Cashel Mall Beautiful People

Cashel Mall is a car-free central-city street in Christchurch, New Zealand, it's been pedestrian only since 1983, and there are big shade trees, good shopping and eating, and lots of people like to hang out there. Unfortunately our city council has been under pressure from developers who would like the area to become more upmarket -- that means redesigned to scare away the young people who have "colonised" the area -- they dress funny and scare "normal" people away!
Worse still, they have proposed putting a road back through the mall because they think traffic will "bring back life" to the place... go figure!? I conceived this video as a way of showing the council how well this space is used and valued, and chose the song for its beautiful music and relevant lyrics. The footage was shot by Nick and Raven from Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti, and Tom did the edit in an evening -- legend! It was played to the Chch city council as part of my submission on the proposal on Friday 3 November, then played again at the NZ Walking Conference the next day.
Hope you like it -- no road thru Cashel Mall!! (PS -- you could email our mayor garry.moore@ccc.govt.nz if you wanted to support keeping Cashel Mall car-free.)

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• urban
• space
• youth
• music
• people
• car-free
• council
• activism
• pedestrian
• christchurch
• zealand

[factory14]

What year was that filmed?

[pjdespa]

November 2006

[nugagim]

Ah nostalgia; They've ruined this now, all the green areas & seating are gone, put in ugly pointless tram lines, an overpriced touristy gimmick, got rid of the overhead walkways, replaced all the warm colours for cold barren white slabs, and play loud classical music to scare away the 'youths', it just seems desolate now, not appealing in the least. Sad, it's like they want to kill the inner city. Just like they keep pulling down all the old buildings with character & putting up concrete blocks.

[nomyek200]

Christchurch sucks, i live there.

It's an absolute shithole.

[princette]

Hey Christchurch city (Lets hide those Maori Streetkids, so they don't scare the tourists) Council. They have it wrong, all the crime down there is committed by poor white trash, not the Maoris who are mostly hard working and productive citizens. I was born and raised in Christchurch and love the place, but the racism and homophobia I experienced there was an element in my decision to move to Auckland. Auckland is far from perfect, but at least its tolerant.

[pkziya]

by the way what religion they has..

[everyday4]

Nice work, but it totally misrepresents the vibe of the location, shame on you.

I walk threw the "Hack" 7 to 8 times a week.

Mostly the vibe is spotty youth yelling shit at each other, has a bad sewer smell, yeah solo Mums hang about "choice" .

The place is full of tension and immaturity, bugger off to the beach all you "beautifil people"

[jamiegoughnz]

Great track (got to love Trinity Roots) & great clip.

Hopefully we can get more and more of these beautiful people into our City Mall. The City's pretty different from a suburban mall, we don't want to be and we should be celebrating what makes us different.

Loved the little dude on the bench!

Cheers,

Jamie Gough

[ullijohanna]

keep it up. it is great to see video's of people in other places

[joebonk]

pedestrian areas must have huge psychological, societal, and ecological benefits because we dont allow them in the USA