The Four Avenues

The Four Avenues are a group of four major arterial boulevards — Bealey Avenue, Fitzgerald Avenue, Moorhouse Avenue, and either Rolleston Ave or Deans Avenue — that surround the city centre of Christchurch, New Zealand. Serving as an inner ring road, they popularly form the limits of the city centre, separating it from the city's suburbs. Almost all of the city's commercial heart lies within the approximately rectangular 9.8-square-kilometre (3.8 sq mi) area formed by the four avenues. The term "within the Four Avenues" is widely used in Christchurch to refer to the central city.^[1] By extension, Christchurch as a whole is sometimes referred to^{[by whom?]} as "The Four Avenues".

Historically, Rolleston Avenue, rather than Deans Avenue, was regarded as the fourth of the four avenues, but reconstruction of Christchurch City Centre following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake has officially made Deans Avenue a boundary of the CBD.^[2] This has enlarged the central area to include Hagley Park, a green area which dominates the western end of the city's centre. Technically, this means there are five, not four, avenues, as Deans Avenue does not connect directly with Bealey Avenue, the two being connected by the shorter Harper Avenue, which skirts the northern edge of Hagley Park.

The avenues were named for early Christchurch city founding fathers (Samuel Bealey, John and William Deans, James FitzGerald, William Sefton Moorhouse, and William Rolleston), with the exception of Harper Avenue (formerly Park Road) which was renamed in 1931 to honour retiring Christchurch Domains Board chairman Sir George Harper.^[3]