Ron Fensom moved to the Christchurch suburb of Halswell 58 years ago, Charmayne Forster moved into Halswell 15 months ago, and both of them love the growing community.

Remember Halswell being a village? Now every field around it is set for development. What are we to make of Christchurch's emerging southwest? JOHN McCRONE reports.

This is it. Quaifes Road in Halswell. The very edge of town. Well, for the next 20 years at least.

The earthquakes shifted a lot of things about in Christchurch and one of the things that got shifted was its centre of gravity.

With the need to find new subdividable land in a hurry, the city has taken a decided lurch to the southwest, particularly out towards Wigram and Halswell.

The old Christchurch petered away into a straggle of paddocks, market gardens and lifestyle blocks as you headed out on the road to Lincoln or Akaroa.

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And this didn't seem surprising as a lot of the land looked unbuildable with its many springs and streams. A natural wetlands, especially where the flats meet the base of the Port Hills.

The water wants to go both ways there. On the Hendersons Basin side, the trickles gather to form the start of the Heathcote River. While around Halswell, they drain off down to Te Waihora/Lake Ellesmere.

But come back now and there are great lumps of subdivision scattered about. The roadworks of the Southern Motorway – due for completion by the end of the year – slice across the landscape.

And if you think there is an unwanted field left out of the growing carpet of homes, check the zoning maps produced by 2016's fast-tracked Christchurch Replacement District Plan hearings, and you will find there are development intentions for that too.

The southwest fringe of the city is destined to become a solid block of housing.

Already there are entire new suburbs you've never heard of, like Awatea, Longhurst and Quarry View, while Halswell will be utterly transformed by galloping subdivision.

IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF City plan was to hold the line at Quaifes Rd. But houses not expected to reach there before 2030s.

Only 20 years ago, Halswell was still an outlying village – a last blip before you hit the countryside. Locals were grumpy enough when the small subdivision of Oaklands got tacked on to its back.

Even more controversy followed when the Catholic order of the Good Shepherd Sisters started selling off land for the 900-home Aidanfield development in the early 2000s.

The sections were rushed to market before the area's stormwater issues had been sorted out. In 2005, messy overflows into Cashmere Stream saw Christchurch City Council (CCC) threatened with legal action. There were a lot of 'I told you so's' at the time.

However, today Halswell is poised to be completely surrounded. The District Plan chopped up the local fields with a series of individual Outline Development Plans (ODPs), each with room for about 1000 sections.

On the map, you now have designated a West Halswell, North Halswell, East Halswell, Northeast Halswell, South Halswell and even a Southwest Halswell. And it all ends abruptly at Quaifes Rd as the urban limit that has been drawn to give the new Christchurch a crisp and tidy edge.

Ross McFarlane, a community board member for Halswell, says the scale of this sideways lurch, this sudden shift in where a large chunk of Christchurch is going to be living, is probably still an unabsorbed fact for most of the city.

"It's like somewhere the size of Gisborne has moved into the area," McFarlane says. Or as the residents' association now likes to joke, "It won't be too far in the future where Christchurch will become one of the smaller suburbs of Halswell."

McFarlane says the pace of the building has slackened a bit now the post-quake mega-projects – like Ngai Tahu's 2000-section Wigram Skies, and Fulton Hogan's 1400-section Longhurst/Knights Stream Park – are pretty much complete and inhabited.

Yet the developments are continuing paddock by paddock, another few hundred homes at a time. "A quote we had from council recently is we're still hearing a subdivision application per week."

It is shaking up local politics. A combined Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton community board has been formed to make high level sense of this wedge of the city which already has a population of 76,000 and – with its similarly expanding industrial areas – provides 57,000 of Christchurch's jobs.

So what does it all mean? How is the character of Christchurch going to be altered by the southwest having this sudden new-found importance? And who even lives out there?

THE FUTURE WAS ALREADY PLANNED

Armed with District Plan maps revealing the full extent of the coming developments, I go for a drive.

Earlier, CCC planner Ivan Thomson had helped explain the area's geography. He says the first thing to realise is that Christchurch had already planned for all this even before the quakes.

Thomson says strategic thinking about the southwest in fact began way back in the early 1990s – sparked by the introduction of the developer-friendly Resource Management Act (RMA).

Up until then, the outer fringes of Christchurch – especially where the farmland was considered too good to sacrifice for houses – had been automatically protected.

IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF Wigram from the skies: Ngai Tahu's 2000-section development part of a carpet of new housing.

"High quality or versatile soils were held of national importance under the previous Town and Country Planning Act. And that helped contain Christchurch's outward growth," says Thomson.

But with the RMA, the council had to start marking off blocks of land where subdivisions would be encouraged.

"So round about 1993, we did our first South West plan. During the hearings, Aidanfield got zoned, and a couple of other areas around Halswell Domain, then Wigram airfield."

This planning exercise eventually morphed into a general long-term Urban Development Strategy (UDS). All of Halswell, and also Awatea to the north, were earmarked for development in a broad-brush way.

The developers have known for quite a while which empty fields were going to become valuable, Thomson says. And this is why the post-quake zoning decisions could be so swift.

None of what is taking place counts as a surprise. The main difference is the earthquakes are seeing all that growth – right up to the Quaifes Rd boundary – happening at once.

Heading out of the city to take a closer look, I hit Ngai Tahu's Wigram Skies after cutting through Aidanfield.

Wigram – I'm sorry – but it still feels a little plonked down in the middle of nowhere. Just houses and houses, without much of a view to tell you where you are.

As an ex-airfield, Thomson says Wigram's problem was that local roads ran around its perimeter. It was a large island of land, not naturally connected to the city. Then the new Southern Motorway really penned it in.

Creating a flow to its entry and exit routes became a mission. This explains the somewhat mysterious set of motorway overpasses and road twists you need to take to find it.

Thomson says if you want some local history, in the council's mind, the Southern Motorway was originally intended to be a gentle boulevard modelled on Memorial Avenue. "It was going to be a parkway with trees on both sides and provision for future light rail."

That would have given the connections to the planned developments at Wigram and Awatea a very different flavour.

However, the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) prioritised a traffic-moving state highway connecting rural Canterbury to the central city and Lyttelton Port instead.

So there are off-ramps serving Halswell and Wigram, but not on-ramps, as NZTA has deliberately engineered the flow to favour the through traffic.

Hence my vague sense of disorientation as I drive around. Now that Wigram is largely established as a new corner of the city, the issues with its geography are showing through in a feeling of what it would be like to live there.

But Wigram does have its fans. As well as the fact that the sections have sold, the evidence is in further investments like the private 12-court Zhu Badminton Centre which opened there in mid-2018.

MAKING THE BURNSIDES FEEL DATED

Continuing on to Halswell is when you truly start to appreciate the speed at which familiar green spaces are still being gobbled up by unexpected development.

Thinking about the character question, it hits me. This must be what it was like for Christchurch when Burnside, Bishopdale and Avonhead – the northwest fringe – was taking shape between the 1960s and 1980s.

The wholesale rolling out of family-friendly neighbourhoods. The suburban dream as it was understood at the time.

SUPPLIED Even in 2009 plans, Halswell was going to grow. The purple areas first, then the brown and green.

A logical grid of evenly spaced schools, sports fields and street corner shopping strips. Some of the ridiculously wide side roads with room for six cars abreast. Sections still big enough – or the houses still small enough – for a regulation square of lawn and thick boundary of shrubbery.

Burnside retains the echoes of Baby Boomer hopes and ambitions. But now – seeing the box-fresh subdivisions mushrooming across the southwest – Burnside suddenly looks its age. Its stock must have fallen.

Right behind a rebuilt Halswell Primary School I find the upmarket Quarry View subdivision – the first stage of what will become Southeast Halswell under one of the ODPs.

Down towards the back, where the sections are getting close to the quarry and hills, the landscape is delightful. All big poplars, long grass, cycle tracks and deep watery gullies.

The ODP map shows this converted farmland will join up with the other new subdivisions which have appeared on the flanks of Halswell Quarry. The houses are also going to march on south – across Glovers Rd – until they are knocking on the door of Kennedys Bush.

The questions about the flood prone-ness and land suitability are noted. The developer's engineers are going to have to work around some hazards. Yet in general, a green light for residential development has been given.

I head on to the subdivision that has really been intriguing me – Fulton Hogan's Longhurst/Knights Stream Park. So big, they gave it two names. And odd because it starts right at the Quaifes Rd edge of the city.

Meeting up with Cr Ross McFarlane and Dr Chrys Horn, chair of the Halswell Community Project, there appears a simple explanation.

Horn says, being in the business of building infrastructure, Fulton Hogan knew the area was going to be early off the block for development because the new sewer lines being laid to service the southwest came in that direction.

Fulton Hogan had bought the 120 hectares of dairy farm the far side of Halswell Junction Rd before the earthquakes. "So actually it was dictated by sewers more than anything else," she says.

The subdivision feels a success. It has certainly filled in fast given that much of it was only expected to be opened in the 2030s in the pre-quake version of the South West Christchurch Area plan.

McFarlane says Longhurst reflects good masterplanning. It has a clear hierarchy of roads from its main spine routes down to its small mews, and also maintained open view corridors to make the most of the nearby Port Hills as the landmark.

It all helps to tell you where you are and how to find your way out. You definitely feel some place.

McFarlane says another improvement – one that will impact all the new subdivisions – is that the District Plan now demands a concentration of 15 dwellings per ha rather than just 10.

This has forced developers to go duplex and multiplex – add smaller terraced housing among the standard big family homes.

"What's change is the density of the build. And so it's 50 per cent more of absolutely everything on the same footprint of land."

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF Impact of south west expansion still to be appreciated say Cr Ross McFarlane, right, and Community Project's Chrys Horn.

It works. Longhurst is an instant village with a medical centre and commercial hub – gym, dairy, several cafes and restaurants, a hairdresser and even nail parlour – as its heart. Then small houses in walkable distance.

It seems like a family-friendly modern-day equivalent of Burnside with the number of children filling the streets or waiting at bus stops. But with the townhouses, cycle paths and linking nature areas, it looks calculated to appeal to active retirees too.

So on an ordinary morning, Longhurst feels lively, full of people, even though you know it is built right where Christchurch now officially ends.

Horn says another factor that is going to characterise the new southwest will be a sense of ethnic diversity. She says with Indians, Asians, and other immigrant nations, it feels more comfortably representative of today's Christchurch.

But socially, she cautions, the southwest is also going to be marked by the cost of buying into the area. Because of the price of any new build, fostering real community may be harder than expected.

"You typically have two working parents up to their eyeballs in debt. And so people don't have the time to give." That will emerge as another aspect of the area's character.

McFarlane agrees. He says it is hard to imagine Longhurst forming its own Scout group. It is more likely to clip on to the existing one in Halswell.

And when it comes to social connectedness, one of the worries is that while the council has been building the libraries and swimming pools to service an expanding population, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has no plans for a new secondary school in Halswell.

There are plenty of primaries being built or revamped. Longhurst has one due to open this year. However, as a council report argues, secondary schools are what really cement relationships in an area. "This has resulted in the youth lacking cohesion and a sense of identity with Halswell/Wigram."

McFarlane says the MoE has done several assessments of the need. "It said there wasn't the demand." Or at least, there was plenty of free space at the high schools in both Hillmorton and Hornby.

But he says the reality is Halswell parents will try to get their kids into Riccarton, or even bus them out to Lincoln, in preference.

With the population of Wigram and Halswell predicted to grow from 20,000 in 2013 to 45,000 by 2030, a local high school appears likely to remain one of the southwest's unresolved issues.

LIFE AMONG THE DRAINAGE PONDS

A sharper picture is emerging of what it would be like to move out to the southwest. As McFarlane points out, a big feature is the eco-greenness of the new subdivisions.

It is largely because the land is so riddled with streams and springs. If you want TC1 shingle to build on, then Rolleston up the road has plenty of that. But it is dry and bony compared to Halswell's mostly damp TC2 soils.

I found that out kneeling in the middle of one of Longhurst's open areas, scattered with flax and stone drainage cairns. My trouser knee was immediately soaked.

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF Instant village at Longhurst: District Plan is requiring denser development even out on the city's edge.

McFarlane says that is why some of the development plans seem dubious to him. But then one thing the earthquakes have taught Christchurch is how to build on bad land using new techniques like rib-raft foundations and plastic sewer lines.

McFarlane says they were a solution to where homes had to be rebuilt in the east, and now they are being turned around to justify subdividing the more marginal parts of the southwest.

The council likewise is having to invest heavily in a new network of stormwater treatment swales and flood detention ponds.

McFarlane says the housing pays for the plumbing of the land. "Any section here, the council will take approximately $35,000 in development contributions. And $5,500 of that is just for stormwater management."

And that in turn is how the District Plan can allow further subdivision to cross places like Sutherlands Rd and begin to wrap itself around the margins of Hendersons Basin itself.

To deal with that, CCC is currently building a new wetlands – a wildlife reserve – and emergency pump station in Sparks Rd.

So it is an interesting equation where the southwest fringe is being remodelled as a picturesque story of houses set among drainage ponds, landscaped with native planting.

McFarlane says the farmland used to absorb the water as a natural hazard. Now Halswell will have its own Travis Wetlands and many walking trails as a dominating recreational feature.

For a carpet of housing – unlike Burnside or Bishopdale era development – it will feel more semi-rural than strictly suburban. You can see that taking shape already.

BACKFILLING THE SOUTHWEST MAP

There is more to come. A question has been what kind of new shopping area would follow for Halswell.

The District Plan picked a spot – fields within the North Halswell ODP, opposite Aidanfield. But developers have been fighting over who gets to do it.

McFarlane says that dispute seems to have been settled with Woolworths – the owners of Countdown – buying Hallgrow Farm.

New World has been winning the supermarket battle in the southwest, so Countdown obviously decided it needed to get spending to make something happen for itself. It has applied for consent for a comprehensive development that includes a shopping precinct.

McFarlane says with the ODP reserving an area the size of Westfield mall, there is bound to be a big DIY store – Bunnings or Mitre 10 – too.

Around them will go residential developments. The Halswell Commons project is building now. And so North Halswell will take shape as a reality, backfilling the map of Christchurch to finally connect old Halswell village seamlessly with the suburbs of Hillmorton and Hoon Hay.

JOHN MCCRONE/STUFF Water feature: New homes being built in Halswell's Quarry View by a landscaped drainage pond.

This will be the picture. Another piece of the southwest jigsaw is Awatea, the rambling block of land between Wigram and Halswell Junction Rd.

CCC's Thomson says the council wanted to see residential development there right from the 1990s. But it was a hard area to get going because much of it was old land fill pits or industrial sites.

For a long time, it was hampered by uncertainty about exactly how much land the motorway was going to require. It also had a noisy resident in the KartSport Canterbury racetrack in Carrs Rd.

Thomson says at one stage the council even talked about forming its own urban development agency to get Awatea moving. But now it looks to be forging ahead.

The kart track is being eased into a relocation out at McLeans Island – dropped in a disused quarry, a hole in the ground, to help deal with the noise. Meanwhile, the land left spare by the Southern Motorway's construction has been picked up by Fletchers Living to build affordable housing alongside.

Christchurch will be finding there is yet another suburb it didn't really know about appearing on the southwest edge of town.

The grand plan is to hold the line at Quaifes Rd, says Thomson. There is enough greenfield space within Christchurch's boundaries to meet even strong population growth for the next few decades.

The council also want some pressure on the property market to put more focus on developing denser inner city living options.

"That urban limit will be up for review in 2022. But at the moment, the idea is not to merge Christchurch with Prebbleton," Thomson smiles.

So there has been a lurch. And it has to settle. Yet enough of the new southwest has emerged to start to get a sense of how it might feature as a significant wedge in the collective mental map of Christchurch city.