Another Master Plan from the Expert CCC Plannerista

Posted in response to Yet Another Master Plan (Press, Nov 6, 2012, this ol' gull has a more sober view than the local cheerleaders, essential though they may be. The 2002 Master Plan (yes, folk, there Was one) envisaged fairly much what locals now appear to desire intensely. It includes 5-7 storey apartments, and if proceeded with at that time would have brought discretionary-i­ncome-earning residents to the area, and provided the revitalisation being talkked about ever since the old Pier went down in 1965. The 2002 Plan had two massive defects. The dysfunctional CCC (quelle surprise) had not actually bothered to allow for any of this in its District Plan. It took until 2009 - seven long years - to get Plan Change 27 through the gate and allow any building whatsoever which could see over the high dunes. The 2002 plan also drew heavy opposition from a small but vocal group of locals, as did the Slow Road which replaced the pedestrian mall. This opposition polarised the community, and the effects linger to this day. The net effect of these circumnstances was to turn away investment, deny building (no Plan/zoning), and significantly decrease the overall attractiveness of the suburb both in terms of housing stock and inhabitants thereof. The 2006 Census (taken just before the current rot set in) reveals low incomes, high transfer-paymen­t dependency, and this of course makes retail of any sort very wary. In addition, the retail oxygen has been sucked out of the area by a combination of nearby malls (thanks, CCC yet again), the depopulation of Wainoni, Bexley, Aranui and South Brighton/Souths­hore (thanks, Gaia), and the fact that with population only in a narrow strip along the beach, there isn't exactly a critical mass of customers there anyway. So there's a Perfect Storm: - zoning (at last) for intensification but no money (GFC) - low income population means little discretionary spend - locals who are belatedly now trying to make up for a decade of furious opposition to Business - a low standard of housing in the area (take a look on Marine Parade south of Beresford Street) - the usual litany of tagging, street aggro and assorted underclass provocations - but of course Tomorrow will be a Better Brighton Day.... And in the meantime, there's plenty of pickings to be had from the unsanitary inhabitants of the 'burb.....

Renew New Brighton

A response to some simpleton's comment in Der Press:

Hate to disillusion our Renew New Brighton, but there goes yet another example of a complete and utter foobar by, guess who, the CCC. The timeline:

After the 1997 Pier opening (50% privately funded from Pier & Foreshore over 30 years, hard to get more community centred than that), CCC realises the suburb needs a bit of a lift.

In 2002 after a few discussions, the NB Master Plan was released to general approval.

Around that time a lot of property activity happens, as folks realised the potential of the seaside and the views. So they start to plan Development, Building, Cash and New Residents!

Whoa, there! The CCC has omitted to do any Plan Changes! So none (not a single one...) of these development plans ever got off the ground.

CCC finally gets around to Plan Change 27 in (wait for it...) 2009.

By which time the community is polarised (what? new people? with more money? Interlopers! Oppose the Change...). Some of the developers have gone bust, taking with them firms, jobs and livelihoods.

PC 27 passes. Development has a Green Light.

Whoops! The GFC has struck, and there is no mo' money for , oh, a generation or so.

See? That's how to Renew Brighton......simple, eh?

The latest Tsunami

Well, young gullz, we've been and had another Tsunami. Or to be more accurate, a small-t tsunami.

Did anyone on our fair beach actually notice?

I asked old Gaffer Bob, that half-feathered uncle of Aunt Jane's by her half-sister Ethel, but he fell asleep about three squawks into my question. So I guess the answer is No.

Did the police race up and down, furiously sirening and getting the Endangered Inhabitants of those crummy old houses behind the 8-metre dunes, to safety?

Why, no.

Did lots of those odd humans race down to the beach to see what the fuss was all aboot?

Why, yes.

Were any of them sucked out to sea, thrashing and promising to Gaia that they would never be so stoopid again if she'd just wash them right back up?

Why, no.

So it was really a non-event.

Which is extremely predictable, really. Because distant tsunami have never much affected our fair beach, at least the central to northern bits. There's just too much sand out there, too much friction, and no confining bay or sub-sea features. The waves certainly arrived, but compared to the full moon tides as predicted by that funny old bloke Ken Ring, they were nothing. Those full moon tides ran, oh, at least half a metre higher than the tsunami!

But the good folks of Brighton and surrounds have nothing to worry aboot compared to their brethren in the Peninsula Bays and even the corner of the Southshore Spit, Sunmer, Redcliffs and the estuary. Those Spit dwellers can get the waves both ways - the slosh over from the sea as it jams into the corner (look atta map, why don'cha), and the back-slosh from the Estuary, which as you may recall is filling up with sand.

But I digress.

No bad effects.

But it is amusing to watch those silly hunans crying 'look out - the Wave is coming'.

Hearings and Soundings

Well, I chatted a couple of days ago to Ethel, my gull half-sister by old Aunt Jane (don't even ask...). She'd swallowed a spider who'd swallowed a fly, who'd been sitting perfectly happily on the wall at New Brighton, all through the Hearings on Plan Change #27. And what a Story that was!

Seems that the Hearing was run by a Commissioner, who had done all this sort of thing before, seen it all, and wasn't about to be swayed by people making wild assertions. Kept asking for Evidence and other Inconvenient Facts. A bit of a Martinet, in fact, although what a small furry rodent was doing heading up a Hearing Commish is beyond me. No, wait, that would be a Pine Marten.

But it gets better. There were the usual suspects there, and a certain, shall we say, asymmetry in the hours allocated to the 'Let the Dozers Loose' mob and the 'Dog in the Manger, it's Our Social Space' space cadets. The mangerists had, oh, days and days to present their case.

Which, unaccountably, they didn't use. Ethel, being ever sharp about Free Food and all, had hung about, hoping to cadge some. Poor dear, she had to console herself with aforesaid Spider-Fly Horse's Doover.

Because, it turned out, the 'Social Space Cadets' just couldn't fill their time. Well, not sensibly, in front of the Stern Commish, anyway. So it all just petered out. Not with a Bang but a Whimper, you might say.

The Spacies, of course have always suffered from a couple or three Issues.

1 - they want desperately to Represent the Whole Suburb, and indeed claim to do so at every opportunity. But, oh dear, how sad, never mind, many good citoyen of New Brighton actually like to think for themselves, and don't take kindly to being Hectored, Smeared, or Have their Thinking outsourced. So the Sorry Space Cadets are routinely shunned, while other more, shall we say, inclusive organisations route right around them.

2 - they thus tend to suffer from Groupthink. Like many another Oppressed Bunch, they unite against a Common Enema. Which, unfortunately for this crew, seems to be ' the rest of the World'. This doesn't do wonders for the Quality of Thought: that which sounds so Cutting and Intelligent in the cloistered confines of your Little Group, often sounds simply Nuttier than Squirrel-Poo in a Public Forum. Which doesn't do much for #1, and so the sorry cycle continues.

3 - they hate Eeeevil Capitalists, Running-Dog Developers, and Business people, who are all out to Pillage and Rape their comfortable little world. Trouble is, these same folk are actually the ones who Sell them Food, Clothes and Bicycles, Build their Houses, and Run their Credit Cards and Bank Accounts. So there is more than a little Cognitive Dissonance in their World-view.

And when they have to stand up and Declaim in Public, the hate and venom which are an inescapeable result of 1-3, seem to Bubble Up despite their best intentions. They appear to be Mad as Pants.

I'm not sure that the Noble Commish actually said that, but I bet he thought it.

And the best bit is last.

One of the last Submitters seems to have run afoul of Godwin's Law.

Now you don't have to be too bright to know that, even on the Anonymous Internet, where no-one knows you're a Dog, invoking a Nazi analogy means that you have automatically lost the argument.

But pulling this stunt in front of a Learned Commissioner....well, words fail me. For once.

So it didn't actually all end with a Whimper. More of a Heil.....

Sand again - connecting the dots

Funny old thing, sand. This old gull started blogging about it in the very first post, and thanks to a flight way up the beach, feels impelled to rattle on some more, on that very same topic.

As young Gullz know, the Waimak River pumps somewhere between 50 and 100,000 cubic metres of sand out into Pegasus Bay each year. This is around the figure Ecanz works to (that's if it actually ever did anything about it, but, like old folks do, why, I'm rambling already). That sand's gotta go somewhere - right?

So there are three basic choices for yer Typical Grain of Sand:
- North
- Out to sea, straight ahead (East)
- South

Yours Truly has argued, convincingly, (well, shure convinced me, anyways) that the majority actually goes South, and ends up doing four things:

- making sandhills even higher
- making the seabed shallower all along the coast
- making the entire beach wider
- scooting round the end of the Brighton Southshore Spit and filling in the Estuary

Obviously, what happens week to week depends on storms, what state the sandhills are in, what various agencies have messed around with in terms of holes on the beach or new planting which traps sand, yada,yada,yada.

But the big picture is plain. More land ahoy!

And now, this old gull, having enjoying a leisurely glide all the way to Brooklands Lagoon and back, has picked up a snippet from a resident of that fair burg. (And what a burg it is! Your faithful scribe had thought of Brooklands as vaguely shack-infested, but blow me down, it's suburbia!)

Oh yes. That snippet.

Seems that the sand used to be dredged out of the Lagoon (which, for all of you non-flying types out there, can be Google Earthed) but that has long since ceased (Ecanz theory tending to the Keep It Natural in this case). And the Lagoon is rapidly silting (or sanding?) up. Quell Surpise, as our French cuzzies say. Causing washes at king tide, uncomfortably close to the front doors of some of the aforesaid non-shacks. According to our Intrepid Ninformant.

So, connecting the Dotz, us wise old gullz can see that:

- the Brooklands Lagoon is filling up at the Waimak Mouth
- the dunes are getting higher where they are constrained
- the Estuary (Heathcote-Avon) is filling up
- the seabed adjacent to the coast and off Sumner is filling up.

Hmmmm. A pattern, wethinks?

A good question to ask Ecanz:

What Are you going to do about all that sand?

Hint: how's about Dredging some of it again? After all, there's a bit of Coastal Property may need some Highering sometime this century, if all the eco-chondraics are right.

The Density of Fireworks

Fireworks are a funny, human thing. They take ages to prepare, but once that fuse is lit, they go bang or hiss or fizz, light up the sky for oh, about fifteen seconds, and then it's all over, Rover. As they say about lots of stuff, the joy is in the anticipation.

Well, this old gull has seen a lots of fireworks shows. There's the Council one down on the pier: us gullz always view that one from North Beach or the Southshore Spit - too much noise, smoke, and general mayhem up close. Mind you, those are truly spectacular displays: on behalf of the ratepayers' houses I perch on, I say: if you have to give the Council oodles of dosh to piddle away in various ways, the annual Make Things Go Bang display is right up there with the best of them.

But away from the bright lights, there are other, much more amateur fireworks shows, too. There are little groups of people secreted away everywhere, preparing their own displays. And on the big night, getting totally trolleyed, letting their carefully prepared displays go off in various ways. Yelling and yahooing generally help. But, as seasoned observers, us Gullz take such displays in our stride.

The Gullz fraternity/sorority have been endlessly amused about the antics of more than the bang-and-spark sort of fireworks. There's been another little group secreted away, preparing the Big Bang Submission for the Council's Residential density Study.

That Big Bang was meant to show the Council that the Little People were going to Stand Up and Not Let Development Happen anywhere in Brighton! And there was a Form Letter to sign, which said all that in simple words, so as not to have to let any of the Little People actually Think for Themselves. Because That, as we oldsters all know, leads to People Getting Ideas and that will Never Do. And so about, oh, thirty-seven people actually signed their brains away.

But then two Utterly Dreadful things happened to this little band of naysayers concerned citoyens.

The Council looked through all the Submissions, and decided that the Form Letter was actually just one small-s submission, not, as the purveyors and thought controllers had hoped, thirty-seven Big-S Submissions. Quelle horreur! Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth!

And the Evil Capitalist Developers who had bought the beachfront sections in the Commercial Zone, had their Tower Plan finally passed, put up a big sign advertising a quite tasteful looking glass and steel apartment block, and all this, just one short block away from the Chief Thought Comptroller General! And right in the path of the summer solstice sunrise, too.

Well, as us Gullz well know, you don't go poking at a sleepy dog, seal, human, or Council, without expecting some sort of unpleasant surprise. Little yappy dogz can give a Slow Gull a nasty surprise. Seals, well, have you ever smelt their breath when they open their mouths? Humans, let's just say they are one unpredictable animal of them all. And Councils, being Humans plus lots of Other People's Money, are the ones you least want to poke at for any extended period.

So, hindsight being a rather exact science, we Gullz can give the Bad Pennies of the world a leetle advice.

Try and be nicer to other people, because thinking that you're the Expert, Oracle and Fountainhead of Wisdom can be just so very tiring.

And, as brilliant as your voice sounds to you and your sweetly deluded followers, the rest of the citoyen of this fair city have a say, too. That's what Councillors do.

It's called Democracy.

Another one bites the dust - The Front Burner Rulez...

Well, baste me with butter and fry me slowly! Who would'a thunk it - another of those Beautiful Sea-side Mansions on Marine Parade, right next to the burnt-out hulk of the First Arsonical Episode of 2006 (by spooky coincidence), has Boint! Or, thanks to the ever-alert boyz and girlz of the Volly Fire Brigade, half-boint.

Now, young gulls, (oh, how rude, clean fergot to ID mesself - it's Aunt Sally Seagull blogging away here, don't all squawk at once, thanks), I do recall being told at a recent Peoplez Republic of Chch meeting on the topic of Revitalisation, that the said City Council are not responsible for the tenants of rented houses: their selection, or behaviour, or tendencies to the three 'A's' - Arson, Anti-social behaviour and Animality. And that's quite true.

But it does beg the question: if the said Council had an actual Plan which Evil Capitalist Developers (ECD's) could follow, when it proposed that "It is proposed that residential development on the beachfront be limited to developments in the order of 5 to 7 story (sic) apartment style buildings and that such developments occur close to the commercial area.", would this sorry state of affairs have come to pass? That Draft Master Plan was in 2002.

But, dear gullz, there was (can you believe this?) no such plan. Just a dopey, dreamy Envisionment.

So the ECD's who had gone and bought up lots of nice juicy sea-front sections, in the expectation that they could pop in to an architect and draw up a 5-7 storey block, toddle on in to the CCC, and get an approval after the obligatory to-and-fro and the payment of a substantial fee, were sorely disappointed. No approvals. You can, little fledglings, just imagine the conversation between an eager ECD and the ever-cautious CCC.

ECD: I've read your Master Plan, and like it so much I bought the sections already!

CCC: That's nice. New Brighton will be sooo revitalised what with (consults QV's Recent Area Sales figures) all that dosh you spent on them. What will you do with those old houses on them?

ECD: I'm going to drive a massive dozer right through them tomorrow and (pulls out a plan fresh off the printer) Build This! Whaddayerreckon?

CCC: (gives little nervous laugh) Why, ECD (can I call you E for short? we'll be seeing quite a lot of each other, you know), this here plan seems to have (counts on fingers) 7 storeys, or storys, as we refer to them in our Draft Master Plan. You can only build 3 there, 'cos that's the present L3 zoning.

ECD: Well, of course I knew that, but as your very own Master Plan clearly envisages 5-7, I just thought I'd go for it anyway. So, how's about a Non-Notified Consent, seeing as how you 'envisioned' precisely this sort of development anyway? And you will note, it's only a block from the Commercial Area, too! And (hastily places thumb across the Average Apartment Size panel) look how pretty the views are!

CCC: (second nervous laugh and quick glance over shoulder to check the exits) Well, E, I'll have to Consult my...my...Handlers! Shall we meet again in say, eighteen months?

ECD You mean, you little twerp, that the Master Plan for New Brighton Revitalisation isn't actually worth the paper it's mis-spelled on?

CCC: (Triumphant grin) Why E, I thought everyone knew that! It was a Draft plan, after all. So, what will you do in the meantime, while we run around like headless chickens and spend squillions of our ratepayers money on consultants and fear-mongers Consult our Citizenry?

ECD: Why, I'll rent out those beachside slums Seaside Mansions to pyschopaths, lurkers, hoons, arsonists and thieves and use a Rental Agency for Tenant Selection and Management (and rent collection, natch). And by the way, suppose that 10 storey plan comes through quickly, like next year, how would you enjoy first option on a penthouse apartment?

CCC: (stands on dignity and yelps briefly) Why E, that isn't the way we do things here. You cannot Buy your way into a scheme change! Well, not That way, anyway. We'll just take another - oh, say 4 years, and deliver a half-assed Scheme Change to allow little towers all up and down bits of the beach. But of course we can't guarantee timings: after all, the whole of Greater Christchurch will be able to object, because the Beach and Sandhills are Essential Tsunami protection, don't ye know?

ECD: That's OK, little minion. I have deep pockets, and the massive holding costs you are telling me about here, what with Interest on Capital Invested, not to mention those Overheads, will simply be put onto the cost of each and every apartment when we eventually get the go-ahead. In late 2009 or thereabouts, is my guess. Plus, of course, a Modest Mark-up. And a sign-up fee. And...

CCC: (small twittering noises) But, but, what about the Poor People who have an Entitlement to Water Views as part of their Community Involvement and part-time membership of the Association of Social Engineers? After all, the Central Commizat's Community's Draft Master Plan does envisage ".. a full cross-section of accommodation from the budget to the high-end, from aged care to single student/worker accommodation in a higher density..." If these apartments cost (quick calculations and a loud gulp) half a squillion each, how can these poor souls possibly afford their Rightful Share?

ECD: Beats me. Perhaps you could persuade your Council to buy a few boxes (on lower storeys, with Glorious Sand-hill views, preferably, they're gonna be hell to sell) out of the goodness of your hearts and the depth of your ratepayers' pockets. But tell me, is the notion of actually paying for them 'envisioned' in your Long Term Community Plan?

CCC: Er, um, not at this present juncture. For the Great Gull's sake, it was all we could do to save a few suburban libraries, let alone acquire expensive beachfront apartments at market prices. But (brightens up) perhaps you would like to donate one or two as part of - let's see - an Endangered Species Contribution?

ECD: Well, let's put that suggestion on, as we developers say, the Back Burner for now. Bit like your actual Plan, eh? Unlike our old houses, which we will leave, wink, wink, on the Front Burner.

And so, dear gullz, the ECD vision has come to pass. The Beachside Renters seem to keep getting trashed, then torched. It would be a brave gull who claimed that neither the ECD's nor the Clueless City Council were to blame.

Well, saves on D9 diesel expenses, it must be said. Pity about the actual ratepaying residents bringing up families next door.

And hey, look on the Brighton side! Lookit the Buskers! the Art! the Markets!

Why, Brighton's Revitalizing right in front of your eyes! (No, Do Not look south of Beresford Street on Marine Parade, Jonathon Seagull! That way lies Disillusion and Despair.)

A Cat called Isaac

Da, Da, there's a big yellow machine in the carpark with big rolly tracks and a long wavy arm, taking sand away from our beach!

Easy, there, Two Feets and one Beak (Can I call you TF for short?). Haven't seen you around since... since I helped your Mum out with that egg. That big yellow machine is...A Cat called Isaac.

Why's it shifting all that sand, Da?

Why, TF, because that there wind blown sand is just about to cover up a fence belonging to the Council.

Why's the Council worried about that, Da?

Because People park in the car park just above that fence, and they don't like gritty sand on their nice cars, TF. And the Council does own that car park, you know. It's one of the few bits of our beach that are actually Private Property. With a Title and all.

Lost you there in that last bit, Da, but there's lots of much higher sandy heaps just real close to the car parky bit. Why don't they take those instead?

Why, young TF, those other higher sandy heaps are Essential Tsunami Protection. And besides, they aren't Endangering Council Amenities. Just foo-barring nasty Developers plans for Towers and things. What's not to like, young TF?

But Da, if there really Is a Tsumani, won't the car parky bits and our favourite rubbish bins, be the first to get washed over? Being as how they are Rilly, Rilly low.

Good point, young TF. Perhaps the Tsunami bit is actually just a crock. Don't tell the other gulls, though - that would just get them all worried. The poor boobies think that there is Essential Tsunami Protection all the way along the whole coast. It's only us wise old gulls who know that there are more holes in that theory than, than, why, more holes than the ones they're digging in front of the Council Car Park!

Da, if the Council was being rilly, like, Consistent about this sand thingy, wouldn't they just sort of level the whole lot off a bit more? Why are they so worried about a few cars in parking lots, to the point where they carefully scrape off the little low lumpy bits in front of them, but leave the great big stonking heapy bits just a few wing beats south and north of the car parks?

Why, young TF, beats me. You can't really expect Rationality and Consistency from this Council, is all. But you wanna know the real joke, TF?

Da, you know your jokes just never fly....Sorry, couldn't resist. Oh, all right. I know you're going to inflict one on me anyway. Inflict away, Da.

Well, young TF, it goes like this. You know that some hopeless specimens Fine Upstanding Citizens don't want nasty High Towers in their little village. Despite the fact that most of these folk don't actually seem to own any property there. But the developers who own the property along the beachfront, they know they can only sell sea-view apartments. So, the joke is, young TF: the precious Council's determination to keep those big sandy heapy bits just as they are, is going to make those Developers ask for plenty of Extra Height to get those sea views....Just the opposite of what those FU... those citizens would want!

Da, that's not actually a joke. That's a Perverse Outcome, and that Council lot should be ashamed of their part in it, surely. They should offer the Cat called Isaac to unheap those heapy bits and then make those Developers settle for less height, and keep everyone happy. Even those smelly hippies Conscientious Objectors?

'Fraid that won't fly, young TF. Nanny Council knows best. The Sandy Heaps will stay as long as they do.

But Da, we are allowed to Spot the Cat, aren't we?

Of course, TF, of course. 'Tis a Gullz Right!

A Gap appears on Marine Parade

Ever on the scrounge for Fast Food, your snoopy Gull scribe was flying lazily down Marine Parade the other day. Normally, this strip (which has been heard to be described, shurely in a jocular manner, as 'the jewel in the Crown of Christchurch') gives good pickings. Because, you see, the old houses lined up here, especially south of the mall, have all been bought by developers and are awaiting.... well, development, I suppose.

Anyhoo. Where was I? Oh yes, these old houses can't be developed just yet, it seems, because the stupid Council hasn't got it's Plan into gear to allow it. So, how to turn a dime from those old, un-maintained houses, you wonder, as a developer watching the interest bills on the purchase price mount up and up?

Why, you rent them to, shall we say, the less discriminating sector of renters. That's not, by the way, what most actual ratepaying residents call this crew. We have learnt some choice new words, I can tell you!

But the inevitable has happened, as it always does. One of these old houses has gone up in smoke - the very smoke I saw when flying down the Parade. Bound to happen, eh? Rent a shack which everyone in the whole town knows the owner will never ever maintain, to the Great Gull Above knows who, for who knows what purpose, and then stand around gawping in wonder when the whole thing burns to the ground. And then the Stoopid Councillors come and stand around and blame the landlord for not maintaining the shack!

Talk about confusing Cause and Effect! The Council has just circulated a notice to ratepayers about a Planning Nimprovements Meeting, which was approved by the last Council, 'early last year'....That's 14 months ago. I've had another generation of Cute Gullz in that time! No wonder the developers are a bit down in the mouth. At this rate, they'll be able to fire up the Cat D9, oh, around 2015 or so.

That's 10 more years of rent-a-scum inflicted on the permanent residents of this Jewel in Christchurch's Crown! But (hee hee) look at it my way. 10 more years of Glorious Pickings from this same rent-a crew, who, surprise surprise, are none too particular about disposing of their rubbish.

But the final kicker is this: that house I saw burning down was my very Favourite pickings place. The best week-old chips, plenty of mice to harry, even the occasional rat on a good day. A little bit of fun has gone out of my Gullish life.

The Road is here (and so is yet more Albanian Concrete bunker design...

Your faithful gull scribe must hear record her deep disappointment at the way this road has turned out.

For starters, there were no bodies lying in front of construction machinery. We had heard from our country gull cousins about just how scrumptious a cast sheep could be. Imagine how tasty the softer bits of a cast human would be! We certainly had our hopes up.

But, despite looking every day at our Slow Road during construction, flying in low, swooping circles, and using our patent Night GullVision specs, there just weren't any such bodies. Perhaps the noisy humans who had promised to do this, just didn't mean what they said? Who knows? But we went hungry (at least until we remembered the back of the Chinese chippie...)

And the advent of all those cars, constantly going up the road has really changed our feeding patterns. We used to be able to hover round those funny humans who sat on benches all through the old Mall, talking to themselves, throwing food around, leaving shiny things for our magpie friends to sort through. Most other humans seemed to actually avoid them - don't know why, they may have smelt funny but that food! But these funny humans seem all to have decamped, along with their food. And once again, gullz go hungry.

It must have something to do with the cars - all those humans looking out the windows - maybe those other humans just felt too observed or something? Some do, you know: just try flying over one of those pairs of humans on the dunes, and they go all aggro and throw things at us.

Whatever, the Slow Road and the new Mall may be a Nimprovement for humans (at least, for the majority, can't please 'em all, you know) but it's a minor Feeding Disaster for gullz. Even the new Subway, which we had so looked forward to, is so clean and tidy, there's just no pickings there at all!

But I must confess that it is fun to see how the new parking spaces have turned out. The Planner Humanz seem to have chosen a Bunker as their design guide for the planters around the parking spaces, as the hard stuff they put around them is about two gullz high. You should hear what some of the parking Humanz have to say when they ease into their chosen spot, and wipe out their tyres, wheel alignments and side panels on these high, hard sides, often all at once! We certainly learnt some new bad words. And those white bunker sides are getting all black from these scrapes - a sure sign of dopey design, according to our old Uncle Theodore.

But gullz, unlike Council Bureaucratz, are adaptable beasts. Deprive us of food here, and we fly around and find it there. We've survived quite well enough to report it to you, our dear readers, after all. But those planters, they're built like - bunkers. They'll be there for a while. Wonder if gullz can take up panelbeating or run a wheel alignment shop? Hmm, another Brighton Business Opportunity! The Council did say they needed more. Not altogether sure this is what they had in mind, though.

Oh well. The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. That's life.

Roadz a'coming

Jonathon L Seagull las had a swoop or two across the Central Dead Zone of Brighton Mall today and found some interesting fences have gone up. Now we all know it's election year and the pollies (who are as always trying to buy votes by bribing those stupid humans with their own hard-earned tax dollars) need fences to sit on. But there's enough fences there for about (counts claws on red webbed feet) why, at least seven Parliaments' worth of Hapless Politicians. So it cannot be the Electioneering Seat of Choice.

On the other hand, if this is the start of the Evil Slow Road, where were the intrepid Let's Lie Down in front of Heavy Machinery crew? Your faithfull scribbler did notice some rather congratulatory pavement chalk markings, and after a quick flit round the block to collect our resident Human Scribblings Interpreter, we have a translation!

The messages seem to indicate that the people actually paying for the Slow Road - the businessfolk and those residents who are Tax Producers rather than Tax Consumers - are pleased that the start of serious construction is evident, in full and on time. The chalky bits say "Bring it On", and "The Tide has Turned".

Now frankly, in our gullz line of business, we would far rather see fat juicy little Worms turning, but each to their own.

But it does occur to even the dimmest Gullz Brain Cell, that the members of the Intrepid Anti Road mob Society, in order to do the threatened Lie-in, will have to Scale the Fences, Brave the wrath of Burly Blokes and Blokesses clad in tar-covered overalls (that's the road contractor's workers - keep it simple, JL (Ed. Gull)) and (as the said fences limit pedestrians to about two abreast tops) perform all of this for a total audience of maybe ten casual shoppers; dozens of shop workers whose livelihood depends on Actual Work and Trade and who therefore, one suspects, will not be Highly Amused; one badly controlled Poodle; and the obligatory Flying Squadron of Gullz.

The Squadron, will, of course, along with the Craven Politicians, be sitting on top of the Fences. Laughing their silly heads off. Although to the humanz, it will probably just sound like a lot of squawking.

As those chalky marks say, Bring it On. Oh, and can each human please bring a Plate - a chippie or two for us hungry Gullz? It may be the Winter of the Anti-Roaders Discontent, but Winter is certainly what it feels like to thin, starveling Gullz. Warm chips, s'il vous plait.

Beach Surveyz In!

Sister Theresa Gull has many good qualities. Sharp eyes, great sense of humour, the ability to target a Porsche Cayenne right across the bonnet in a howling southerly. What more can you ask for in a gal? How about a Sneak Preview of the Survey we wrote about, oh, ages ago?

Yes, young gullz, the resultz of the Survey are in! You'll recall that several Intrepid (OK, starving) students were recruited by the Peoplez Republic of Christchurch GreenSpacey Unit to conduct a survey of people they met on the beach. The questions did not include anything about the height of the dunes, per se. (That's dog Latin for 'as such' - yes, even gullz can enjoy the benfits of an edumication in Classics.)

Yet, what do we find in the summary of the results? A pointed statement about how few people want Brighton dune heights altered. And not coincidentally, another statement about how 'natural' the Brighton beach experience is....

Now this is quite rich for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, survey respondents were mostly from Summner, by a ratio of 666 Sumner to 431 Brighton in the overall survey.

The survey was, so the letter sort of says, a Sumner one with Brighton cobbled on at the last minute. And it shows...

Now as most Seagullz know, as part of their Survival Kit, there are one or two differences between Sumner and Brighton Beach inhabitants. Especially those who actually walk on the beaches. Given that the Brighton Beach catchment of users included Aranui, Bexley, and the central part of New Brighton itself, one key difference will be what sort of food they can afford, and thus what they leave for Us, the ever-circling Gullz, to eat.

Now at Sumner, the diet is, shall we say, Refined. Salt-free pretzels, Organically Decafeinated chips, and of course everything, but everything, has at most 1.35% Fat Content per Serving. Now that's fine in the height of Summer at Sumner, but, (and I, Sister Theresa Gull can vouch for this,) if you expect to survive the depths of a Canterbury Winter on a sub 2% Fat Content, you're gonna be a Dead Gull. Or at least, a very thin, woozy, and unable to Fly gull. Not a recipe for Darwinian Success!

No, you really want to be at Brighton. The beachgoer demographic there is (thank the Great Gull Above!) decidedly different. For starters, they are, shall we say, less Refined and more Catholic in their food tastes. We can feast on pizza, chips, fish, burgers, Coke, those nicely spiced-up cans of stuff that taste like Coke but kick like Horse. Fat content is not actually listed Per Serve, (the Contents Disclosure text on the wrappers seems to mainly be newspaper articles) but is certainly north of 50%. You can happily survive even a snowy winter on that sort of fare.

Now, given this sort of difference in foody tastes, you'd expect a much wider general tolerance at Brighton. And so it is. Negative experiences were very low. Complaints were also low. People thought the beach was accessible, and parking was good.

Well, of course they would! Great gullz, they have over 10km of beach to wander along, versus scarcely 2 at Sumner.

It's free! They're, not to put too fine a point on it, not financially equipped for Chargeable Amenities.

They (at least 24%, anyway) walk to the beach!

They can't be seen from the road or the cliffs! That certainly gives a lot of scope for jollity.

What's not to like?

So the survey really just confirms the bleeding obvious: what in fact a Council officer was heard to say before the survey was even conducted, by another sharp-eared gull:

Brighton is Valued mainly for its Natural, even Wild Beach Experience.

Depending, of course, on Who you Ask.

So, this didn't need a Survey to figure out. We could have just sidled up to a Council Staffer and asked for the Party Line.

The second reason the Survey is an expensive joke (you Did remember I had two reasons!):

Given that many Brighton respondents would have been interviewed within a few hundred metres of the Pier, their definition of 'natural' must logically include:

- the Pier,
- the Library,
- the Bungee Rocket Towers,
- the New Brighton Working Men's Club,
- the New Brighton Surf Club premises,
- the Esplanade Hotel,
- the two paved carparks and stone beachfront wall for good measure,
- the Beachside Slum Block (Beresford to Hood Street - bought for development, still waiting, inhabited by - well - rent-a-Hoods)
- as well as dem old Sand Dunes.

All of which are clearly visible from those locations.

So their 'natural' experience is, shall we say, elastically defined. It does not seem to quite fit the definition used in the Revitalisation Plan - "attractions worthy of a ‘class’ seaside suburb."

(Yes, patiently listening Gullz, they used those Actual Words in the Plan! Must have slipped through the Peoplez republic's Content Filtering and Proof Reading section, eh?).

Now for those Sand Dunes!

As Gullz have observed before, there is a big difference between the earnest Plannerz of Christchurch, and the Developer Gullz:

Planners are salaried Council employees and know nought about Commercial Matters or the profit motive. Generally speaking, they would not recognise an Incentive if it came along and - er - Incentivised them.

Developers are Crafty Beastz who live by Profitable Enterprise and can spot a Nincentive from several continents away, who have access to Legal Eagles and other Birds of Prey, and who generally have an accumulated War Chest of bright shiny gold coins from which to fund Forays on Hapless Bureaucratz.

Now, as the pre-conceived Result of this Survey shows, the GreenSpaceys don't want their Beautiful Natural Sand Dunes to be tampered with. And they now have a Survey with which to prove it! However hopelessly skewed or interpreted the methodology or results, staff generally win. Over elected representatives and quite frequently, common sense.

But, the more they insist that Dune Heights are Fixed Forever, the more they are generating an Unintended Consequence.

Existing Dune Heights will simply be added to Developer Private Scheme Change Height Requests.

It's quite simple really.

As anyone who observes Gullz knows: you have to be able to See Over those Damn Dunes to get a sea view. That's why us gullz sit on powerlines, not kerb edges. We need to be able to See Far to survive.

As do Developers. How can you sell a ground-level or Level 1 (or, if you are particularly blessed, Level 2) apartment?

By using the pitch "get your Glorious Sand Dune View here!" - not.

So developers will do the obvious: add the unsaleable first x meters of their apartments, to the total height demanded.
Their equation is simple:

Total height needed = The Bit with a Real Sea View which will Sell to Punters
+ what the hell - space for a penthouse and a Rooftop Pool - for personal use.
+ Maximum height of Dunes in front at Present
+ Contingency of Extra Dune Height in case the Green Spaceys decide to plant Big Trees on Top

So, little Gullz, here we have a classic Perverse Incentive set up:

The more insistent the Council staff get about Dune Heights, the higher developers will demand their apartment towers can be.

Somehow, we Gullz don't think that this is what the Spaceys actually expected. Or what the Plannerz (a separate Council department, mais naturellement) would actually want, either. They're on record as wanting 5-7 storeys, not well over 10 (as it assuredly will be under this calculation).

Or, to take a wild guess, what the good citizens of Brighton would want. But to figure that out, we would probably need -

Another Citizen Survey.....Good Grief!

They only knew what they're Agin, not what they're For

Seagullz rarely get invitations - we generally have to make our own opportunities and just fly on in there. Bit like businesspeople, really. There's no Gummint Agency out there for businesses which dishes out Glorious Commercial Possibilities. See a need, Fill a need.

Where was I? Oh yes, Invitations! Well, you can imagine the flutter on the powerlines when not one, but (count 'em!) Three invitations came old Seagullz way! We rented the services of a Much Smarter Gull (cost us half a day-old burger and a leftover Kiddies Vodka RTD can - bloody roguish price if you ask me, and the MSG did a couple of donuts on the way out, that's how happy she was, I blame the burger of course) and we discovered that the three Invitations were actually to the Same Event! Talk about disappointment....

They were all to attend a "Let's Not Dig Up the Brighton Mall" meeting.

Unsigned.

We tried to contain our excitement.

Successfully.

But, as things went, over the ensuing week, Sister Euphonia Gull and your faithful narrator, Elder Jonathon L Seagull, just kept thinking about this strange event, and, it being a lazy Saturday afternoon anyway, we just went along anyway, to sit on the fence outside, and use our Sensitive Gullz Hearing to spy on the meeting. And there was always the chance of a great Kiwi Afternoon Tea afterwards - Sister E is very partial to those sausage roll thingoes.

As things turned out, we were sorely disillusioned. For starters, we didn't have to worry about tuning up that Sensitive Hearing. The Language! The Volume! The Negativity! that poured out of that room could have powered half a hippy camper bus if we had hooked up the genny.

There were arguments about business. Most of the room seemed to believe that the Private Sector was some sort of Nest of Demons, who would be better off Exorcised, than inhabiting shops in the Mall. This is a very curious attitude, because, as Sister E said to me sotto voce, halfway through one of these rants, "who the hell else do these guys think manages to feed them every day, except the Wicked private Sector?"

There were arguments about Vehicles. Some of the carless types in the room were convinced that Vehicles were Evil, and that this extended to their drivers, and that we would all be better off Walking or Bussing everywhere. One genuinely deluded type seemed to imagine that in the 40's and 50's (that was clearly, to this one, a Very Long Time Ago) everyone was driving around in cars! As Grandad Theosophat Gull (who had joined us on the fence outside, to see what all the helpless laughter was about) said - those days, everyone Was walking or tramming, and nobody could afford a Car!

He then said - let's imagine this crew carrying their own food, on foot, from the farm to their home, once a day!

No container trucks! They're evil vehicles.
Sore feet!
Dire effects on Cows' Life Experiences as everyone needed more Shoe Leather!

About here, we cracked up a bit, and someone inside the meeting looked out and tried to shoo us away - said we were Interrupting an Old Lady who was Reminiscing. Well, she might have been, and we might have got a bit squawky, but the unshaven bloke next to her was doing a much better job of shouting her down than we were. Such discourtesy! Even the Tuesday Press said so, just in reportese. We did quiet down then, but.

So what was this August Gathering about?

Well, the funny thing is that we never did really find out. One lady did offer to lie down in front of the roadmaking machinery, as a Physical Protest once Legal Options (which generally involve hiring expensive lawyers, and we did detect a little shudder that ran around one or two in the room as they recalled their own experiences of that) ran out. Well, that sort of lie-in did Rachel Corrie a lot of good, didn't it.

One thing that everyone was Agin was a Road. Why?

Because it would destroy Their Space and let those Evil vehicles in. The brave Councillors present (and really, we did try to clap to encourage them, but wingz just don't make much noise) who gave up a perfectly formed Saturday arvo to listen to this sorry bunch assembly of earnest Citizens, did point out that it is actually The Council's land, and they intend to just go on and make a Road regardless. At this, one or ten people actually shuffled around and looked pleased.

Because it would lead to Unsustainable Development. The elderly gentleman who spoke about this did ramble on a bit, and I must confess to missing most of it - Grandad T had listened intently for three seconds and then fallen quite asleep. That's usual for him, but he then fell clean off his perch (corro iron fences are narrow at the top, believe me) and we had to undertake a Nemergency Rescue.

Because it would be Good for Business, and therefore we must Oppose it, because.... well, colour me pink and call me Polly, but isn't Business the whole point of a Mall anyway? What is any Mall but a collection of Shops? We did detect that very few Meeters had much direct experience of Business - there was this little curl of the lip as most speakers pronounced the word. Except the chair, who has a little business in the Mall. Which the Road could be Good for. So why...go figure, you can't make this stuff up...

Because - well, this one is really a bit hard for simple Gullz to figure out. One speaker, who kept standing a good bit of the time (in gullz, that's a Classic Dominance Posture), late in the meeting, started talking about Social Role Valorisation which seems to be

"the attainment and/or maintenance of valued social roles for people with disabilities and other groups who are held in low esteem in society, as a strategic defence against their systematic devaluation."

People with Learning and other Disabilities! Now call me old fashioned, but all that talk about Social Role Valorisation sounds like a thinly veiled insult to the good people of the meeting, doesn't it?

But the real beef we had was the beef we didn't!

After all that, after all the yelling, Shouting Down of Elderly Ladies, Presentation of Sustainable Alternatives, Let's Lie Down in front of Heavy Machinery, Let's subtly insult the rest of our fellow Citizens, and Let's not even thank our Stalwart Councillors at the end - after all that...

Everyone just Drifted off, like sand down to the Spit.

No Bloody Afternoon Tea.

No Sausage rollz.

Good grief - that's why we hungry gullz Went in the first place!

Reach for the Sky!

Gullz are opportunistic little beasties - we live on our wits, constantly cruise and look out for those treasured castaway bits and pieces that constitute our major diet. We wheel, circle, play 'spot the pedestrian' (see the Gullz Cardinal Rule) and generally keep a very good eye out for Number One. As dear old Darwin noted all those years ago, to Survive one must be Fitted to one's Environment. Mind you, he was rather taken by those scruffy little Galapagos Finches, but he speaks the truth still. Survive by adaptation, or perish!

Just like developers, really. All those cunning individuals who own large chunks of Marine Parade and have in some cases spent several million of those shiny gold coins to do so, must be thinking hard about the People's Republic of Christchurch's latest environment. Which is an open invitation to developers to join hands, sing from the same page in the song-book, seek a Private District Scheme Change, and apply the results thereof to Private Profit, wine, women (and possibly an UnCivil Union or two), and absolutely definitely, Song.

For who wouldn't scrarwk, squeal and cheep just a little bit, when one contemplates the goodies on offer! Just like Sister Gull Frances, when she has got the Gull Trifecta: spotted a Uniformed Person, buzzed an unsupervised toddler, and found a still-warm piece of ... whatever is there. Hunger trumps taste any day in our Darwinian world. Incentives to keep living really do matter.

As they do indeed for the Developer's sharp minds. Now ask yourself this: given the following facts, what would you try to do?

Fact 1: the Council will not follow through with Actual Planning to help Revitalisation along. It wants the developers to seek Scheme Changes itself.

Fact 2: The Revitalisation plan therefore loses most of it's Council mandate, because the Council has in effect walked away from it in practical planning terms.

Fact 3: Sea views sell very well along the entire length of the beach. As witness: the almost $800K paid at NorthShore for said view.

Fact 4: The first two or (if you pick a really unfortunate location) three storeys of any development property have no sea views, just Glorious Iceplant/Marram/Lupins. There is no real profit in these floors.

Fact 5: The dead hand of Ecanz lies over the dunes as regards Policy, Height, Non Native Cover and Coastal Policy. So no developer will attempt to take them on. The preferred course will be the Internet option - just route around obstacles (or in this case, over them). Build plenty high, to ensure lots of profitable, Sea View floor plates.

Fact 6: Any District Scheme change will cost plenty. Consider legal assistance, at $2K/day, muliply that by 6 to 10 developers (who will all want to retain individual counsel even if they collaborate in other areas) and a change timeline that cannot realistically be much less than 3 years - more if appeals wend on. Total input could be north of $5-8 million to get the scheme change through.

So, having digested all this - ask the Darwinian Developer the money question: what sort of Scheme Change would you seek, given this Environment?

The answer, young gullz, is probably not what the Council would have envisaged. It's own little Revitalisation Plan talked about 5-7 storey apartments over a modest area adjacent to the CDB (if indeed the centre of Brighton can be so classified).. Central Dead Zone (CDZ) is more like it. 5-7 storey towers could probably be learned to be loved in time, although the NIMBY's are out in force even at that modest height.

Developers, dear gulls, react to incentives and the immediate environment. they are already in the hole, money wise, for probably $15 million of direct investment. That burns up say $1.5 million every year in holding (opportunity) costs - that's $41 grand per day. You can feed a few little gullz with that sort of money. Throw in another 3 years ($4.5 million holding), $8 million to get a Scheme Change, and, what the heck, let's imagine a convoluted appeal process that burns up another $3million. Add that lot all up and you have - um - $30.5 million in the red.

(For Gullz sake, Answer the Question! Oh, all right.)

As a developer, I'd go for for the highest, most fabulously Profitable set of boxy little apartments I could possibly get away with.

I would definitely not ask for 8 storeys and 48 large units, selling for say $600K average each. That's only $28.8 million gross, direct build and fitout would probably run to 20 million, and I'm stuck with a one-fifth share of $30 million Planning costs too! I'm never going to get my Ferrari with this sort of profit!

No, by Gullz, I'd go for 30 storeys, and pack in 8 units per plate, and sell them for $300K each. The build cost goes up to say 50 million, my share of the Hideous Planning Change is still $6 million, but my gross is now $72 million. That's a Ferrari, a Zonda, and I still have change! Yippee!

Wait, what about the Council and the residents the damn Council is supposed to represent, I hear some naive gullz in the back row squawking about? Well, what about it, gullz?

Who paid for the Scheme Change? ME!
Who put up with the flack from Furious Hippies, tired pensioners and their damn catz, sad residents, and stupid ECanz who, unaccountably didn't see this coming? ME!
Who relinqished the chance to go for a moderate scheme change and stick to the 5-7 storey guideline? NOT ME! The STUPID COUNCIL!
Who has just set up a Perverse Incentive for all the clubbed-together developers to do the Same Damn Thing? THE STUPID COUNCIL!

I've got my Ferrari, and a small island offshore, and I don't have to live with anything I've built.

HAR HAR HAR! Or, Yo Ho Ho, and an entire pub full of rum. Oh, and Women and Song.

As a wise old economics lecturer once told me: a Monopoly is a Very Bad Thing. Unless, of course, you happen to Own one!

(A sadder and Wiser Gull doffs his Developer cap, and now speaks once more as - er - himself)

Incentives really do matter, don't they. Drop a tiny but well-formed potato chip, and we Gullz will have at it. Drop a $100 bill in the street, and see how long it flutters about. Relinquish the leadership role in District Planning to private developers, and see what you will get.

Grinning lawyers, quite a few over-tall Tsunami Refuges, and the odd Ferrari. Or three.

Excuse me, I feel an 'I told you so' coming on. I'd better find a Pedestrian to spot with it.

Council invites developers to form a Cartel......

Elder Gull (Jonathon L) has just found a choice little piece in the sandhills which grace our jewel by the sea, the Burg of Brighton. He ate the piece with great gusto (it was, so he claims, Rigg, but we suspect that to have lasted this long, the fish in question must have been LeatherJacket), and then noticed the paper it was wrapped in.

From the Press of 24 March, one of the Councillors seems to be urging local developers to 'get together and a (sic) do a joint scheme change'. That's right, young gullz. A publicly elected Person is urging private speculators to form 'a collusive association of independent enterprises to monopolise production and distribution of a product or service'.

Back up the truck, Gail! This seems to be - spooky coincidence, n'est ce pas? - the dictionary definition of a Cartel. And Cartels are Bad, right? Not the sort of thing a councillor should be promoting, no? And what about the notion of council leadership. The article Brother Jonathon found was, in fact, headed 'Call for Council Lead'.

This is, by any measure, a remarkable suggestion by the good Councillor. From our own flyovers of the developers properties, which amount to most of the L3 land in Brighton, it is plain to see that not a lot is going on at the moment. Three storeys height restrictions, in most of this zone, mean two storeys of Arse End of a Dune Views, not something the average apartment seeker pays squillions for. That leaves the third storey as the Icing on the Cake - (cake! how long must thin, hungry little gullz wait for Cake?).

But who is going to go first? And why would they tell the other developers just what they plan, when, and using what stratagems and inducements? Who, around the table, is going to tell his fellow Competitors - hey, I'm going to give my first two floors of buyers a free trip to somewhere with an Actual Sea View every winter, and a mortgage holiday for a couple of generations, and a deep discount if they should unaccountably wish to Move Higher in the world?

I ran this past Sister Theresa Gull, who promptly convulsed herself and, shall we say, evacuated, right where she stood. This, by the way, is absolutely against the Gullz Code, which stipulates quite clearly that said evacuations should at a minimum be performed above a real estate agent's car, and for preference that car should be high-end European.

The thought of cut-throat, money motivated developers and Hard Men (and honorary Men) - sitting round a table, talking through their plans, making joint plans for an Approach to the Powers that Be for Mutual Profit and Prompt Realisation - is either extremely unlikely or very very scary. You'd have to ask - why would they do such a thing? Why should a Councillor seriously suggest it? Isn't that a threat? Whoops, a 'threat' is a synonym for 'Cartel', according to dear old Roget.

Maybe it's time for the Council to rejoin the vertebrate world, grow a spine, lead with some Actual Planning to give the Revitalisation thing a kick along, and leave all these silly dreams of happy developers joining hands and singing the planning equivalent of 'Kumbayah', right where they belong - in the imagination of a few fevered individuals.

The Gullz would certainly be happier. Any more laughter at this sort of thing and we are going to lose our reputation as the Scourge of the Mercs.

Dear God, will the Magic never end?

Elder Gull (who, unique among Brighton gulls, can read newspapers as well as pick those choice little still-warm chips out of them) has come across a warning of yet another Arty Farty Festival planned for this quaint little burg by the sea. Yet another market, with stalls, stallholders, trestle tables bearing squidloads of said Art, but few serious buyers.

It's another demonstration, according to the blurb which EG read with many a sigh, of the Art and Craft, Leisure and Recreation focus of New Brighton. As Sister Tui Gull says (in print, on big Wellington billboards) "Yeah, right". This riff is straight out of the Revitalisation plan, and places the cart squarely in front of the horse. Real artists follow patronage, money, and their own insistent inner impulse to create, sometimes simultaneously. They sure as heck don't follow Central Planning Committees.

And to cap it all off, another day with "country, pirate and gospel" music. From some of the usual suspects, of course.

Dear God, will this natural magic never end?

Yes, young gulls, one day it will. When there are a serious number of residents, in close proximity to a natural gathering-place, with serious discretionary cash jingling in their pockets, and with cosmopolitan artistic tastes. We, the red-footed gullz, will know when that day arrives - we'll hear some seriously varied music from (gasp) Outsiders! We'll feast on some actual Discarded Cuisine, not burgers and chips. We'll peer enviously through the windows of a niche bookshop, rather than peek at those stupid kids snorting laughing gas. That's when we will know Revitalisation has occurred.

A tsunami propgation model on the Web?

This service could be the start of something really useful: as well as the public notification via Civil Defence, the Web-based notification could be to an email address, accessible from your own cell phone. The more such services get out there, the more robust the model becomes. There is always the caveat: as seagulls well know, stuff happens locally. The gust which gives Brother Gull Jonathon a quick case of the runs, out over the dunes, passes unnoticed by Sister Gull Theresa who happens to be rootling through the rubbish bins by the Pier. Tsunami are very localised beasts, just like hail-storms. As they say in that really big country north-north-east of here, 'your mileage may vary'.

New Brighton Revitalisation – revisited.

It’s been repeated so often it has become a cliché - the one about Christchurch being the only city in the world where the rich live by the airport and the slums are along the beach. Every so often there is a newspaper article about the bright new feature of the beach suburbs, but we are still waiting. And the slums are certainly there: turn south at Beresford Street and glance right.

Three years ago after a major public meeting, The New Brighton Revitalisation Committee was formed – a combined effort of CCC and locals.

They started well, produced some very pretty brochures and came up with a plan, though they seem to have forgotten that they promised to report back to the local community on a regular basis.

The essential vision statement for the 'revitalisation' project is here.

As vision statements designed by a committee go, this is not too bad. Note the emphasis on ‘encourage investment… commercial and new residential’. Now think of the progress made on this point, three years on. There’s been a lot of land change hands. But visible construction? None.

All we have got is some physical infrastructure improvements (connecting beach to mall via narrowing of Marine Parade, for example, even if the kerbing is positively Albanian in both design and execution).

Can a Council or a Committee make any realistic progress on ‘encouraging investment’? Of course they can. By getting out of the way of those with a commercial interest, and letting them get on with residential development. All else then follows.

The NB revitalisation plan tries to anticipate e.g. the type of retail outlets a revitalised mall would contain. But these things grow organically, and a biological model is more to the point: businesses always follow the consumer dollar.

The first and most obvious ‘development’ needed is residential beach apartment towers. These would house a stable core of local customers, who together with the wider retail catchment, and those attracted by events and other local activities and amenities, would become customers for an increasing range of local businesses.

Get the people into apartments first, and then stand back and watch the cafes, bookshops, hairdressers, galleries, arthouse cinemas (the old Joyland theatre is currently up for sale…), set up and chase those dollars.

That isn’t to suggest that the community abandon design guidelines and other restrictions or requirements for these new residential constructions. Far from it: we need some new ones, of which more later.

But for heaven’s sake, let the dog see the rabbit first. Stop trying to micro-manage revitalization, and let the private sector do what it does best: provide us with things we want and are prepared to pay for.

What could slow or stop development?

There are three aspects which have the potential to seriously restrict the natural flow of investment needed for the developments which constitute the true revitalization.

One is the Coastal Plan Review.
The second is the City-wide review of possible District Scheme changes.
The third is the fear generated by recent “expert” pronouncements about tsunami.
These come in two flavours: Distant, and Near.

These are all discussed, then tied together by some Civil Defence and planning suggestions that offer a way forward.

Coastal Plan Review

Present Coastal plan priorities give first place to ‘conservation’. This is frankly dopey, since there is endless argument over what is being conserved. It certainly is not the original beach, with its low or absent, ever-shifting dunes. It currently seems to be the ‘conservation’ of man-made dunes, created with the non-native sand binders of Marram and Ice-plant which now form the most prominent vegetation. Except, of course, where there aren’t any dunes – North Beach surf club, and Central Brighton. There, presumably, we are conserving stone seawalls and paved carparks.

Proponents of keeping the Coastal policy exactly as is (i.e. Conservation focused) need to acknowledge that this policy acts directly against the revitalization process. By trapping the beach and dunes in a 1980’s time-warp as to uses, dune contour, width and height, they are standing in the way of revitalization.

This ‘conservation’ objective needs to be replaced by a zoned approach which emphasizes particular priorities for distinct zones. After all, the beach from the Waimakariri Mouth to the tip of the Southshore spit is just too diverse for a one-size-fits-all Coastal policy.

It seems more intelligent to zone off the beach priorities just as the land uses on the shore side are themselves zoned. Five distinct zones can be identified by a glance at what lies behind the dunes now.

1. From Waimairi Surf Club to Thomson Park should be recreation and amenity focused
2. Central NB area down to Shackleton Street should definitely be commercial/residential Recreation amenity focused in keeping with the Revitalisation intention
3. Between Shackleton Street (which marks the beginning of the old 5-chain wide Beach Reserve) and Tern Street, some combination of ‘wild experience’ with a mild conservation-cum-recreation focus would seem appropriate.
4. South of Tern Street, the dunes are privately owned,
5. The Spit area itself is a Conservation area with a focus on migratory birds.

These changes would provide something for everyone and avoid the locked-in, one policy for all approach which is currently in place. If you wanted a latte in a tiki bar by the beach, you could go to Central NB or North Beach. If you wanted to bird-watch you could go to the tip of the Spit. If you wanted to drive your 4WD on the beach you could get a permit at Spencer Park and go up the Waimak Mouth spit. If you wanted a ‘wild’ experience but close to the city, you could get on your bike and go somewhere between Shackleton and Tern streets. If you want to find a decent size wave you could try the artificial reef. Beach-sail or kite-surf could be for hire just south of the Pier. And you could still walk the doggies almost anywhere but the marked areas, s’il vous plait.

Differential zoning would make it much more workable than the present tunnel-vision policy emphasis. So the policy suggestion is:

Review the Coastal Plan policies with a view to zoning, allowing differing priorities in different zones, and to harmonise these with the Revitalization Plan.

City-wide review of possible District Scheme changes

The council is about to look at District Scheme and prioritize areas that need to be to be reviewed. If Brighton doesn’t come to the top of the list this could mean further delays in potential development. And the review would need to be consistent with the intentions of NB revitalization goal of ‘encouraging development’.

What do developers need by way of ‘encouragement’? In a word: certainty. This comes in three dimensions.

1. Certainty of a sale of their developed residential units, homes, apartments etc. And this comes down to one factor: sea views. Without a single cent of Council promotion, as shown by the high prices paid for rundown properties, developers can already smell the salt laden air of our beach. But why would you invest in an apartment by the sea, with a stunning view of the back end of a sand dune? The policy answer to this question is equally simple:
height restrictions could be stated as a guaranteed number of storeys with a clear sea view.
This would give a developer certainty that ‘x’ floors times ‘y’ units per floor could be sold, and would avoid the eternal question of just how high those dunes in front actually need to be.

2. Certainty as to process. As the recent Ferrymead debacle has demonstrated, developers need to be confident that a plan submitted in good faith, conforming to current District Plan requirements, is not going to be side-swiped by a public which distrusts the approval process itself. Developers in NB will be committed to several million dollars in land acquisition before the plans are submitted, so any significant increase on their holding time to completion can mean financial disaster. Imagine the extra interest on $3m, if an unanticipated appeal drags the planning process out by a couple of years. The policy answer is simply to ensure that there is proper communication between Councils, developers and their publics, and (less simply!) that the public broadly speaking can live with any proposal conforming to current District Plans. For instance, the revitalization plan notes that ‘Residential development on the beachfront limited to 5 – 7 story apartment style buildings’ would be appropriate. With the proviso that Certainty #1 can be met (the ‘clear sea views’ principle), this does seem like a good start.

3. Certainty about design guidelines. This is a notoriously subjective and hard-to-get-right area: Sydney’s ‘Toastrack’ by Circular Quay happened despite planning guidelines and despite a proximity to the justly famed Opera House, and the architecturally acclaimed Sumner beach front apartments have not met with much public enthusiasm. It’s quite easy to nominate some of the jam-packed, tiny, apartment developments in central Auckland as examples to be avoided. But it’s much harder to provide positive guidelines. There is definitely one area where new design guidelines are needed, and that is Tsunami refuge provision – see below for a fuller explanation. Briefly, it means using a robust form of construction, and keeping the first couple of storeys relatively clear so that a tsunami wave could just flow straight through them. As the two lower storeys in these developments will likely have Glorious Dune Views anyway, devoting them to mundane uses such as car parking and amenities such as gymnasia or pools, is not much of a disincentive for developers.

These ‘encouragements’ are what the Council should be considering for the proposed changes to the District Plan for NB.

However, it doesn’t get us off to a good start when ECan Regional Councillors talk at local meetings about stopping some of the planned aspects, such as the artificial reef, or when the revitalization plan itself tries a bit of social engineering (‘Residential developments should cater for all age and income groups’).

Many locals surf, and an artificial reef has a great potential for generating more consistent waves. This would in turn feed into commercial surfing ventures, further visitors, and more events. There has to be serious, substantive arguments to accompany any ECan objection to an artificial reef: we haven’t heard any yet.

As for accessibility of beach front residential units to low-income people: let’s be frank: that train left the station at around the time waterfront sections hit the $300,000 mark. Was this guideline applied to Sumner? Does it apply to Fendalton? Is the Council prepared to observe its own design guidelines for the beachfront developments, and to put our rates money where its mouth is to acquire land and do the development? This aspect of the plan needs to be just quietly ignored.

Tsunami and Brighton.

There has been a good deal of public fear-mongering in articles since the Dec 26th Indian Ocean earthquake. While the possibility of a tsunami is ever-present, what we need to do in the here-and-now is actually quite simple.

In a Distant Tsunami alert, follow the Civil Defence instructions in the back of the Yellow Pages.

In a Near Tsunami situation, there is no plan yet and no available refuges. Don your life jackets.

Let’s examine these two very different situations more closely.

First of all, tsunami can originate either from a Distant or a Near source. Their effects are quite different.

Distant Tsunami
We know quite a lot about Distant tsunami and their historical effects, and there is a Pacific Ocean tsunami warning system in place, thanks to US efforts after the 1960 tsunami which had disastrous effects in Hawaii.

Distant tsunami arrive after an earthquake along an American (South or North) fault line. They take at least 12 hours to cross the Pacific, and thus there is plenty of time to organize and carry out the existing Civil Defence plan. This advises a retreat from the coast of several kilometers, or a climb to at least 35 metres above sea level.

The historical pattern of distant tsunami effects on our immediate coastlines is also quite predictable. Tsunami are affected by two factors: the sea-bed profiles offshore, and the coastline shape itself. Anything offshore (such as reefs – artificial or natural, islands), can act to dissipate energy. Other features such as submarine canyons can act to focus it. Both effects have been observed in Canterbury.

Generally speaking, the broad beaches of Pegasus Bay have seen only minor wave run-ups from Distant tsunami. These have been contained by existing seawalls (e.g. by North Beach Surf Club and at Central Brighton), by dunes elsewhere, or else the waves have simply been too small to be noticeable – their energy was directed elsewhere.

However, in any confined area – the Waimak mouth, the Estuary, Sumner, and all of the Peninsula bays plus Lyttelton Harbour, the tsunami waves tend to be focused and intensified. Houses were carried away at Okains and Le Bons Bay in the 1868 tsunami, and 3-5 metre waves are consistently recorded for Lyttelton during most significant tsunami.

The NOAA website and tsunami search engine here has a useful summary of historical tsunami effects locally. Search for coordinates -43 North to -46 South, and from 172 West to 179 East, and run-up country “New Zealand” to pick up the East Coast around Canterbury.

But as noted, there is at least time to prepare for such an event. We cannot realistically save buildings in the bays, but we can save ourselves. And as was the case for the recent North Island floods, these events are insurable, so that the loss of buildings and houses is not necessarily an economic problem. There is time to collect personal objects of value.

In short, a Distant Tsunami is not something to be feared. Prepared for, insured for, planned for, trained for - yes. On notification, the drill is – follow the Civil Defence instructions in the back of the Yellow Pages. And don’t rush – there is time, and you need to be sensible.

A Near Tsunami

But what about a Near Tsunami – one caused by (say) an earthquake in the offshore faults under Pegasus Bay?

The first point is there has not been one in our recorded history, so we know very little about possible effects. But three good assumptions can be made from other Near Tsunami, such as the one which hit New Guinea in 1998. Firstly, it will be relatively soon after the quake – minutes, not hours. Secondly, it will be high enough to overtop any reasonable seawall, dune or other coastal defence. Thirdly, it will be energetic enough to go a fair distance inland. In the 1998 New Guinea quake, for example, a 10+ metre high wave washed a village on a spit into the lagoon beyond, crossed the lagoon, and carried on for 1.3 km into the coastal mangrove forest beyond. Details are at NOAA

A good place to start is to model the effects of a Near Tsunami: New Scientist (Issue 2482 P 16) notes that the Pacific Marine Environmental Lab in Seattle has software which has accurately replicated the Boxing Day tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Policy suggestion is straightforward:

Fund the modeling of a Near Tsunami caused by a Pegasus Bay fault rupture

There is absolutely no way to plan a conventional Civil Defence evacuation for a Near Tsunami. The wave run time is just too short – minutes, probably. And it cannot be assumed that any Avon bridges would actually remain usable. There is concern over all the Avon bridges’ ability to withstand a large, local earthquake - the working assumption has to be that these bridges are unusable.

And as Guy Fawkes night regularly demonstrates to us all, even if those bridges are open, getting out of Brighton fast enough to outrun a Near Tsunami is really not a viable option.

This means that we have to look to our immediate environment for help – within the distance we could run in say 10 minutes.

In Japan, which sits on the junction of three highly active tectonic plates, some coastal cities maintain a series of what are termed ‘tsunami towers’ to which locals can escape. As ‘New Scientist’ (Issue 2482 p 13) notes, these are reinforced structures, and locals are trained to ‘run for the tower’ immediately a large local quake is detected.

So, if we had a tower to run to, our best bet is to ‘run for the tower’.

How does all of this discussion tie in with Brighton revitalization?

As you have probably noticed, none of the Pegasus Bay beach suburbs has any structures approaching a useful ‘tsunami refuge’ height (probably at least 20 metres).

And as part of the revitalization (arguably the first, most important step) high-density residential apartment development is seen as part of the vision.

The buildings themselves are likely to be apartment towers, built as standard commercial structures, using load-bearing columns to support large floor plates. This is a very robust, well understood construction technique, and has a couple of great advantages for Near Tsunami protection.

Firstly, provided the lower storeys are designed with either no walls or walls which will ‘pop out’ under wave pressure, the structure can act just like a bridge. The supporting columns present little area for the waves to attack, and the water flows harmlessly through the first and possibly second storeys.

Secondly, if sufficient clear floor space on plates above the expected tsunami level is available for public refuge, those spaces become the escape route and refuge for a significant number of local residents. Such floor space can accommodate a surprising number of people: if you’ve ever looked at an elevator’s certificate of fitness and wondered how they can get all those people in, well, in a tsunami you could pack a refuge space to that sort of density.

Developers have to provide a ‘reserve contribution’ as part of the development’s contribution to open public reserve space. The suggestion here is quite straightforward:

i) require developers of multi-storey towers to provide accessible refuge space for x people above a designated height, in lieu of or as part of the Reserve Contribution.
ii) Require pop-out walls up to a designated tsunami height, and design the building itself in conformance to tsunami robustness standards.

The refuge space does not add to development costs, as that contribution has to happen anyway whether in cash or provision. It does require that physical space be set aside – but this could be as simple as an extra-wide stairwell. In any case, such details are for the engineers and planners to sort through: we are concerned here just with the broad principles.

So to summarise what citizens can be told in Civil Defence advice, once these refuges are available:

in a Near Tsunami, run to the nearest designated Refuge Tower and climb as high as possible.

In a Distant Tsunami alert, follow the Civil Defence instructions in the back of the Yellow Pages.

Earth to Kirk: Junk Science makes Bad Policy

There is an article headed "Dunes Crucial Defence" in Wednesday's (Jan 19, 2004) Christchurch Press 'Perspective', by Professor Bob Kirk. It's notable in several aspects. It defends and summarizes the current position of Environment Canterbury - a not surprising advocacy. It borders on the mischievious in conflating a Charteris bay tsunami damage photograph with discussion of Pegasus Bay foredunes. It neglects to differentiate tsunami effects based in the elementary classifications of source and destination. It glosses over the inconsistencies in both the extent and likely effectiveness of the dunes as a primary defence. And it omits entirely any reference to the practical effects of all this, as it relates to the current Catch-22 policy situation applying to Central Brighton development.

It is no new story, that New Brighton has seen better days. St Kilda, Melbourne had the same sort of reputation as does Central Brighton - seedy, run-down, and generally unattractive. A Brighton revitalisation project is, in broad terms, underway. But real revitalisation takes private capital, higher population density, the attraction and retention of higher-discretionary-income residents, and the emergence of services, facilities, retail, restaurants and other niches, to serve this population. This can be seen now at St Kilda, where the quirky retail strip has become a fashionable destination.

But back in struggling Brighton, apart from the Pier and the Library, little in the way of actual, on the ground revitalisation is apparent. The current event-based effort does attract day trippers with some spin-offs for the local retail scene. But, honestly, an essentially transient audience attracted by jugglers, clowns and buskers is no substitute for a more discriminating population of permanent residents who (together with the day visitors and a wider selection of events) can more readily support the sort of niche shops one finds in St Kilda - excellent art bookstores, the best gelato stand in Melbourne, European cakes and confectionery, a thriving range of slightly alternative retail, and all this interpersed with banks, insurance, property agents, telcos and restaurants. That is, of course, just an old seagull's vision. Jugglers and clowns are necessary for the contentedness of the wider population - ask any Age of Empires gamer. But, and this is the essential point, this revitalisation stuff cannot be done other than by the private sector. It is emergent rather than planned, and what emerges is more akin to a biological process than to bullet points on a Revitalisation Policy document.

So what's stopping a private-capital-funded Brighton renaissance? An unholy if perhaps unintentional combination of Council land-use policy and the continuing wrangle over the dunes and sea views. It can be seen as a classic Catch-22 - the present L3 zoning allows 10 metres high/three storeys. But the dunes (where they exist, of which more later) average 8 metres high, effectively cutting out sea views. Hence, there's no incentive for developers to build as things stand, and a glance along the narrow-dunes strip from Rawhiti Park south to Rodney Street will confirm that that's exactly what's happening. Nothing. It's hard to sell apartments with the pitch "You've just paid $650,000 for your unit. Here's your view - of glorious marram grass, sand and ice-plant".

The natural reaction of developers is being followed: applications for consents to move above the 10 metre mark, and a concomitant desire to lower the dunes. But the Council has decided, on the basis of staff advice, to think everything through slowly as a formal District Scheme change, rather than to decide cases quickly on their individual merits. This may have superficial appeal. But it is having an absolutely chillng effect on development - already financial difficulties are apparent amongst the backers of at least one project, and this can be explained by the sudden increase in the holding time needed between section purchase and start of building. In effect, by opting for a Scheme change and throwing the door open to a raft of Christchurch-wide objections, comments and discussion, the Council has imposed opportunity costs upon developers, which conceivably run to millions of dollars over the rather leisurely Scheme Change timeline. Hence the chill.

And what of those dunes, and their 'crucial defence' element? The City Council depends on Enviroment Canterbury for advice on this, and any changes of dune height need a consent from EC. The problem with the EC position of dune height is simple: if the dunes are 'crucial' as alleged, then what about the stretches where there aren't any (Central New Brighton, the Avon-Heathcote Estuary mouth) or where the height is substantially less than the fabled 8 metres? Surely, in those areas, there is no 'front line' of tsunami defence.

A tsunami, for the record (US Geological Survey definition) is "A sea wave of local or distant origin that results from large-scale seafloor displacements associated with large earthquakes, major submarine slides, or exploding volcanic islands." The two defining characteristics of tsunami are a long period (15 to 60 minutes) and very high energy.

So it is necessary to differentiate our tsunami. For, as history shows, the same tsunami can have a markedly different effect on different destination shores. And the source of a given tsunami is also critical in those effects. Let's characterise source as Near tsunami and Distant tsunami; and destination as Pegasus Bay, Estuary and Avon/Heathcote rivers or the Peninsula Harbours and Bays.

The effect of a tsunami, and hence the mitigation efforts which can reasonably be put in place, varies. If we place these in a matrix of Source and Destination, we can from historical tsunami run-up records see something of this variation.

Far Tsumani - Pegasus Bay
Run-ups (the recorded maximum height reached) have not exceeded 2 metres over 150 years. In Central Brighton (where no dunes have ever existed) there has been no significant damage caused by tsunami run-up.

Far Tsunami - Estuary and Avon/Heathcote rivers
Waves over the Moncks Bay road at mid-tide (May 1960, referred to by Brown and Weeber, in their 1992 publication "Geology of the Christchurch Urban Area") and many instances of the Avon holding up and back-flooding parts of the Spit and South Brighton, particularly at lunar high tides, and not only from tsunami.

Far Tsunami - Peninsula Harbours and Bays
Significant run-ups - 5-6 metre high waves in Lyttelton (August 1868, May 1960), Henry and Ann Bailey's Le Bons Bay house swept away (August 1868, Ogilvie, 'Picturing the Peninsula", 1992). Generally, large, destructive waves.

Notice that the effect on the Peninsular Bays is quite different? In general, according to Brown and Weeber, tsunami have "particularly strong effects in the harbours of Banks Peninsula" because of the seabed configuration. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that there is a substantial seabed gradient just outside the mouth of most of the eastern bays (such as Hickory, Le Bons and Little Akaloa). The regular NZ632 chart (Maritime map) shows this quite clearly. The rapid decrease in depth causes a tsunami to 'rear up' and break onshore. However, Pegasus Bay (especially the southern end) has a substantial bank of post-glacial sand (the Banner Bank) in the northward lee of the Peninsula, for some kilometres out to sea. The seabed depths decrease gradually toward land, and wave energy is partially dissipated by friction over this extended distance. Waves which do reach the beach tend not to break as much as slop.

Secondly, bays and harbours tend to focus and can amplify incoming waves - this is the 'embayment effect', where energetic waves act unpredictably in a confined space. Owners of Tory Channel (Marlborough Sounds) baches will have experienced akin to this effect when the fast ferries were introduced and before speed (and hence energy) restrictions were imposed. The ferrys' propulsion is from water jets, four in all, with 9000 Kw to power each one, moving tens of cubic metres per second of water. The energy from those jets manifested itself as waves which travelled along the channel bottom, then literally reared up onto the beach frontages, carrying with them rocks as big as 30cm across, and all manner of channel-bottom scourings. Multiply the energy by several thousand times, and place it in a tsunami situation: the embayment effect is a real killer. It is this effect which the 'Perspective' photograph depicted - in Charteris Bay. And hence the mischief: this is emphatically not the effect which occurs on the Brighton beach shore.

So much for Distant Tsunami. Spot the omission? No Near Tsunami has ever occurred. There is a substantial fault in Pegasus Bay, which could generate the vertical movement necessary for a tsunami. We simply don't know what might happen. But if the experience of New Guinea in July 1998 is anything to go by, there is little warning time available. A 7.1 magnitude quake in the fault system nearby, offshore, generated a series of 10 metre plus waves which had sufficient energy to overtop an entire 100 metre wide spit, wash several hundred houses into a lagoon, and which waves were still sufficiently energetic even after that to penetrate another 1.3 km inland. (source: NOAA photographs and text captions, accessed from the Tsunami Runup database)

It's a fair bet that a similar event in Pegasus Bay would cause waves that were energetic enough to overtop the rather patchy dunes which are our 'defence'. If the evidence of storm damage to the dune system over the last few years can be extrapolated, where significant erosion caused movement of dune sand out to sea (and, by happy coincidence, damaged beyond repair the startlingly ugly post and plastic netting fences to such an extent that they were later removed), a plausible effect of the many-orders-of-magnitude more damaging tsunami waves could be to erode and destroy the dune system entirely in the first series of waves, vegetative cover notwithstanding. Later waves (and tsunami rarely generate just one big wave) would then have no impediment. This effect would be particularly marked in the area of dunes with the narrowest base (and hence the least cross-section of sand to destroy). And where is this section of dune? From Shackleton Street to Waimairi Beach surf club - which contains the very area of L3 limitation already noted.

The notion of dunes as a 'crucial' element of defence nows seems rather tattered. The dune system is well overspecified for the Distant Tsunami's historical run-ups, which in any case cause markedly differing effects. Un-duned areas such as Central Brighton have not suffered historically. The Estuary, with known historical wave run-ups, is completely unprotected absent a barrage or other significant physical barrier at its mouth. Property along the south side of the Estuary and in any of the Peninsula Bays is at much more immediate tsunami risk than is New Brighton, because of the embayment effect. The jury is still out regarding the Southshore (Spit). And let's not even think about the non-notified consent for 14 storeys just along from Moncks Bay road....

And in a Near Tsunami, all bets are off. The combination of massive, energetic waves, short wave run time (and hence, little Civil Defence warning preparation time) and the probable irrelevance of the dune system (where it exists at all), means that the reasonable preparation via land use, dune retention and Civil Defence alluded to by the good Professor, will simply not cope. As Civil Defence staff will privately admit, the likelihood of evacuating in a planned, orderly fashion, the whole of the ocean-facing suburbs, across bridges which are few in number and may not by then exist, is close to zero for such an event. It would be intellectually more honest, and save a good deal of wasted or misdirected resources, if EC and CCC were simply to say that any extreme wave event cannot reasonably be mitigated in any way. As the call centre industry might say, it's YOYO support. You're On Your Own.

Rather than attempting to gauge and mitigate such an event, it would be a more productive exercise for EC and CCC to audit the Distant Tsunami effects, to a much better degree of consistency and clarity than currently appears to be the case. There are known risk areas (harbours, estuaries and bays) where warning systems, evacuation plans, and physical mitigation efforts such as a barrage could be considered.

The other aspect which should be considered is the adequacy of public and private provision of insurance for the respective facilities, services, dwellings and shops. After all, in an extreme tsunami event, it's not CCC or EC which, or private individuals who, end up paying out the bulk of the restoration costs. It's not AMI or State or FMG, either. It's Munich Re, Swiss Re, General Re: the re-insurers of the world. But this can only happen if there is proper cover, frequent physical audits and assessments of risk, and (of course) payment of premiums. I know how my own house is covered. Can CCC and EC say the same about their bridges, sewage pumps, and other infrastructure items?

There is of course a nice, simple, win-win which both ECan and City Council could support: creation of a reef system out in the bay. Wins: surfers get a decent break to ride, tsunami energy is dissipated by offshore reefs, and the reefs will attract and retain at least some sand from the Pegasus Bay longshore drift, thus delaying some decreases in Estuary depth.

So the present state of play over New Brighton Revitalisation can be summarised:

1. The present dune height over the Shackleton Street to Waimairi Surf Club stretch averages 8 metres (allegedly) or is absent (Central Brighton carparks, opposite the Ozone).
2. The L3 building height is limited to 3 storeys/10m as of right
3. A third floor apartment dweller would have only a marginal chance of a sea view (that chance depends on just which dune you're opposite, and on whether or not you have a kitchen table to stand upon). First and second floor dwellers - no chance.
4. So naturally the market for 3-storey apartments is, shall we say, nascent
5. Consents for higher buildings won't be granted case by case - a District Scheme Change is the preferred course of action
6. This will take years, allowing for submissions, objections, notifications, appeals and lawyers' retirement funds.
7. So if you've just spent several million dollars on beachside sections in anticipation of a consent as per 5), better tell your banker you're in for a long, rough ride.
8. And because some rather junky science is being quoted to defend the tattered state and average height of the coastal dune system (as adjudicated by EC), don't expect dunes to be lowered much, or soon, either.
9. Bingo! Catch-22 applies.
10. But the Council will cheerfully insist to all comers that it has a viable 'New Brighton Revitalisation Plan' in action, and point to all those buskers.

In his article, Prof Kirk alludes to the 'derision' with which at least some people greet the current dunes height policy. Perhaps now, we can see why.