Lincoln University and CBRE, a commercial real estate service provider,
have conducted research to investigate the impacts of the Canterbury
earthquake on the commercial office market in Christchurch. The 22
February 2011 Canterbury earthquake had a devastating impact on
Christchurch property with significant damage caused to land and
buildings. As at January 2012, around 740 buildings have either been
demolished or identified to be demolished in central Christchurch. On
top of this, around 140 buildings have either been partially demolished
or identified to be partially demolished. The broad aims of our research are to (i) examine the nature and extent
of the CBD office relocation, (ii) identify the nature of the occupiers, (iii)
determine occupier’s perceptions of the future: their location and space
needs post the February earthquake, and the likelihood of relocating
back to the CBD after the rebuild, and (iv) find out what occupiers see
as the future of the CBD, and how they want this to look.
The 2010 and 2011 earthquakes have had a devastating impact on the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. The level of destruction has been especially evident in the central business district where it has been estimated over 1000 buildings have already been or will eventually require demolition. Although, contrary to expectations, most of the fatalities were in relatively modern buildings, the Victorian and Edwardian era building stock was especially hard hit in terms of property damage. Unfortunately this era and style of building were also the focus of the most successful inner city revitalisation projects to date. A major research project is now underway examining the impact on the earthquakes on one of these revitalisation areas. The first step is to examine the international literature on similar inner city revitalisation or gentrification areas and in particular the characteristics of owners and occupiers attracted to this type of environment. This is the focus of this paper.
The topic of ‘resilience’ thinking seems of late to have superseded that of ‘sustainability’ thinking. Sustainability means simply that which sustains and lasts but has taken on many different subtle nuances over the last 20 years since it came into common parlance with the Bruntland Report of 1987, which sought to clarify the definition. However, resilience ‘speak’ has become hot property now, especially highlighted since Christchurch experienced a natural disaster in the form of several large earthquakes from Sep 2010 until most recently in December 2011. Many people comment on how resilient people have been, how resilient the city has been, so it seems timely to investigate what resilience actually means and importantly, resilient to what and of what? (Lorenz, 2010).
This essay will look at the concept of systems and resilience, definitions and theories will be explored generally and then these concepts will be more closely defined within the context of a particular system, that of Somerfield School located in the western suburbs of Christchurch.
