Tony Watkins

Our way of seeing history underpins our actions.

72) The era which grew out of the industrial revolution is drawing to a close. At that time people felt disempowered by machines and by a capitalist system over which they had no control. Where once people had grown their own food, and artisans had passed their arts, crafts or building skills from one generation to the next, people were now seen as nothing more than human resources. Displaced and disadvantaged some escaped to new lands where they could be free, while others were, over time, lifted by utopian idealism to a hard-won level of decency.

73) Kohukohu as a European settlement was a heady mix of sawmill industrialisation, individuals giving meaning to their lives through seeking to be free, and exploitation of natural resources. Individuals became wealthy but at the same time the human habitat, which remains the source of life, was degraded. Success and affluence found expression in gracious homes. Stability and continuity found expression in community buildings.

74) Utopian idealists today have moved far beyond inventing technical fixes to a consumer-driven industrial revolution. They are concerned with the health of the planet as a prerequisite for the health of individuals. This spiritual quest recognises that there are material limits to a physical world, even though there may be no limit to the human spirit.

75) Planning, as we know it today, began with the idealism of correcting the worst excesses of the industrial revolution. Over time all that has changed so that what began as a process of empowering the individual has morphed into a process of disempowering people so that now almost no one builds for themselves to satisfy their own needs.

76) Planners and other bureaucrats now not only control the built environment but also support a building process which disempowers people and saps the wairua out of the built environment. Planners are committed to fundamentalist materialism. For them building and towns are objects. Things. For them a town is something which grows out of their minds. Intellect, but neither heart nor hand. Fast urban design. Planners see process as nothing more than the means of bringing their materialistic world into being. People are seen only as consumers. The Building Act is concerned with consumer protection. Dictatorship has replaced architectural democracy.

77) Slow urban design is concerned with how change occurs over time. It focuses on continuity. It builds upon what UNESCO would call “intangible heritage”. What we see becomes but an expression of what we cannot see. Kohukohu is a process and a way of seeing. It is an attitude.

78) Understanding why Kohukohu has become the way it is can be more important than understanding what it has become.  Seamless continuity with the past sustains the life force or wairua of any historic precinct.

The way Kohukohu has become what it is,

is more important than what it has become.