It was supposed to be a post-quake phenomenon, yet there is little sign of it slowing. Why are rural fringe towns like Lincoln still growing so fast? JOHN McCRONE reports.

The contrast is striking. In central Christchurch, Fletcher Living is taking forever to get going on its East Frame townhouse and apartment block development.

Government and council have agreed that denser inner city housing is vital to making a success of the earthquake rebuild. Yet despite inking a deal with Fletcher to build nearly 1000 homes back in 2015, the first 20 properties won't be finished until late this year.

The buyers just don't seem to be there for them. And so the East Frame development has been uphill all the way.

However, take the road half an hour out of town to Lincoln and the story is the opposite. This once sleepy village has exploded with subdivisions. Its residential footprint is now 10 times what it was 20 years ago.

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Driving down Gerald St, through its centre, you might not realise. Not much looks that different.

Well there is a snazzy new library. And for a Tuesday morning, there is quite a hum of people, plenty of cars coming and going.

But the strip mall of shops by the crossroads is still classic small-town New Zealand. The House of Allure rubbing shoulders with Lincoln Hair Design, the German Butchery (Private Processing), Hammer Hardware and – a slight sign of gentrification? – a new sushi and donburi bar.

Yet turn off sideways from any of the highways approaching from Prebbleton, Tai Tapu or Springston and suddenly you are no longer in the concrete breeze-block 1980s.

Street after street of brand-new, double-glazed and tastefully-landscaped, housing unfolds. Instant suburbia.

Pleasant colour schemes, artful variety. The gleam of the now. Backyard trampolines and front drive basketball hoops which speak to the influx of young families.

Then the kicker. Keep driving to the back of every subdivision and the work gangs are breaking the fields beyond. On all sides, even this long after the earthquakes, Lincoln is still expanding.

One of the big developments is Fulton Hogan's Rosemerryn. A crew in hi-vis is taking smoko in a caravan by the hurricane fencing where the most recently-constructed homes abruptly halt and the tarmac gives way to the paddocks and diggers.

It seems a lot of extra ground they are adding. A few more hundred sections at least. When is it hitting the market, I ask?

"We've got to be done by 3 o'clock," comes the quip to the laughter of his mates. But no, seriously. See that distant fence? It will be all subdivision this year.

And then what looks like a boundary line of bushes? The developers actually own the blocks of farmland beyond. This subdivision could eventually keep rambling across the landscape until Lincoln connects to Halswell.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Rural retreat: New homes clustered around one of the wildlife ponds draining Ngāi Tahu's Te Whāriki development.

The story is the same to the south of the township where Ngāi Tahu has been building the Te Whāriki estate on what was once Lincoln University's dairy training farm.

This side of Lincoln is wet. However Ngāi Tahu has made that a virtue. The subdivision's roads have central swales, green with rushes, flax and native trees. Some of the luckier sections are circled around the wildlife ponds used to keep the land drained.

It is stunning to see how many homes have been completed and inhabited at Te Whāriki these past three years or so. And that the heavy machinery is continuing to clank and grumble across the surrounding fields, carving out even more sections.

Unlike central Christchurch, struggling to get going, no one seems to be expecting this runaway development out in Lincoln to be slowing any time soon.

HISTORY OF A SMALL TOWN

Close to Lincoln town is of course Lincoln University. And there they have a Department of Environmental Management where they study these things – town planning and urban sprawl.

A trio of researchers – senior lecturer Roy Montgomery, head of department Shannon Page, and research assistant Nancy Borrie – have now done the obvious thing and used Lincoln as a case study of what has been happening, development-wise, since the earthquakes.

The summary was recently published as: "Making sense of suburbia: A spatial history of a small rural town in New Zealand."

I meet up with Montgomery, who has an eclectic background. As well as being a Lyttelton Fire Brigade volunteer and a PhD in theatre and film studies, he has been a guitarist in Christchurch bands like the 1980s The Pin Group.

Montgomery smiles at the irony. As a research topic, it was certainly right on the doorstep, he agrees. Page even lives on Te Whāriki.

But after Rolleston, Lincoln does have the distinction of being the fastest growing town in the fastest growing district in the whole of New Zealand. It is somewhat remarkable, Montgomery says.

And it also looks a natural experiment if you want to discover what kind of real estate the average Kiwi hankers after, given the option.

Understand Lincoln and you might understand why central Christchurch remains at a virtual standstill.

So what has the research uncovered? Montgomery says what has come through most strongly for him is just how much Lincoln expresses the original desires of the Canterbury Association settlers – the vision they first projected on New Zealand as a "green and empty" land.

"In terms of design, Lincoln's right there as the idealised version of Canterbury. The association wanted dispersed settlement, not concentrated settlement."

Montgomery says the map of the new province, land bought from the Māori, was drawn up with Christchurch only ever meant to be a small port town. About 400 hectares. Not the "boutique world-class city" of more recent ambition.

What the settlers had in mind was an agricultural landscape. So as important as Christchurch was, so too was the building of another six country towns of 200ha each. "Christchurch was only going to be double their size."

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Still spreading: The diggers and pipelayers carving out even more sections for Lincoln's Rosemerryn subdivision.

These rural hubs would each fulfil roles. Montgomery says Oxford, for instance, was chosen for the nearby foothill forests. "The thinking was we will need timber for building. So there can be our timber mill town."

It was also named Oxford as the likely spot for any future university. "That's where all the young men could be kept safely away from the vices of the port. The mountain air would be better than the fleshpots of the city."

Lincoln was then marked down as a flour milling centre. It had the land for wheat fields and a ready-made power source in the gentle, spring-fed, Liffey stream.

"The Liffey is like a mini-Avon. You needed a small water body, not a large roaring braided river that was going to wash away your mill every year."

Of course as soon as the settlers hit the ground, their plans began to change, Montgomery says.

But the province's first elected superintendent, James Edward FitzGerald, owned the 1200ha Springs Run. And in the 1860s, he laid out Lincoln as envisaged as a 33ha subdivision of quarter-acre plots, a grid of houses centred on the Liffey and its mills.

From a planning perspective, Montgomery says you can see how the Liffey is Lincoln's lucky feature.

The flour mills have long gone. Only a few mill stones remain as civic sculpture by the library. But the winding stream is the anchor to the township's character.

Montgomery says consider Rolleston – another politician's invention, but a product of 1960s thinking about putting a dormitory town on a main rail and road corridor rather than this 1860s water-powered village.

Rolleston has wound up not quite knowing which bit to make its centre. Its subdivisions feel more randomly plonked down. And the railway and highway split Rolleston in two. It straddles them with all its homes on one side, its industrial area, the iZone, on the other.

By being conceived a century earlier, Lincoln has the advantage of a more organic design, which is now coming through in its recent rapid expansion.

NO 'TOWN AND GOWN' CONNECTION

So good bones. But it did take rather a long time for Lincoln to get going in population terms.

Montgomery says it might seem that what should have put it on the map was the founding of an agricultural college next door in the 1880s – what became Lincoln University.

The college was followed by a wheat research establishment and agronomy division, the forerunners of today's collection of Crown Research Institutes (CRIs).

However, Montgomery says there was never really a "town and gown" connection. This did not impact the township's growth as you might expect.

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF Lincoln University's Roy Montgomery: In planning lingo, Lincoln offers prospect and refuge.

The university staff and students tended to live elsewhere – either the halls of residence, or because commuting was so easy, wherever they liked in Christchurch and the surrounding countryside.

Lincoln township had no special place in local hearts, says Montgomery. The university people who chose to live there were mostly the international students coming to do research.

"The post-grads from developing countries especially have been part of Lincoln township since the 1950s."

Montgomery and his co-authors mapped Lincoln's boundaries and found that even in the late 1940s, it still fitted inside FitzGerald's original grid of 100 sections with a population of around 400.

Through the Baby Boom 1950s and 1960s – when Christchurch was adding on slabs of suburbs like Burnside – Lincoln grew by just five small subdivisions. By 1970, it had 220 homes and 770 people.

Montgomery says a big part of it – as for all small rural service towns of the time – was that development wasn't especially encouraged. Farming needs dominated.

Lincoln only had to be home for the local mechanics, electricians, hauliers, seed merchants and irrigation firms. "The people who fix things for farmers without being farmers."

But that began to change for a combination of reasons. First, the ending of agricultural subsidies in the 1980s meant struggling farmers began to look to lifestyle blocks and town fringe subdivisions as a source of income.

Then the new Resource Management Act freed rural land of many of the existing restrictions, making it more easily subdividable.

On top of that, local government amalgamations were erasing old county boundaries and creating large territorial authorities like Selwyn District Council with a financial incentive to increase their ratepayer base.

So suddenly a place like Lincoln could grow, says Montgomery. Yet it took a while to get going. In the 1990s, with the rural economy still slow, no one had much reason to move to invest in somewhere like Lincoln.

However, as Canterbury's dairy conversions began to crank up through the 2000s, there came a wave of new developments. Lincoln stirred as an agricultural service town again. In 2001, the population stood at 2100. By 2006, dairy had helped drive it to 2700.

Then came the quakes and people being tipped out of Christchurch. In 2013, the numbers had risen to 3900. In 2015, it was 4900.

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF A stream runs through it: The Liffey powered the early flour mills. Now it gives Lincoln an anchor for its identity.

But its growth has kept rolling, now reaching 5800, with council predictions of it hitting 10,000 in another three decades.

Although given the rate the developers continue to break ground, that is looking rather an underestimate.

CREATING A PLACE PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE

As a lesson in real-life planning, Montgomery says what Lincoln's success confirms is that people like well-constructed suburbia.

Of course Lincoln also has its proximity to Christchurch and its cheaper land prices. Those are big factors in home-buying decisions.

But on the whole, people don't want to live in cramped urban environments if they have the choice. They like living in a community, but at arm's length.

He says it is notable that 180 years ago, FitzGerald's original ideal section size was 1000 square metres. And on the new subdivisions, the section sizes remain about 700sqm.

Admittedly what has changed is the houses have got so much bigger. The 113sqm of the 1940s is now a home with 219sqm.

Montgomery says the big cities of the world areusually built-up largely because there is not much other choice. They are founded somewhere strategic – a harbour, a river, a rail junction – and then find themselves hemmed in by geography.

"A lot of the 'eternal cities' are where the connections converge. But then they're often in really vulnerable locations. By the sea, or a natural funnel of some kind."

Yet Canterbury was always a low density settlement. With its flat plains, it could spread itself out in comfortable fashion.

Sprawl is in its nature. Only the resulting dependence on cars make that a planning problem. And with Lincoln a half-hour trip from the central city, it is difficult to pretend that people will clamour to live in smaller, more cramped and expensive, inner city complexes.

Montgomery says in planning lingo – habitat theory – Lincoln offers "prospect and refuge". What appeals is a safe place with a view of a sustaining landscape. This is why natural features, like rivers, lakes and coasts, are psychologically so important.

But another factor playing out to Lincoln's advantage is that developers have got much better at creating subdivisions – getting away from cookie cutter formulas. And councils are also thinking ahead in terms of coherent growth plans.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Early morning in Gerald Street. Not much has changed if you are only driving through Lincoln's centre.

Montgomery says everyone criticises the old-fashioned subdivisions with their enclosed labyrinths of cul-de-sacs. However even those were a planning response to the rise of the car.

"Particularly post-war, there were a lot of young families. And what they needed were neighbourhoods where children could play on the streets and feel safe."

Today's subdivisions, as in Lincoln, are large enough that they generally combine the cul-de-sacs with large connecting boulevards. A greater diversity of form is built in.

And there is a new emphasis on walkable neighbourhoods. The subdivisions are criss-crossed by separate networks of footpaths and cycleways. And then the subdivisions as a whole are designed so one links seamlessly to the next.

In Lincoln, the roads of Rosemerryn do continue through to the roads of Flemington next door. They are not boxed off as might have been the case a few years back.

On the Liffey Springs development, the Little River rail trail threads its way through Lincoln on its way south. Montgomery says the developers now sell an "indoor/outdoor flow" on a subdivision scale.

So when the market demand did develop – the second more intense spurt following the earthquakes – Lincoln was "pre-loaded".

It had the natural features to give it character, its streams and ponds. And the developers knew what they were doing.

SNOWBALLING DEVELOPMENT

On the front patio of an over-55s villa in another of Lincoln's many new subdivisions, Barton Fields, a lady sits with her tea and papers, enjoying the sun.

A whole road of these smaller units have been built. And down the end, the bulldozers are again churning up the fields for the next stage of the development.

Giving lie to the belief that Lincoln is being solely filled by Christchurch quake refugees, she says most of those around her have country connections.

She lived in Southbridge until her house got unmanageable. Several of her children have bought here. The other retired neighbours come from places like Leeston and Halswell.

Lincoln has the attraction of being new and thriving. In Southbridge, the bowls club was quiet. Here it is jammed.

There is the big recreation centre. There is the New World supermarket down the university end and soon the promise of another supermarket opening on the Prebbleton entrance to the town.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Roads to somewhere: Te Whāriki also signalling where the next lot of houses are about to go.

The place is snowballing, she says – a magnet drawing people from all directions.

Nick Booth, sales manager for local estate agents Ray White, says Lincoln and the other post-quake destinations like Rolleston are on a roll. Good housing stock and good facilities.

Though price matters too, especially for young families and first time buyers. "You find people start looking at Prebbleton and then – value for money – go on to Lincoln, and from Lincoln to Rolleston."

There is a pecking order because even $20,000 less for the land can make a difference.

Flemington subdivision developer Shane Kennedy, a local racehorse trainer who jumped in when AgResearch put the land on the market, says the earthquakes did create a permanent shift.

Add in the effect of the southern motorway extension and Christchurch is spreading so that the new subdivisions of Wigram and Halswell are going to become almost connected to those of Rolleston and Lincoln.

Kennedy says demand for sections has become steady – less volatile than it was in 2014 or 2015 – because Lincoln is seen as a well-established option now.

He says he hopes central Christchurch does work, having doubled down on its "best boutique city" densification plans. And in another five years, once it is actually finished, it could be a different tale.

"It's timing. When there's the convention centre, the sports centre, people will want to move into town."

Meanwhile, Lincoln has not done its dash yet. "Where does it end? It's difficult to say whether it will be in five years, 10 years, or 20 years. But my view is it's probably closer to 20," Kennedy says.

And certainly that seems the collective judgement. The edge of every Lincoln subdivision just marks where more fields are being ploughed for sections.

Christchurch has to push housing development in its central city even if it is uphill. But Lincoln is showing the direction the city will mostly go if it gets the chance.