Nearly 15 years after the Canterbury quakes, Christchurch is a humming melting pot of industry, culture and new opportunities. Has New Zealand’s oldest city become its newest success story? Mitchell Hageman investigates.
When it comes to the Garden City and its surrounds, people are voting with their feet.
More than 42,000 people have moved to Canterbury from the North Island since 2018, with the region “leading internal migration numbers for three or four years now”, according to Business Canterbury head of advocacy and strategy Tait Dench.
Census data also reflects a pattern of migration. Close to 17,000 people who had lived in Auckland in 2018 moved to Canterbury by 2023, and the region’s 15- to 24-year-old population grew by 6% in the last census.
One North Island expat is Eva Lloyd, a 28-year-old entrepreneur and model who has lived in a few major NZ cities before settling in Christchurch.
“Christchurch is growing quite quickly in terms of business and start-ups, and that was a major appeal to me,” she says.
“It’s an incubator and feels bigger than Dunedin, with more going on, yet not quite at the point where it’s bursting and claustrophobic.”
One thing that struck her the most was the “active” lifestyle of the city, something she compared to the likes of Sydney.
“When I first came to Christchurch, I scouted the city for one week, staying at different AirBnBs in different areas while doing some bartending at the Riccarton and Addington races to get a gauge on what the city was like before committing to moving here or not,” she says.
“I remember driving up from Dunedin and feeling a strange feeling of excitement/dread/novelty, as I drove past Hagley Park and saw swathes of people running and cycling, thinking to myself, ‘wow there’s so many active people living here’.”
According to OneRoof data from August, the average property value for Christchurch sat at $797,000, the lowest of all the major cities except for Dunedin. Auckland City housing had an average price tag of $1,424,000, and Wellington averaged $943,000.
When asked what the main three selling points for Christchurch are, Ray White Papanui real estate agent Vanessa Golightly says choice, price and lifestyle.
“It’s the perfect balance of a city,” she says.
“It’s half an hour to get anywhere, we’ve got good schools, housing’s pretty affordable for what you can get, and there’s an international airport so if you needed to work somewhere else or come and go, you can.”
She said from the perspective of those moving to New Zealand for the first time from overseas or nationally, Christchurch was “almost a no-brainer” choice.
“It’s kind of like a big little city. There’s enough going on to feel like you’re part of a city, but it’s not a hassle. You’re also never sitting in two hours of traffic.”
But while the city is an attractive place to buy, Golightly also notes that Christchurch has " a bit of a boring story" when it comes to the sales market.
“We don’t have the same highs and lows as other places. When our market goes well, people maybe get $60-70k more than what they thought, and when the market is under performing they might get what they expect, possibly $20-$30k less.”
There are also a few cost-associated caveats where the North Island is marginally better positioned.
Christchurch residential rates are generally a little higher than Auckland and Wellington. The Taxpayers’ Union’s Council Rates Comparison Chart lists Christchurch City Council rates at $2998, Auckland City Council at $2825, and Wellington City Council $2972.
Recent data also shows the region is being hit harder by insurance premiums than most others. Comparison website Quashed reported that average house insurance quotes recently rose 18% in Canterbury, 13% in Wellington and 7% in Auckland.
According to the Insurance Council, areas prone to flooding and seismic activity (like Christchurch) will always cost more to protect than others, with premiums being based on a range of risk factors.
Lloyd, who is renting, says that in her experience, rent costs around the same as in Dunedin, but the quality of places in Christchurch tends to be “nicer” because there were a lot of new builds.
“There seems to be a lot more people here that own their own houses and are looking for flatmates to fill in rooms,” she says.
She’s spoken to friends in Wellington who have rent that is significantly higher for worse living conditions.
“One of my friends was in a flat that had no furniture in the living room, a leaking laundry, cold and damp interior, and smelled of mould from the second you stepped into the house.”
It’s not just the lifestyle prompting a move; it’s also a fertile business breeding ground enticing industry movers and shakers to settle in the region.
With them, they’re bringing their bright ideas. Tait Dench says new businesses are being established in Canterbury at twice the national rate.
The manufacturing sector is also leading the country in activity according to the NZ Business Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI), and exports through Canterbury’s ports are up 12% year-on-year.
Pet food business Riverland‘s general manager Michael Dance told Christchurch NZ last year he thought “companies now have another option outside Auckland, and the connection to Christchurch is so easy”.
Getting the business off the ground was a fast process, with factory construction beginning in June 2023 and operations starting in February 2024.
Dance noted that the scale of Christchurch – a place he described as a “vibrant new city with modern facilities and the number of nearby attractions” – is making it an attractive option.
“The world finds an excuse to come to Christchurch a lot more these days.”
Infometrics data from 2024 also shows employment was up 3.3% from a year earlier, with growth higher than the New Zealand average of 2.2%.
But it’s also the work-life balance that Dench says sets the city apart.
“Success here doesn’t come with the familiar trade-offs. You can succeed in business and raise a family, all while enjoying one of the most affordable, high-amenity lifestyles in the Southern Hemisphere,” he says.
“There are not many globally connected and growing cities in the world where you can work in leading innovative business in industries like aerospace or advanced manufacturing and drive home for lunch and get to your children’s sport practice after work in the same day”.
Viva contributor Jo Elwin wrote earlier this month that Christchurch “may be Aotearoa New Zealand’s new food capital” citing how its redevelopment had brought “a youthful energy to New Zealand’s oldest city and, with an overwhelming number of restaurant and bar openings”.
In fact, the number of Cuisine Good Food Guide hatted restaurants (one and two hats) doubled from four to eight in the Kaikōura-Christchurch-Canterbury since they were last awarded.
Lloyd agrees Christchurch is humming with activity, explaining the range of attractions and how easy it is to access them was something that also drew her to the city.
“My favourite thing about living in Christchurch is the proximity to various activities around the city by transport. In 10-20 minutes, you can be at a University, the Port Hills, the beach, shopping mall, scenic walking/hiking tracks, botanical gardens, the theatre.”
The city has more than 45 large-scale art installations in the central city, including the tallest mural in New Zealand, and over 750 pieces of street art have been catalogued.
“Bringing arts and culture into the mix helps balance the major events portfolio and makes the city more attractive to a wider range of visitors and residents. The arts provide attractions for shoulder seasons but most importantly builds capability and capacity in the arts and cultural sector,” says Christchurch NZ general manager of destination and attraction Loren Aberhart.
Major events hosted by the city include the World Buskers Festival, Flare Street Art Festival, Electric Avenue (which resulted in a visitor spend of almost $10.5 million) and the recent addition of the Spring Fashion Week for Christchurch November 7-9 curated by New Zealand Fashion Week. In April 2026, Ruapuna Raceway will also host Supercars.
Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger has a bold vision: to make Christchurch “the sporting and events capital of New Zealand”, one he believes is close to being a reality.
“We have One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha, which is being delivered on time and on budget. When it opens next year, it will provide the most incredible venue for business, community, cultural, sports, and entertainment events and bring with it significant economic benefits,” he says.
“We will also have Parakiore Recreation and Sport Centre opening later this year, the largest aquatic and indoor recreation venue of its kind in the country. It’ll build on Canterbury’s legacy as New Zealand’s sporting powerhouse, and the best athletes in the world and our own world champions will use Parakiore.”
The region also seems to give people more bang for their buck and more disposable income to spend on keeping themselves entertained. Based on Infometrics data, the housing affordability ratio (ratio of house prices to household incomes) in the year to June 2025 was 6.5 for Christchurch City and 7.2 for Auckland, meaning Christchurch residents were also likely to have more income to spend on going out or attending events.
On the flip side, it could be argued that Auckland and Wellington have also seen large strides in championing events, with Auckland’s Eden Park given resource consent to host more concerts per year, and Wellington having recently hosted large scale events like football friendly Wrexham v the Wellington Phoenix and also hosting pop superstar Ed Sheeran next year.
Mauger says, in general, the city is seeing more and more people of all ages choose it as their new home for educational, business, and lifestyle opportunities.
“We’ve been called New Zealand’s most vibrant city and the ‘capital of cool’, as well as ranking highest in the 2024 Happy City Index,” he notes.
Data from the NZ Quality of Life Project 2024 seems to back this up. Eighty per cent of respondents from Christchurch rated their overall quality of life positively compared to 75% of respondents from Auckland.
Perhaps some of that comes down to the city’s rebuild blending the past – and the future. Aberhart says 90% of the central city is brand new, the city still has the largest collection of heritage-listed buildings in New Zealand.
“In transforming [the city], we’ve turned towards nature and let the sunlight in, opting for a low-rise city of exceptionally energy-efficient modern architecture.”
But being the “capital of cool” also means colder winter temperatures and the chance to get your tyre chains out every once and a while.
Niwa’s climate and weather map notes that Christchurch’s average winter daytime maximum air temperatures range from 7C to 14C, with the city even seeing a -2.8C reading this June owing to a polar blast. Auckland’s winter temperatures generally range from 12C to 17C, and Wellington’s sit around 10C to 14C.
And like all major metropolitan cities, crime is also something that still impacts people, as Lloyd unfortunately found out.
“One of the downsides to Christchurch that I had not realised initially is that cars get stolen quite often. In the last year and a half, I have had my car windows smashed and my car stolen twice.” Lloyd says.
“I wish I had known before moving to Christchurch what cars to avoid purchasing and where to avoid parking. Typically, staying in paid parking buildings is fine for any duration of time and free street parking is okay outside of late-night hours and not super remote.”
The New Zealand Police crime snapshot tool notes that theft reports (which includes but is not limited to vehicle theft) in Christchurch were at 26,275 between July 2024 and 2025. While this was down on the previous reporting cycle, it was still higher than Wellington at 13,972.
Lloyd says it might pay for people to do some “light due diligence” and look at social media posts of people living in Christchurch to see gauge whether it would be the right fit for them.
“Christchurch is lucky in that it has so many ambitious people trying to start something new that there are all sorts of run clubs, start-up clubs, round tables, pottery classes, horse riding lessons, trail running groups, German language exchange meetups, you name it,” she says.
For those still not convinced about making a move, Mauger had one simple piece of advice.
“If you’re thinking about moving here, come and visit, you won’t want to leave”.
Mitchell Hageman joined the Herald’s entertainment and lifestyle team in 2024. He previously worked as a multimedia journalist for Hawke’s Bay Today.