Community belongs in the heart of our city

I’ve been thinking recently about the value of keeping community in the heart of a city.

So often, as cities change and property becomes more valuable, community organisations, hubs and gathering spaces get pushed further out. There are all sorts of understandable pressures behind that, but I wonder what we lose when it happens.

One of the things I really value about CWEA is that, more than 100 years after it was established, we are still right in the centre of Christchurch.  And that matters.

Our rooms are used constantly, not just for our own courses and events but by an extraordinary range of community groups and organisations. One of the comments we hear again and again from people hiring them is how much they appreciate being able to find somewhere affordable that is right in the city.

That idea has stayed with me.  Because spaces and places to gather, belong and organise feel increasingly precious.

We live in a world where so many forces seem to drive us apart. Where the individual is increasingly king. Where so much of life involves buying something, booking something or consuming something. Where it is entirely possible to move through a city surrounded by thousands of other people and have very few places where you can simply come together.

Community spaces offer something different.  They are places to meet, talk, learn, share food, debate, make things, organise, celebrate, grieve, plan, disagree, find support and build relationships. Sometimes they are places where something quite ordinary happens. Sometimes they are where movements, friendships and ideas begin.

And for some communities, having a welcoming place to meet matters even more. Not everybody feels equally comfortable or equally welcome everywhere. Accessible, affordable community spaces can provide somewhere people know they can gather and be themselves in safety.

Having those spaces in the centre of our cities sends an important message too: community belongs here.

Not hidden away. Not pushed to the margins. Not something we make room for only after all the commercial uses of a city have been accommodated.

A healthy city needs shops, businesses, offices, restaurants and homes. But it also needs places that exist primarily because people need one another.

Perhaps that is something we should value much more deliberately in the way we think about our city centres.

Because keeping community at the heart of a city is about more than preserving a building or providing an affordable meeting room.

It helps keep community at the heart of the city itself.