To have a place is a research project that explores ways to better understand and record connections between people and public places in Ōtautahi Christchurch. This co-produced project has been developed with project contributors to design and develop the process, tools and prompts that will capture information and data about how and why people do and don’t feel welcome, safe and able to participate in public life in public spaces. 

We want to understand what the city would look like and be like if everyone felt welcome and could participate fully. We are particularly interested in hearing voices of residents that often don’t get heard in the design of our cities; those who aren’t pictured in the minds and work of those who make decisions about or design our urban landscape.

This week To have a place has been developed as a installation space in the Life in Vacant Spaces (LiVS) incubator in Cashel Street in the central city. Here we invite passers by to share some of their ideas and insights into the city. This is an opportunity to ask more people how places in Ōtautahi Christchurch feel to them. Beyond this, our findings will be catalogued and shared.

To have a place was inspired by a project in Copenhagen, Denmark called Urban Belonging, which sought insights about how a city works as a space of belonging — not seen from the professional eyes of those who plan it, but from those who live in it. Our early discussion here with partners and participants highlighted that ‘to belong’ in Aotearoa had a different meaning to the European context, so we framed our questions around what it meant to feel connected, and how the intersecting identities we all have can make experiences of spaces and places distinctly different.

In 2024, our first groups worked with us to confirm that belonging and connection was important to them. They also helped us understand if using the app developed by the Urban Belonging project would be useful and suggested the addition of paper journals to catalogue their experiences moving around the city centre. We then held two workshops where we shared the data and created maps cataloguing experiences.

There are two main objectives: to help those who make decisions about or design our public spaces consider a broader cross-section of people, including those whose perspectives are often absent; and to encourage decision makers to centre connection and belonging in the design of our cities.

The project has co-created with — and is about insights from our collaborators — residents who for multiple reasons might be systematically marginalised voices that often don’t get heard in the design of our city.

The project was instigated by Te Pūtahi: Centre for Architecture and City Making an independent non-profit organisation that catalyses greater involvement in city making through a diverse and inclusive programme of engagement.

This project is supported by the Christchurch City Council Place Partnerships Fund, and ChristchurchNZ.