Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110530 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110528 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110476 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Delivering the books. Photos taken in Redwood Library on April 8 following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-04-08-Redwood-After-The-Earthquake-IMG_0437 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
File reference: CCL-2011-04-08-Lyttelton-Library-P1110834 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries Photos of Lyttelton Library on Friday 8 April, the day it re-opened after the February 22 earthquake.
File reference: CCL-2011-04-08-Lyttelton-Library-P1110826 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries Photos of Lyttelton Library on Friday 8 April, the day it re-opened after the February 22 earthquake.
File reference: CCL-2011-04-08-Lyttelton-Library-P1110822 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries Photos of Lyttelton Library on Friday 8 April, the day it re-opened after the February 22 earthquake.
File reference: CCL-2011-04-08-Lyttelton-Library-P1110825 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries Photos of Lyttelton Library on Friday 8 April, the day it re-opened after the February 22 earthquake.
Photos taken in Lyttelton on April 19 showing the demolition of buildings on London Street, Lyttelton, following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-04-19-London-Street-Demolition-IMG_0165 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries.
Photos taken in Lyttelton on April 16 at the official re-opening ceremony following the February 22 earthquake. Cake was served, and Greg Malcolm entertained. File reference: CCL-2011-04-16-Lyttelton-Library-re-opening-P1110826 From the collection of Christchurch City Lib...
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-05-24--Loons-LYP1120499 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton showing the demolition of various buildings following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-05-20-Lyttelton-Demolition-P1120450 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries.
Photos taken in Lyttelton showing the demolition of various buildings following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-05-20-Lyttelton-Demolition-P1120472 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries.
Photos taken in Lyttelton showing the demolition of various buildings following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-05-20-Lyttelton-Demolition-P1120455 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries.
Photos taken in Lyttelton showing the demolition of various buildings following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-05-20-Lyttelton-Demolition-P1120449 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries.
Photos taken in Lyttelton on April 20 showing the demolitions on London Street following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-04-20-Lyttelton-Demolitions-P1120072 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton on April 20 showing the demolitions on London Street following the February 22 earthquake. File reference: CCL-2011-04-20-Lyttelton-Demolitions-P1120075 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110583 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110582 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110551 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110522 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110504 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110488 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110503 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110499 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
Photos taken in Lyttelton following the February 22 earthquake. File ref: CCL-2011-03-05-After-The-Earthquake-P1110501 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries
File reference: CCL-2011-11-25-Presspass-November2011 527 From the collection of Christchurch City Libraries. Passes for The Press Christchurch Writers Festival, cancelled due to the earthquakes.
On September the 4th 2010 and February 22nd 2011 the Canterbury region of New Zealand was shaken by two massive earthquakes. This paper is set broadly within the civil defence and emergency management literature and informed by recent work on community participation and social capital in the building of resilient cities. Work in this area indicates a need to recognise both the formal institutional response to the earthquakes as well as the substantive role communities play in their own recovery. The range of factors that facilitate or hinder community involvement also needs to be better understood. This paper interrogates the assumption that recovery agencies and officials are both willing and able to engage communities who are themselves willing and able to be engaged in accordance with recovery best practice. Case studies of three community groups – CanCERN, Greening the Rubble and Gap Filler – illustrate some of the difficulties associated with becoming a community during the disaster recovery phase. Based on my own observations and experiences, combined with data from approximately 50 in-depth interviews with Christchurch residents and representatives from community groups, the Christchurch City Council, the Earthquake Commission and so on, this paper outlines some practical strategies emerging communities may use in the early disaster recovery phase that then strengthens their ability to ‘participate’ in the recovery process.
There is a critical strand of literature suggesting that there are no ‘natural’ disasters (Abramovitz, 2001; Anderson and Woodrow, 1998; Clarke, 2008; Hinchliffe, 2004). There are only those that leave us – the people - more or less shaken and disturbed. There may be some substance to this; for example, how many readers recall the 7.8 magnitude earthquake centred in Fiordland in July 2009? Because it was so far away from a major centre and very few people suffered any consequences, the number is likely to be far fewer than those who remember (all too vividly) the relatively smaller 7.1 magnitude Canterbury quake of September 4th 2010 and the more recent 6.3 magnitude February 22nd 2011 event. One implication of this construction of disasters is that seismic events, like those in Canterbury, are as much socio-political as they are geological. Yet, as this paper shows, the temptation in recovery is to tick boxes and rebuild rather than recover, and to focus on hard infrastructure rather than civic expertise and community involvement. In this paper I draw upon different models of community engagement and use Putnam’s (1995) notion of ‘social capital’ to frame the argument that ‘building bridges’ after a disaster is a complex blend of engineering, communication and collaboration. I then present the results of a qualitative research project undertaken after the September 4th earthquake. This research helps to illustrate the important connections between technical rebuilding, social capital, recovery processes and overall urban resilience.