Shaping People's Desire

June 2024: PLACEMAKING FOR CIVIC IMAGINATION PART I. The Lyttelton Petanque Club helps lead to Albion Square.

Volunteers at the first working bee for what became the Lyttelton Petanque Club.

In 2010 and 2011 a series of earthquakes rocked the region of Waitaha Canterbury in Aotearoa New Zealand with devastating effects.

The most destructive quake was centred in Trent Hiles’ hometown of Ōhinehou Lyttelton, a little port town of 2000 people with one vibrant main street, London Street. Afterwards, the street was like a gap toothed smile, many landmarks – the Harbour Light Theatre, the Albion and Empire Hotels, the museum, half the buildings – all crumbling, cracked or fenced off for fear of further collapse.

Lyttelton is a small place, and the impact was huge. The first colonial settlement of the area, Lyttelton was known for its range of quirky, character buildings. The mortar, which contained a high portion of sand more than 100 years old, crumbled in the shaking and rumbling of the quakes.

Trent responded to the situation in the best way he knew how – by creating something with his hands. He made white, wooden crosses and marked them with their street number and installed them on each broken or empty site on London Street. He did it anonymously, publicly mourning the loss of the fabric of his town.

He had lots of other ideas for creative public events and installations on vacant sites. When he heard about a creative quake-response group called Gap Filler that a few of us had started in the central city, he reached out. We’d done some outdoor movie nights, pop-up concerts, photo exhibitions – all on sites where buildings had been demolished. We’d also figured out the ‘back room’ stuff: permits, liability insurance, landowner agreements, etc.

A partnership, Lyttel Gap Filler, emerged. Trent gathered a few other locals together, putting their collective energy into bringing life to an empty site in Lyttelton.

The first site identified for action was the site of the former Albion Hotel on the corner of Canterbury and London Streets. After getting agreement from the landowner, Lyttel Gap Filler dropped fliers in all the local letterboxes inviting people to a series of Sunday working bees. We left a blackboard on the corner the week prior saying “Working Bee, Sunday 10 til 2 – bring a shovel” to call more people to action.

About twenty-five people turned up at the allotted time with shovels, wheelbarrows and power tools. Someone brought baking for the volunteers. We had no plan. Deliberately. The people who turned up had to decide what we should do. It was awkward at first, but four small groups emerged to work on furniture, a stage, a garden and a petanque pitch.

Rich hard at work on the furniture team.

Pallets were cut up to build chairs. Cable drums became tables. Bricks from the old, ruined building were laid out to form the petanque pitch. A garden was planted amidst some of the residual foundation. The remains of the concrete pad became a stage for Lyttelton’s many musicians. Later on, Trent made a couple of temporary artworks spelling out messages using nautical flag designs. The site was christened the Lyttelton Petanque Club.

Probably more chatting than hard labour, which is actually great.

People gathered in the space, swapping stories and telling their tales of the quakes. Petanque balls could be borrowed from the business next door and the library. People took turns watering the garden. Barbecues were held and musicians played outside on the stage. The plants grew. People added to the space because they felt like they could, or that their help was needed. The DIY hodgepodge aesthetic of the space built communal ownership, giving tacit approval for anyone to get involved. And when the anniversary of the earthquake rolled around, this was the place where hundreds of people spontaneously gathered.

The site a few weeks after 'completion', with lots of new additions and contributions from locals.

Around a year and a half later, Christchurch City Council began a suburban master planning process as part of the quake recovery process. They engaged with locals about their hopes and priorities for the town. Among many other things, people said they wanted a ‘town square’ gathering space that they’d never had before. Quite a few pointed to the success of the Lyttelton Petanque Club site. As a direct outcome of that process, the City Council eventually bought the site and developed it into Albion Square – a large, functional, lovely space with a stage, seating, plantings, playground and cenotaph. There was a genuine effort to co-create the design with the community. Locals had the chance to propose temporary seating and artworks, some of which then got funded and made – a few of which became long-term. Trent was commissioned to make a new nautical artwork for the square that’s still there today.

Albion Square, on the same site, with Trent’s colourful artworks sticking up in the distance.

The Lyttelton Petanque Club was people’s first palpable experience of what a ‘town square’ might feel like in Lyttelton. That primitive temporary project – making it, caring for it, activating it – helped till the soil of Lyttelton’s civic imagination. At the next opportunity when asked about their hopes for the place, ‘town square’ was a prominent response. Arguably, the same experience that sparked the civic imagination also limited it: could that site have become something else other than a town square? Should a town square have been developed on a different site in Lyttelton?

It’s clear that this form of placemaking, what we might call urban prototyping, is an important tool in shaping the sense – a collective sense – of what’s possible in a place. With care, this tool can be honed and used to cultivate the civic imagination on a whole range of issues. At this historical moment in which humans are facing multiple interlinked crises, we will require more radical change over the next 20 years in our behaviours, political systems, technologies, distribution of wealth, social relationships, and use of resources than we have in any other period of human history. But as individuals and as societies, most of us feel paralysed and helpless because we cannot fathom what these new systems, structures and solutions might look like.

Imagination is a prerequisite to meaningful change. If we cannot first imagine something, it’s incredibly hard to bring it about. We need to grow our capacity for collective imagination so that, as a society, we start to believe in our ability to adapt and meet the coming challenges.

Grassroots urbanism, even or especially the messy, low-fi, temporary kind, is one of the best fertilisers.

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* This series of articles has been in the works for a long time. Many thanks especially to Tim Taylor Stephanie Symns and Coralie Winn for inspiration, support and earlier drafts!