The Re-Creation of Bottle Lake: From Site of Discard to Environmental Playground?

Abstract

In order to understand the workings of ecological imperialism at the local level, this essay traces the haphazard environmental history of an area of land at the north-eastern border of Christchurch. It analyses the changing environmental qualities of place over time as a chain of discourses that have formed, re-formed, cross-fertilised - each influencing a new land-use or perception of the area as wasteland, playground, wetland, and site of rehabilitation and recreation. An examination of the collision of discourses from elsewhere with local pragmatism reveals the limits and contradictions of theories of ecological imperialism at a local scale.