When five-year-old Matilda walks through Invercargill’s CBD with her parents she skips. Or jumps, flies like a bird, or roars like a lion. Sometimes she plays Twister with her little brother, spinning the dial to find where she puts her hands or feet.  

It’s playful, it’s creative, it’s imaginative. It’s fun.  

The redevelopment of the Invercargill CBD has created the opportunity to reimagine how a city centre can engage a community, support and encourage physical activity, and create opportunities for family activities. 

Healthy Families Invercargill has been part of that re-imagining process since early in the redevelopment, working alongside Council, developers, retailers, and other stakeholders to determine how to create a city centre that people want to visit. 

Initiatives such as the creation of the Invers Play Trail – a series of activities located throughout the CBD that encourages families and individuals to be active, play, and have fun, have demonstrated to decision makers, developers, and the community, how urban design can support the community to be more active.  

A focus on play, physical activity, and active transport has also been incorporated into the CBD masterplan, a framework for future CBD projects that Healthy Families Invercargill was asked to be part of. 

The aim of the masterplan is to make Invercargill’s city heart a more interesting, vibrant and attractive place to be, somewhere where there is something for everyone – families, the young and old, businesses, tourists, and those who visit the city centre most. 

Healthy Families Invercargill manager Jared Cappie said being involved in the conversation around the masterplan had provided an opportunity to share the value of creating health promoting environments (places and spaces that enable the healthy choice to be the easy choice) and promote the importance of play and physical activity. 

“We want to create a place that everyone can enjoy by making our city more fun and playful for people of all ages and abilities, which will also encourage people to stay for longer.” 

Through the work Healthy Families Invercargill has done with initiatives such as the play trail, the creation of a play space in Esk St, and work being done to promote active transport, stakeholders, the community, developers, and the council were able to see the value of creating spaces that encourage visitors, not only to visit, but to also stay, engage, and enjoy, Cappie said. 

“CBD developers and the city council recognise the importance of making our city centre accessible and enjoyable for everyone, not just through quality retail experiences, but also by making it a space that people want to be in. Spaces that enable them to be active, have fun, and spend time together.” 

“It’s about changing the mindset that business centres are simply about business. The CBD is the heart of our city, and through this masterplan, we are influencing how people view that role, and making valuable and important changes to ensure that going forward, our CBD is vibrant, inclusive, accessible, and a place people want to spend time in.” 

Article added: Monday 22 March 2021