John MacDonald: Population growth is fine, but are we ready?
When you look around Greater Christchurch, do you look around and think “oh, we could handle another 100-or-so thousand people living here”? Do you think to yourself “our roads aren’t clogged up, our schools aren’t overcrowded, we’ve got plenty of houses”? Do you think that? Or does it feel to you like we’re just getting by with what we’ve got, with the population we’ve got? I think we’re just getting by and, if we don’t wake up, we’re going to be another Auckland before we know it. There are a couple of things today that have got me thinking about this. The first is this report from the Infrastructure Commission which pretty much says —when it comes to infrastructure— we kind of know what we need to do, and we just need to do it. And one of the key issues it identifies is population growth and how we’re going to deal with it. The other thing that’s got me thinking about how disorganised we are for having a truckload more people living here is what Selwyn mayor Sam Broughton is saying today about population growth in his area. He’s saying that, in 10 years time, the population of Selwyn will be bigger than the population of Dunedin. Dunedin’s population by the way is currently about 130,000. And Sam Broughton thinks there’ll be more people than that living in Selwyn in 10 years time. Rolleston, especially, is going nuts. As of last year, the population of Rolleston was 29,600. Almost triple what it was in 2013. As for the population of the wider Selwyn district - as of last year, it was 81,300, which was a 5.2% increase on the year before. Compare that to the whole country’s population growth over the same period - which was 2.1%. So nationally, 2.1% population growth. In Selwyn, 5.2%. And these are the numbers that have prompted Sam Broughton to say that, 10 years from now, there’ll be more people living in Selwyn than Dunedin. And it’s not just Selwyn. It seems to me that the whole of Greater Christchurch is going nuts - or not far away from going nuts, anyway. Let’s look at Christchurch city’s population. At the moment —according to the Christchurch City Council website— the population in the city is 396,200 – that’s as of June last year. After the earthquakes, the numbers went down by about 21,000 people. But things have bounced back - in fact, they had bounced back by 2017. And, it seems to me, that there’s no shortage of people wanting to come here from around the country. The universities —Lincoln and UC— are going off big time, which is such a change from how things were after the quakes. And, as for population growth in Christchurch, the numbers in terms of projections seem to vary a bit but there’s no doubt the city is going to have more people —not less— in the future. Numbers I’ve seen this morning say the population of Christchurch could be as high as 445,000 in 10 years time, and well over half a million in about 15 years time. So, a lot of variables, but there’s going to be more people here in a pretty short time. Are we ready for that? I don’t think we are. At least when you consider how things are at the moment. We’ve got someone here at work who says it can take her 45 minutes to get from where we are on Armagh Street by the Margaret Mahy playground - it can take her 45 minutes in the evenings to get from here to Brougham Street. And then she’s got the drive to Rolleston from there. I don’t think we’re ready when you consider the likes of Cashmere High School making its zone smaller and smaller in recent years because it’s struggling to cope with the number of kids living in its enrolment area. I don’t think we’re ready when you consider that we still don’t have properly functioning infrastructure like the fire-damaged wastewater plant and that organics plant that’s been making life miserable for people in the East. The traffic on Brougham Street. Do yo
