The kept view

The district plan’s landscape schedules, 460 mapped areas and ridgelines where the plan protects the look of the ground itself: the Peninsula skylines, the coastal cliffs, the volcanic outcrops the city is known by. The ground’s permissions are elsewhere in the plan; this overlay is about what the city sees.

Scheduled areas

430

Outstanding

159

the plan’s strongest landscape standing

Main ridgelines

the skyline the rules watch

From

Chapter 9

of the operative district plan

Where the view is kept

Deep gold for the outstanding landscapes and features, pale gold for the significant ones, olive for the rural landscapes; the dashed teal line marks the coastal environment, and the brown strokes are the main ridgelines. The standings stack, one headland can hold several. Hover any area for its schedule entry. A point’s own answer is at /before, the remembered ground at /cultural, and the wild ledger at /ecology.

The gradings

Outstanding is the plan’s strongest landscape standing: natural landscapes, features, and coastal character of national-level value. Significant sits a step under; the rural landscapes and ridgelines carry their own rules.

Outstanding Landscape

Significant rural landscape

Natural Character in the Coastal Environment

High natural character

Main ridge protection 30 lines · drawn as lines

Very High natural character

Significant Feature

Outstanding natural character

Outstanding Feature

Coastal environment

The suburbs under a kept view

By share of outline inside the scheduled landscape areas: read from a sampled join, so a sliver still counts. Ridgelines are drawn but counted separately on each suburb’s page.

Cass Bay90% inside the schedules · 60% outstanding · 1 ridge
Little River89% inside the schedules · 16% outstanding · 3 ridges
Le Bons Bay84% inside the schedules · 25% outstanding · 3 ridges
Duvauchelle84% inside the schedules · 8% outstanding · 2 ridges
Sumner83% inside the schedules · 82% outstanding
Pigeon Bay83% inside the schedules · 9% outstanding · 5 ridges
Port Levy82% inside the schedules · 15% outstanding · 5 ridges
Governors Bay80% inside the schedules · 23% outstanding · 1 ridge
Okains Bay80% inside the schedules · 8% outstanding · 3 ridges
te-onepoto-taylors-mistake74% inside the schedules · 33% outstanding

Questions, answered briefly

What is this map?

The district plan’s landscape schedules, 460 mapped areas and ridgelines covering 145,408 hectares before overlaps. Where the other overlays protect what’s on the ground, these protect how the ground looks, the Peninsula skylines, the coastal cliffs, the volcanic features the city is known by.

What do the gradings mean?

The plan grades its landscape ground. "Outstanding", 159 areas, is the strongest standing: landscapes and features of national-level value where the rules weigh hardest against change. "Significant" covers features and rural landscapes a step under. The coastal environment carries its own natural-character assessment, outstanding, very high, or high.

What are the ridge lines?

Thirty main ridgelines across the Port Hills are drawn as lines, not areas, the plan protects the skyline itself: what happens on a ridge reads against the whole city’s horizon, so buildings and planting there answer to the view from below.

Why do the colours overlap?

Because the standings stack, a Peninsula headland can be a significant rural landscape, an outstanding natural feature, and inside the coastal environment all at once. Each layer is a separate instrument; the map shows them together because that is how the ground actually holds them.

Is unscheduled land a lesser view?

No, the schedules mark what the plan formally recognises, graded through landscape assessment. A street’s own outlook, a local rise, a backyard view of the hills all matter without needing the plan’s word. The schedule is the protected register, not the whole of what the city looks like.

The record behind this

Christchurch City Council’s open data, the DistrictPlanB service’s landscape layers: the natural-landscape schedule (outstanding and significant), the coastal landscape’s natural-character areas, the significant rural landscapes, the main-ridge protection lines, and the coastal environment boundary. The gradings are the plan’s own landscape assessments, a protection overlay, not a ranking of every good view. The remembered ground sits at /cultural, the wild ledger at /ecology, and the high places at /peaks.

This page as markdown: /landscape.md · the record as data: /landscape.json · /landscape.geojson.