PART I
In 2018, I moved to Christchurch from Dunedin, and I have constantly been amazed at the changes in the city, that are still going on to this day.
In 2020 I started work at UC on the QuakeBox Take 2 project, and suddenly I was hearing all sorts of earthquake stories from all around the city. I only had a few memories of pre-quake Christchurch, and I really wanted to understand the setting of the stories I was hearing that really didn’t match up with the regenerating city I was living in. Thus I turned to my favourite site… Google Maps.
Alongside Kete and UC’s own QuakeStudies, Google Maps Street View quickly became my favourite tool for understanding this change. The Street View car has been taking regular 360˚ photos around New Zealand streets since 2007. That’s pretty cool in itself, but what’s always blown my mind is that with the Time Machine feature, you can select an image, and view the same street in different years.
This leads to some incredible visual contrasts. I don’t need to tell you when I can show you – in the slider below are images taken from the corner of Cathedral Square and Colombo Street. The first two are facing south, the final four are facing north.
[photo descriptions: The first two images are screenshots from 360˚ images viewed in Google Maps Street View feature. The first image is of the Christ Church Cathedral in 2007, standing intact. There is a green lawn around it and clearly accessible pedestrian areas. The second image is the same view in 2018, where the Cathedral is in severe disrepair, propped up by scaffolding and without a steeple. It is surrounded by fencing, weeds and cones.
The following four images are from the same position, but facing north towards the old post office on Colombo street. The first image is from 2007 and the building and street are intact and undamaged. The next image is from 2015, where the previous building has been demolished and the ground is covered in only concrete and piles of dirt. There are only a few buildings in the background. The next image is from 2017, where the new library Tūranga is being built. Both sides of the street are surrounded in fencing, and there is only framing and scaffolding on the site. The final image is taken in 2018, and shows a nearly fully built library building surrounded by fencing and construction equipment]
Here’s how this looks in Maps itself:
2007
2020
With the ability to move down the streets, this could be considered the best tool to really see the city’s change on a street level. I recommend taking a wander down Colombo street, using the mouse to move around the image and the arrows to navigate the streets – It’s almost like taking a walk in 2007.
I would love to recommend this as a flawless application to view pre-quake Christchurch… However this method falls flat when it comes to being reliably usable for ‘walking’ through time, due to its tendency to switch back and forth between years when there is a gap for the year you’ve selected. Most cities, it wouldn’t really be that noticable, but not in a city where a new building is opened every week. It’s not like walking through the most recent run of a developed area, or the 360˚ tours that Google promotes on Google Earth.
There’s various explanation for the gaps – namely, as parts of the city (especially the CBD) have been blocked from traffic across the years, the Google Street View car wouldn’t have been able to get everywhere in each run.
I like easy and accessible when it comes to my online experiences, so it’s pretty annoying. One click you’ll be in 2007 on Cashel street, the next 2015, then 2010, and then it can be impossible to find the original 2007 images. Often I know that an old panorama exists on a street but have trouble finding the right spot more than once.
And all this exists within the Maps engine itself- with more links and place data than we really need to view pictures for this purpose alone. Which brought me to my first questions – how much of the city was photographed before 2011, and can we access those images outside of Maps?
And from there, would it be possible to create a version of the Street View environment that only shows you pre-quake Street View photos?
What sort of uses could we find for this data and imagery if it were effectively organised and accessible? What might that mean to an average Cantabrian?
PART II
Another odd job of mine has been volunteering at a tech centre for youth, where we had a HTC Vive VR setup. I really loved introducing the tech via Google Earth VR – an immersive way to experience the already fantastic Google Earth. I love that we always want to check out our own house, the thing we already see the most often irl!
The Google Earth application also offers Street View – VR is perfect for viewing 360˚ images as it follows the direction you’re facing.
In this video, a user demonstrates the Google Earth VR app and its ease of navigation. To move, you just point the controller and move in the street view environment.
As my love of exploring the digital Christchurch grew, I found myself using VR to view Street View spheres all over town.
Street View on Google Earth VR doesn’t offer Time Machine capabilities – but it does displays the most recent image taken for a particular spot. Since many streets are closed to vehicles now, this leaves the 2007, 2010 or 2012 images as the default.
You know the phrase “feature, not a bug”? That’s my experience of Christchurch using GE VR. I spent so long checking out different areas that are closed to traffic. Below are some of the more interesting recordings I took.
This one is of River Road, which hasn’t been photographed since 2007.
This last one shows another angle I hadn’t really thought about. I’ve listened to countless stories of post-quake living in quake hit areas, but hadn’t really seen them. These 2012 images of Avondale shows the long cleanup period that the eastern suburbs went through.
Fences, red stickers, flooding, portaloos… All of which is now gone and turned to green fields (which as a new arrival, I mistook for a park).
I have more recordings on my channel, but if you own a VR device I recommend you check out some areas that interest you!
These bug/features offer a taste of the concept I am building here, where we could combine the wealth of pre-quake imagery into a fully digital pre-quake environment.
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What would it mean to you to be able to stroll the streets of pre-earthquake Christchurch? For long-time residents and new arrivals alike, I believe this could be a wonderful opportunity to remember the city that once was, and marvel at how far we’ve come.