In the summer of 2023/2024, a central-city street in Christchurch underwent a major transformation. The road surface was painted, planters with trees appeared, benches went in and even a public performance stage was erected. What was previously a place for cars became a place for people.

How did this transformation happen? What was the result? Now that the dust has settled on the project, we took a retrospective look at the most recent example of tactical urbanism here in Ōtautahi.

The idea

Anyone who has ever interacted with the City Council knows that enacting change through the normal process is slow. The cogs of bureaucracy seem to turn at a glacial pace. And even when they begin turning, they often don’t result in anything. There are a lot of reasons for this, but a major one is the form that our top-down planning process takes. This is not a problem unique to Christchurch; it happens in any municipality dealing with the urban environment of a city.

Typically, a street is redesigned by city planners, and then the design is sent out to the public for consultation. On the basis of that feedback, the elected members make a decision, and then the street is rebuilt in permanent concrete, pavers and asphalt. For a recent example of how this process works, the renewal of Victoria Street, just to the north-west of Gloucester Street, was undertaken this way. However, the drawbacks are clear: from start to finish, the Victoria Street redesign took from 2016 to 2019, undergoing multiple rounds of consultation and adjustment. The final pricetag of $13 million dollars was a lot higher than the initial estimate, and at all points there was the risk that elected members might just say “no”, and send it back to the drawing board.

“Tactical urbanism” is a counter-movement to this slow-paced process of change. The term was coined by American urbanists to describe changes to the urban environment that don’t require massive top-down planning. Instead of going through multiple stages of detailed designing and consultation, you just get out there and make a change. Tactical urbanism focuses on quick, cheap and often temporary things: paint, planters, benches. With these simple tools, streetscapes can be transformed very quickly. Changes can either be made “guerilla” style without involving the municipality, or can be sanctioned with their consent and support.

The canonical example of a sanctioned tactical urbanism project was the transformation of Times Square, New York, that happened beginning in 2009. The square was closed to car traffic, and the city laid out planters and deck chairs for people to enjoy. The plan was an enormous success; he number of pedestrian injuries plummeted, business foot-traffic increased, and GPS monitoring of taxis even showed that congestion was reduced. In other words, Time Square was converted for a place for cars to a place for people. Despite initially being a temporary change, the project was so successful that in 2014 the square was completed renovated to permanently become a pedestrian plaza. Similar projects have been enacted all over the world, with similar positive results. 

The place

Gloucester Street is one of the many east-west streets running through the centre of Christchurch. When the city plan was laid out in 1850 by surveyor Captain Joseph Thomas, he chose a grid layout for the central city. Gloucester Street starts opposite Christ’s College in the west, runs east between Cathedral Square and Victoria Square, and out to the eastern suburb of Linwood. Historically, it was one of the thoroughfare routes of the central city. However, after the 2010/2011 earthquakes the street underwent a dramatic change. As part of the city rebuild, a new convention centre was built between Cathedral Square and Victoria Square. To make room for this, a block of Gloucester Street was closed to through traffic, bisecting the street right in the middle.

Also in the wake of the earthquakes, the new Christchurch central library—Tūranga—was opened on the south-side of Gloucester street at the western end, directly between Gloucester St and Cathedral Square. The block of land just to the north of this was nominated the “Performing Arts Precinct” in the rebuild plan, thanks to the presence of the majestic Isaac Theatre Royal. That theatre was joined by a music venue called The Piano, and at the time of writing the rebuild of the Court Theatre is happening there as well.

Further to the east, New Regent St and Cathedral Junction are both hot-spots for pedestrians out enjoying the central city, with a collection of popular bars, restaurants and cafés all concentrated together. Both run north-south, with pedestrians crossing Gloucester to go between the two pedestrianised areas. Close by, on the south-side, there is the Pacific Tower; Christchurch’s tallest building and a popular hotel.

This left Gloucester Street in an awkward state. There was no longer much in the way of car traffic, but most of the street was still dedicated to cars. There were two wide traffic lanes and on-street car parking. Yet, with all the performing arts venues and Tūranga nearby, it was clear this central stretch was going to be seeing a lot more pedestrian traffic in the future. The street needed a redesign.

The change

Rather than go through the usual heavy top-down urban redesign process, the council decided to take a tactical urbanism approach.

The redesign was done utilising temporary installations: the road and footpath surface would not need to be fundamentally altered. Planters and temporary bollards were used to narrow the traffic lanes and create slaloms for cars to navigate. The speed limit was reduced to 10km/h, with plastic “speed cushions” introduced to slow cars down. Wooden benches were installed. On-street parking was removed. The road was painted with a bronzed surface to indicate that it was a shared space. To cap it off, a miniature pagoda, designed for live performances, was erected outside the future Court Theatre site.

The change is really quite striking, when compared to what existed previously. But best of all, because the changes were all temporary, the design process was fast and flexible. When an issue was identified with drivers having a hard time seeing through the planters when exiting an adjacent private car park, the planters were quickly moved. Road markings were adjusted to make the roadway clearer after public feedback. In a traditional design process, these changes would be hard to make after implementation, but with a tactical urbanism approach, it was trivial.

The total cost of implementation was about $1.4 million. Most of this was covered by the central government “Streets for People” fund, which directed taxpayer money towards tactical urbanism projects.

Most impressively, the turnaround was only a few months, with the initial design and feedback in September, and the design installed in December. Compared to the usual multi-year top-down design approach, this is incredibly fast.

Activation

Creating a public space is only part of the equation. Once you create it, you need to do things with it to bring people into it. 

Several activations were put on by the council. In one, an early-morning dance party was organised that had 900 people dancing and sipping coffee in the middle of the street. In another, circus performers put on a show for crowds. These events closed the road to car traffic, and brought people in instead, helping to normalise that this was now a shared space for everyone.

The activation events were by all accounts a success, with some attendees not even realising they were part of an urban design experiment. The feedback from attendees was consistent, however: this is how our city streets should be.

The results

Feedback on the change was overwhelmingly positive, with supporters outnumbering those opposed over 2-to-1. On this basis, in 2024 the council chose to make the changes permanent. Later on down the line, once the Court Theatre rebuild is complete, we expect it to be pretty trivial and non-controversial for the council to re-implement the changes with permanent materials.

Overall, our appraisal of the project is mixed. Press columnist and frequent NIMBY Mike Yardley described it as “underwhelming”, and we partly agree. With the Court Theatre rebuild dragging on, the area has definitely not reached its full potential. When we visited, at lunchtime on a weekday, the benches and performance space were not being used. Having a noisy construction site looming over you creates a significant dis-amenity to using the space. There are still undeveloped gravel parking lots on both sides of the road, which is hardly an exciting destination for people to go to.

Yet despite this, the footpaths were full of pedestrians. Most importantly, cars were creeping along at a very safe speed. We saw several pedestrians that clearly felt safe enough to confidently stride out into the road outside Tūranga; we were even able to stand in the middle of it to take photos with no fear of being hit by a car. That isn’t to say that there are no cars; plenty of cars came by while we were there. Thanks to the traffic-calming measures and street surface painting, it is clear to drivers that they need to slow down and pay attention in this space. The project has clearly achieved its goal: this is now a street for people.

What next?

If the council is willing to embrace tactical urbanism, we think they should go all-in. They should abandon the heavy, top-down approach to redesigning our urban spaces, and instead embrace the lean, iterative strategy embodied by the Meet Me on Gloucester project. Quick trials and small prototypes are the fastest and cheapest way to engage with the community. Rather than endless rounds of consultation, just put something in and listen to the feedback. This approach largely overcomes the inertial attitude and knee-jerk opposition that many people (and elected members) have to changes in our public spaces, and gets the conversations flowing in a more productive way.

If anything, Meet Me on Gloucester didn’t embrace tactical urbanism enough. The project still experienced delays and NIMBY opposition, mostly as a result of the council sticking to their usual design/consult/refine loop in the lead-up. While this was generally a step in the right direction, a lot more could have been done if the council had opted for smaller incremental changes, rather than wrapping this whole thing in a big “project” banner. A planter here, a bit of paint there, and without any major capital expenditure we could begin transforming our urban streets across the city.

It remains to be seen what will happen once the Performing Arts Precinct is completed, and the gravel-pit car parks are developed. Our expectation is that this will become a vibrant space, with people spilling out onto the street after shows. Add in some food trucks, cafés and restaurants, and we have a public place that would beautifully complement the surrounding amenities. Once pedestrian foot traffic has increased to a greater level, we think it is a no-brainer to re-implement the change permanently, and maybe even completely close the street to cars between Colombo and New Regent Street; turning it into a pedestrian plaza extension of Cathedral Square.