in last year's Budget and it now transpires, because of the quake, the country could not afford them: they will still pay much less back than they have already received.

At all costs, middle- and low-income earners - already hard-pressed before the quake - must be spared the brunt of the bill.