Christchurch has a golden opportunity to become New Zealand's number one city of choice.

That's the view of the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce, as the rebuild in the city is taking effect.

Chief executive Peter Townsend says Christchurch is back and running after 11,000 aftershocks, 53 of them over five on the Richter scale.

Currently $83 million is being spent in rebuilding the city every week, and by the end of this calendar year 75 per cent of the housing stock will have been repaired and rebuilt, Mr Townsend said.

"There is nowhere in the world where around $30 billion dollars of insurance proceeds have been applied to the rebuild of a city of 400,000 people," he said.

"The Government have injected around $8.5 billion into land, infrastructure and amenities."

Mr Townsend explains that by the end of 2020 Christchurch is going to have as much hotel accommodation as it had before the earthquakes and will be the most accessible city in the country as its traffic infrastructure is taking off with the southern motorway, the northern arterial route and the west diversion.

"The rebuild of the Christchurch Cathedral over the next seven to 10 years must be a tourist attraction," said Townsend.

"Why not, instead of fencing it off and wrapped in white plastic, why not put glass panelling around the outside of it? Why not put a couple of grandstands in the Square so people can look into the rebuild?

And why not make the rebuild of the Christchurch Cathedral a positive experience for tourists," he said.