Sim City Analogies
I saw this Tweet earlier today in regards to CERA (Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority):
The opinion piece concerned was this:
Superman? No, just an admiration-seeker
Saturday, 22 November 2014 15By John Roughan
There is really no defence to a complaint of sexual harassment. If the accused did not know he was being misinterpreted or that his interest was not returned, the best that can be said of him is that he is a clod, a dimwit. If he is a public figure and imagines there is anything he can usefully say about it when he resigns, he confirms the impression.
Until this week, I thought Roger Sutton was merely disappointing. He had been given the largest and hardest reconstruction task New Zealand has needed. He headed the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority with powers to cut through normal consent procedures and get our second biggest city rebuilt.
When he was chosen, he sounded just right – brisk, smart, calm and practical as he outlined “what we need to do”.
As time passed, that phrase, “what we need to do” prefaced almost everything he said. After a year, it began to disturb me that “what we need to do” was much the same as what we’d needed to do last year.
As Christchurch waited for something constructive to happen behind the barricades, it became evident that Sutton was not Superman and Cera was just another bureaucracy. But he could still talk the talk and clearly enjoyed his celebrity.
Rather than restore life to the city centre as quickly as it could, Cera was demolishing most of the remaining buildings. It saw the city central as a blank canvas for civic planners to design what they pleased.
Not long before they issued their “blueprint” a group of out-of-town media were invited by Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee to see the progress. Sutton joined us for coffee in the delightful little mall of shipping containers that private enterprise had created amid the demolition cranes and debris. I expressed disappointment at the wider scene and he replied with a sarcastic reference to the design of downtown Auckland.
It was a surreal moment. Nobody knew what to say. What can be said to someone who raises the aesthetic deficiencies of Queen St when the core of his city is lying in ruins all around?
He didn’t seem accustomed to criticism, he was used to being admired.
……..
Source and full piece: http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11362537
My podcast reply to both John and Eric using SimCity 4 analogies:
Eric’s SimCity Post
Talking Southern Auckland 