The (Post)colonial Landscape of Cathedral Square: Urban Redevelopment and Representation in the “Cathedral City”1

Recent urban redevelopments in central Christchurch draw on the city's colonial origins to develop a market for tourist consumption. This article introduces literature from both the ‘landscape school’ of cultural geography and (post)colonialism, combined with the grounded theory research method, to examine representation in the changing landscape of Cathedral Square. It finds that redevelopment plans, which articulate the traditional colonial representation of the city, are dominated by market and consumption activities such that participation in the central city has become contingent on the ability to consume.