Other options: The East Frame is promised, but the land has not all been sold by the Crown so there may still be community opportunities there.

It's a tough one. Is Christchurch doing well or is it doing badly? Is its earthquake recovery one giant missed opportunity or the best that could have been hoped for under the circumstances?

We are sitting outside one of Christchurch's many new cafes in the unexpected warmth of a sunny nor'wester day, nursing an orange juice and hot chocolate, musing on the state of the world.



Anake Goodall ought to be well-placed to make a call on that poser.



A precocious kid from Invercargill – he helped found a credit union at his local freezing works at age 17 – Goodall was a key negotiator of Ngai Tahu's historic Waitangi settlement and chief executive of the tribe's operations when the earthquakes hit.



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He was involved in the recovery as a member of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Review Panel – the watchdog on the Government's exercise of its emergency powers.



And he sits on many boards, works with many good causes, including being a director at Meridian, executive chair of the social enterprise network, the Akina Foundation, and an adjunct professor at Canterbury University.



So with a foot in both camps – that of big business and progressive politics – surely he has his well-worked out answer by now?



Goodall sighs. It's complicated because so much seems contradictory, he replies. But the big question seems to be why the city's recovery became such a conservative affair.



Goodall says the earthquakes with their massive insurance payouts – an injection of some $33 billion into a community of about a third of a million – were supposed to be the opportunity to create the first new city of the 21st Century.



Instead we largely rushed to build the last version of a 20th Century city ever to be constructed, he says.



"The cruel irony is that Christchurch has just built brand new last century infrastructure. For free, we had all the old infrastructure removed. But then what we did was put yesterday back there."



The question now is whether the dash is done – everyone is too exhausted – or if adventure and ambition can come back into the picture.

JOSEPH JOHNSON / STUFF The Retail Precinct in central Christchurch.

We both happened to be at Cr Raf Manji's launch of his tilt at former Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee's Ilam seat. Standing as an independent, Manji was striking in the boldness of his call to action.

The Government needs to be promoting Christchurch as the true second city, Manji said.

There ought to be a $1b investment fund – $400m of that to build central city housing, $300m for the Avon Red Zone, $200m for a stadium, $100m for city revitalisation projects.



Christchurch should sell itself as the city of health and well-being. A Commonwealth Games in 2026 would be an anchor event to mark its full recovery.



Some of that election stump talk might be questionable, Goodall agrees. However it is nice just to hear someone speaking like that again.



It make you realise how contracted Christchurch's expectations have become.



THE CENTRE V THE EDGE



Goodall has a general explanation. The old knew what it believed and had the capacity to build back the best version of itself fast. And as the concrete was poured, the options for the new disappeared.



It is an organismic view of a city – the tension between a centre with the instinct to conserve the life it already has and the edge which is naturally the first place to feel a strong need for something different. And one has the capital, the other, the information.



"Those with all the resources up the big end of town are the least responsive because they've got the least need to change. Those that are really sensitive to the change are right on the edge.



"And guess what, they've got no resources. They don't have the money, or the human resources either."



Goodall says directly after the earthquakes, Christchurch City Council represented the community. But clearly it was overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. So central government had to step in and take over the show.



However as soon as Wellington was underwriting the recovery, the view from Wellington also came to dominate. And that view was fundamentally risk averse.



"The machinery of Wellington exists to negate risks. That's its function. Ministers never want to be embarrassed by things, so they're never going to try things that have a 50/50 chance of failing."



Goodall says locally there was a general call to build back a city braced for the climate and energy challenges of the next 100 years.

JOHN KIRK-ANDERSON/STUFF Ngai Tahu's Anake Goodall: Christchurch's recovery squeezed out the alternative thinking.

At Share an Idea – held in 2012 when many of those attending were still living in cracked houses – it seemed the only sensible thing to do, he says.

An example would have been mandating that the new houses in the new subdivisions ought to have rain-water collection tanks to wash cars and water lawns. Christchurch's alpine-fed aquifers – that pure "dinosaur water" – is too precious a resource to continue using thoughtlessly.

Modern subdivisions ought to be built with community gardens as well. Another future-proofing step.



But Goodall says the Government didn't even manage to create a few exemplar housing projects of this kind.



And it is easy to point to many promising projects that were allowed to wither from half-hearted support.



The central city was meant to have a district energy scheme providing efficient heating and cooling to all its buildings.



The Breathe urban village project was supposed to a demonstrator for eco-friendly inner city living alternatives.



The temporary Epic Innovation Hub that sprang up to house a cluster of high tech start-ups was intended to lead on to a permanent purpose-built innovation campus three times the size.



Goodall says all these schemes were on the margins – smart responses to the future that lacked an established capital base. The Government tracked the recovery back to what looked the safe middle and slowly such dreams were allowed to die.



"The feeling was we must do what the financial markets demand or otherwise the investors won't come here. We've got to provide frictionless conditions on the market's terms. Therefore we won't do those slightly edgy things like insist on grey water reticulation systems."



Goodall says what was good for NZ Inc came through on every major rebuild decision. Like Canterbury University, where he is part of the Ngai Tahu research centre.



The Government's attitude was it didn't want film studies and other soft subjects. It wanted science, technology and commercialisation. "So there's $250m on the table if we get what we want. And if we don't, we do nothing." Christchurch itself did not get much of a say in the matter.



Goodall says he does give the earthquake recovery an A grade for the initial response – the stabilising of the city's economy, the efficient cordoning off and demolition of the central city.

JOSEPH JOHNSON / STUFF Ash Street in the Innovation Precinct.

But the command and control period went on too long. The community voice was stifled.

And now the city is supposed to be moving into its next phase of taking back local control. Yet – because of a curiously fractured geography of rebuild authorities – there is also a new feeling of leaderlessness.

You have Regenerate Christchurch, Otakaro Ltd and Development Christchurch. There is the City Council of course, and then the Greater Christchurch Group back in the Prime Minister's office in Wellington.



Divisions look frozen in. It is hard to tell where the real power lies. There is no one voice. Again that is why Manji's no nonsense demands for Christchurch suddenly feel quite refreshing in the current context, Goodall says. Most people have just stopped expecting something more.



BUILDING YESTERDAY FOR TOMORROW



So Christchurch had a huge investment opportunity and sunk that capital into building yesterday.



In paradoxical fashion, its glassy central city office blocks and neatly-fenced subdivisions are completely brand-new yet also represent the last hurrah of another era.



Goodall laughs and says he is showing his greeny colours now. But politicians are behind the times. They are never rewarded for taking risks. However the challenges that Christchurch needed to square up to are still absolutely present.



"The simplistic way I look at it is that we're all going to this future. Like it or not, whether it is convenient or not, we're going there. And we already know a whole lot of its characteristics.



"It's going to be low carbon, it's going to be low energy, it's going to be localised, and there's going to be climate variability. So what are we doing about any of those things?"



Goodall says he is impressed at how the corporate world is calling for real change.



Chief executive groups like Pure Advantage have pointed out that the New Zealand economy – mostly farming and tourism – is 70 per cent dependent on its environmental values.



Yet because of policy foot-dragging, New Zealand has slipped from the first place it held in the Global Green Economy Index in 2011 down to 24th in 2016.



Goodall says big business is reading the market signals and responding. Companies like Air New Zealand are heading carbon-neutral and committing to ethical investment because they know customers will demand it.



Perhaps that is a rosy view, he admits – enlightened corporations. But the world has been on a globalisation jag for several decades which has stripped out community values and created stark economic inequality.



A course correction has to happen. And here – putting on his social entrepreneur hat – Goodall says it is a change that is going to be important for small business too.

Images of the Avon River precinct are being used to sell the CBD to visitors and locals alike.

As executive chair of the Akina Foundation, he is helping bring the 2017 Social Enterprise World Forum to Christchurch this September.

It could be the biggest conference the city has hosted since the earthquakes, he says. A revival of the "transitional movement" energy Christchurch was showing there for a while.

Goodall says the simple idea is that people are willing to favour businesses that can tick the right boxes when it comes to their commercial practices. So not only sustainability but supporting diversity and other community-building values.



Christchurch has some like Kilmarnock in Wigram, which offers packing, recycling and office services by staff who have physical or intellectual disabilities.



The businesses have to be profitable, not a charity. But they are doing things in a way that strengthens their own communities, not strip-mining them for profits like a globalised business.



It is a bounce back towards cottage industries, a re-localisation of commerce.



"Scotland has got about 10 years of data on this. And something like £2b a year of GDP comes from social enterprises, 70 per cent of which is goods or services exported. So it's not tiddlywinks.



"And the majority are located in the highlands and islands. So the impoverished communities that've lost out through the centralisation of populations and corporate systems."



STILL HOPE IN GREENFIELDS



Goodall's point is that the current tensions between the centre and the edge are a general thing. It is a story playing out all over the world.



The new finds itself shut out. Then there is a tipping point and it starts to become the norm. A correction happens.



At 57, he is devoting his time to being part of this business transformation in New Zealand now.



So Christchurch could have done better with its rebuild. But life is life.



People know a fossil fuel dependent world is shaky, Goodall says, yet the last few years have seen record sales of new cars. Again, a huge capital spend on yesterday's infrastructure when the realities of the future are plain enough.

SUPPLIED/PEANUT PRODUCTIONS The crowds turn out for 2014's Festival of Transitional Architecture. Where has that energy gone?

We are all on a trip to the same place. Thus regardless of what Christchurch has built, it is still going to have the job of looking up and responding to the challenge of those big social and economic changes.

Goodall says the hopeful part for the city is that not all the concrete has been poured. The Avon Red Zone is an obvious hope of a consultative community approach coming through.

Likewise Fletcher's East Frame and inner city housing development. The land has not all been sold by the Crown so there may still be community opportunities there.

KIRK HARGREAVES/STUFF Share an Idea in 2012: The public were asked what mattered most in Christchurch's recovery.

Regenerate Christchurch and the council's Development Christchurch are making the right noises of being community-facing recovery agencies.

Even this month, dreams of a district energy scheme were revived with Ngai Tahu revealing it was tapping thermal ground energy in its new central city office development.

The issue is whether there is enough local leadership, enough energy left to keep the necessary conversations moving forward. "Everyone is bone tired of recovery," Goodall agrees.

DAVID WALKER/STUFF Bold talk: Cr Raf Manji launching his bid to be Ilam MP at Mona Vale.

At that, we drain the dregs of our orange juice and hot chocolate. The sun is warm, the sky a perfect blue. How Christchurch is doing is the big question. But time again to get on with the rest of the day.