What Makes a City?

– Mike Fisher 2017

Mike Fisher is a friend and peer. We first met Mike in the intense first years after the earthquakes in Christchurch when he was working as an urban designer for the Christchurch City Council as part of the Urban Regeneration team. He then went on to be the Placemaking Coordinator at the Adelaide City Council and Manager of City Planning and Development. He is back living and working in Christchurch and is the General Manager at Riverside Market.

Mike loves cities. He understands local government pressures and processes, business, startups and the creative sectors. Gap Filler acknowledges Mike and his colleagues at CCC as one of the key reasons Gap Filler and many other temporary projects were able to get off the ground easily in the post-quake years in the city.

At some point in the history of city making a shift has taken place where the power, creativity, ideas and connectedness of citizens has been ceded to a group of people who make up local government, and further up the chain the regional or national governments. Citizens for a large part have moved from being change-makers, problem solvers and “owners” of their streets, districts and neighbourhoods to consumers and customers who wait, demand, hope, or protest that government will make the city they want.

Read the rest here: https://makingchristchurch.com/who-makes-a-city-51169ea6f123

This piece was published by The Press in 2017 as part of the City Making Series (2015 – 2017) which was curated by Te Pūtahi – centre for architecture and city making, Project Freerange and us. It was aimed at deepening and widening the voices contributing to critiquing and growing conversations about city making in Ōtautahi, Christchurch. Past articles in this series are available on Making Christchurch here.