One of the most successful grassroots projects was Gap Filler, which temporarily enlivened vacant sites with creative projects. There was the Dance-O-Mat – a coin-operated dancefloor – a football field, an event pavilion made from wooden pallets, a cycle-powered cinema, garden cafes and a bar made from scaffolding.

Another project born out of Gap Filler is community bike workshop RAD Bikes. An acronym for Recycle a Dunger, RAD helps people renovate their "dunger" (broken down) bikes and turn them into workable machines again. Three years on, it’s a thriving non-profit organisation run on a combination of volunteer donations and labour, as well as some external funding. Its five board members include Jess and Nic Sewell. Christchurch is Nic’s hometown, and the couple moved back just a few months after the February quake.

"We thought being part of the rebuild would be really interesting for the years to come," Jess Sewell says. "It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to work in Nic’s hometown, and he had lots of family, including grandparents, who were a bit down about what had happened. We wanted to bring enthusiasm and say, 'This is an exciting thing and we want to be a part of it'."

They got jobs in architecture firms and quickly met creative people who were doing exciting things, making the most of the opportunities that were popping up.

"It was definitely inspiring. It was really exciting," Sewell says. "These grassroots initiatives were about urban regeneration from the ground up and were empowering. You could get your hands dirty and make things happen in your city that you wanted in a really tangible way with a manageable timeframe."

"That’s been a real theme of the rebuild: the parallel developments," continues Sewell. "Things like RAD and Gap Filler have flourished because people can see how they can be involved and be a part of rebuilding and making something positive out of it. People have compared Christchurch to Berlin after the bombing."

Christchurch was always thought of as the Garden City, the most English of New Zealand cities. It was quaint and stately, full of elaborate Victorian stone schools, churches and government buildings that spoke to its past as a hopeful new colony.

Many of those are gone now, damaged in the earthquakes, though there have been passionate campaigns to restore some. One of those taking part is Rekindle. The social enterprise was started by Juliet Arnott in Auckland as a response to timber being taken to landfill, much of it resulting from the demolition of homes made from now-rare native woods. Rekindle has picked up what it could to make furniture and homewares.

Its 2014 Whole House Reuse Project took an entire house and made new, useful objects from it – right down to light switches and electrical wiring. A home that would have otherwise gone to waste was instead turned into nearly 400 beautifully crafted artefacts, including backyard studios, jewellery and furniture.