State intervention in a post-war suburban public housing project in Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract

Viewed positively or negatively, the Levittown image of suburbia often stands as the quintessential expression of this form of housing settlement in the latter half of the twentieth century. The image is one of privately-funded developments characterized by uniform housing styles in layouts that lack diversity visually where the private automobile is the only sanctioned form of transport. Cultural and socio-economic diversity is uncommon here. By the same token, public housing in the post-war era connotes inner city row-house slum clearance or urban edge housing estate tower-block developments which make the Levittowns of the world seem relatively benign. But what happens when the state attempts public housing using the private sector model of middle-class suburbia? This paper examines a central government-sponsored housing project initiated at Aranui/Wainoni in the eastern suburbs of Christchurch in the 1950s. Aranui/Wainoni appears to have faltered from its inception and it is often described as the worst suburb in the city. Drawing upon social capital theory and social sustainability this paper reads government archival records on the early phase of Aranui/Wainoni and argues that social sustainability was implicitly if not explicitly planned for and accommodated. It cautions that the success of “re-planning” Aranui/Wainoni depends upon support for an intermediating community entity and that this will apply to future state interventions in state suburb-making if these are to succeed.