Christchurch
Ōtautahi — the place of Tautahi
A guide to living, working and settling in the South Island’s largest city — written for healthcare professionals, by the team who help them move.
The only city in New Zealand that had to decide what it wanted to be.
The earthquakes took the centre of Christchurch down. What went up in its place is not a copy — it is lower, greener, and organised around the river rather than turned away from it.
You will still see gaps. Fifteen years on, some blocks are car parks waiting for a decision, and locals are relaxed about this in a way visitors find surprising. What you get in exchange is a city with room in it — in the streets, in the houses, in the price of things.
For a clinician moving with a family, that is often the whole argument. A major tertiary hospital, a house with a garden, and the Southern Alps ninety minutes away.
Nau mai, haere mai ki Ōtautahi.
Ngā mihi nui — the Ethicare team
Christchurch, in short
The five-second version
Things we love about Christchurch
From the centre the city reads flat — a grid on a plain, the Alps a blue suggestion on the horizon. It is holding something back.
- Fifteen minutes east, the grid simply stops at the Pacific — and there is surf.
- Over the Port Hills, or straight through them: a drowned volcano with a working port in it.
- The Alps visible from an ordinary suburban street. People say they never stop noticing it.
- Skis in the car before seven, on the mountain by nine, home for dinner.
- The nor’west arch — a strange lens of cloud over the hills — and the light once it clears.
- Riverside Market on a Friday evening, which is where half the city seems to be.
- Trams still running through New Regent Street, past a row of pastel shopfronts.
- Punting on the Ōtākaro Avon. Absurd, and lovely, and you will take every visitor.
- Gardens big enough that people use them, and eat outside in them.
- A short commute, which is really a way of saying the evening still belongs to you.
The full radius is walked in Weekends and the outdoors; what the commute costs you in minutes is in Getting around.
A week, roughly
Not a permanent holiday. A working week with the daylight left over — which is the part that is hard to picture from the other side of the world.
Off at half four. The estuary loop with the dog, the light going gold over the water, and no particular reason to hurry.
Netball after school, then dinner outside — because at seven it is somehow still warm.
Nothing whatsoever. A Thursday is still a Thursday, wherever in the world you decide to put it.
Riverside Market on the way home, then somebody’s back garden until the light finally goes.
The mountain, the peninsula, the vines, the coast. The weekend has earned a chapter of its own rather than a line here.
Read the weekends chapter →Back at work. The same profession, the same standards you hold now, the same you. Only the week around it has changed.
The nor’wester will flatten a good plan several times a year, and it gives half the city a headache while it does it. Winter evenings are dark and properly cold. Plenty of Sundays are just a Sunday, spent on the washing. Picture that too — it is the same life, not a better species of one.
What’s inside
Fifteen chapters in five parts. Nine are written for Christchurch; the rest are national and live once in Moving to New Zealand, so you only read them once.
Ready to explore opportunities?
Read the guide, save it to your pack, and plan the move at your own pace — even if that’s a year from now.