
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Aftermath of the earthquake in Christchurch where the cleanup has begun. Teams of building inspectors gathered at the Linwood Service Centre before heading into the eastern suburbs en masse. Napier building inspectors Gary Marshall, centre left, and Rod Jarvis were joined by City Council planner, Kent Wilson, right, and Kat Newman, left, who worked as the welfare officer on the team on Dallington Terrace".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Aftermath of the earthquake in Christchurch where the cleanup has begun. Teams of building inspectors gathered at the Linwood Service Centre before heading into the eastern suburbs en masse. Jeanette Banks, centre right, shares the relief of having had her property inspected with sister and Red Cross member Sandie Horne, down from Nelson. Napier building inspector, Gary Marshall, left, and City Council planner, Kent Wilson at right".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The lights are on at the new Press building, the first office workers to return to the central city red zone".
After Christchurch's devastating earthquakes, whole areas of the city, particularly out East, are starting from scratch - Aranui is one of them. Today, Lianne Dalziel cut the ribbon on the suburb's new community centre.
<b>Ōtautahi-Christchurch faces the future in an enviable position. Compared to other New Zealand cities Christchurch has lower housing costs, less congestion, and a brand-new central city emerging from the rubble of the 2011 earthquakes. ‘Room to Breathe: designing a framework for medium density housing (MDH) in Ōtautahi-Christchurch’ seeks to answer the timely question how can medium density housing assist Ōtautahi-Christchurch to respond to growth in a way that supports a well-functioning urban environment? Using research by design, the argument is made that MDH can be used to support a safe, accessible, and connected urban environment that fosters community, while retaining a level of privacy. This is achieved through designing a neighbourhood concept addressing 3 morphological scales- macro- the city; meso- the neighbourhood; and micro- the home and street. The scales are used to inform a design framework for MDH specific to Ōtautahi-Christchurch, presenting a typological concept that takes full advantage of the benefits higher density living has to offer.</b> Room to Breathe proposes repurposing underutilised areas surrounding existing mass transit infrastructure to provide a concentrated populous who do not solely rely on private vehicles for transport. By considering all morphological scales Room to Breathe provides one suggestion on how MDH could become accepted as part of a well-functioning urban environment.
Page 5 of Section O of the Christchurch Press, published on Wednesday 23 February 2011.
The rebuild of central Christchurch has been taken out of the control of the city council and will now be managed by a newly formed unit within the Government's Earthquake Recovery Authority.
An article from Army News, March 2011 titled, "Making it Work: Teaching civilians the army way".
Christchurch will lose its Rugby World Cup games with a report finding the city's stadium is unfit to host matches in the wake of last month's earthquake, British media is reporting.
Auckland structural engineer John Scarry is concerned that the series of investigations into earthquake related collapses of Christchurch buildings won't result in the changes needed to make the city safer.
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Aftermath of the earthquake in Christchurch where the cleanup has begun. Teams of building inspectors gathered at the Linwood Service Centre before heading into the eastern suburbs en masse. Gary Marshall, left, building inspector from Napier, and Kent Wilson, City Council planner work at a property on Dallington Terrace".
Photograph captioned by Fairfax, "Aftermath of the earthquake in Christchurch where the cleanup has begun. Teams of building inspectors gathered at the Linwood Service Centre before heading into the eastern suburbs en masse. Gary Marshall, left, building inspector from Napier, and Kent Wilson, City Council planner work at a property on Dallington Terrace".
Damage to Christchurch city following the 22 February earthquake 2011. A car sits in a hole created by liquefaction on Ferry Road. Piles of silt can be seen around the car.
The Christchurch City Council's control of the earthquake recovery plan has been taken out of its hands, to the delight of business leaders, but to the chagrin of some local councilors.
A photograph of a side table and stool outside a temporary café in the Christchurch central city. The café was set up in a house after the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
A photograph of a side table and stool outside a temporary café in the Christchurch central city. The café was set up in a house after the 22 February 2011 earthquake.
A copy of a letter from Hugo Kristinsson which was sent to Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, on 2 March 2014 . The letter was sent on behalf of Empowered Christchurch, as a response to the letter read by the Prince at the official Civic Memorial Service on the 22 February 2014. Kristinsson thanks the Prince for his letter and updates him on the progress of the rebuild. He expresses his respect for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth for their compassion in the early 1940s to the victims of bombing raids during the war and acknowledge's Prince William and Prince Harry's philanthropy through The Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry and The Princes' Charities Forum. Lastly he implores the Prince and the Duchess of Cambridge to visit residents from the 'low-lying seaside side of the city' who 'feel that their plight has been trivialised by the authorities in favour of prestigious big-budget projects'.
A poster created by Empowered Christchurch to advertise their submission to the CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan on social media.The poster reads, "Submission, CERA Draft Transition Recovery Plan. Risk Acceptance. It is the role of insurance companies, the EQC included, to accept the risks covered under their terms of reference/policies and compensate policyholders when such risks eventuate. However, many policyholders in Christchurch have not been compensated for the damage to their homes and their lives. These responsibilities need to be faced by the entities responsible. An equitable solution needs to be found for properties with hazards such as flooding that are a direct result of the earthquakes. In tandem with this, every effort must be made to protect residents from the risks posed by climate change. We need a city that is driven by the people that live in it, and enabled by a bureaucracy that accepts and mitigates risks, rather than transferring them to the most vulnerable residents".
Christchurch's historic Theatre Royal will reopen for business in November, with bookings about to open for the first show, the Royal New Zealand Ballet season of "A Christmas Carol" The 106-year old theatre has been closed for almost four years because of earthquake damage in the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. The $40million rebuild and restoration project will be completed over the next five months and on 17 November 2014, the 'Grand Old Lady' of New Zealand theatre will reopen her doors for performances. With so few venues for performance left in the city, including the Town Hall out of commission indefinitely, the rebuild of the Theatre Royal is very good news for Christchurch audiences Chief executive Neil Cox explains the process of getting oldest Edwardian theatre in the country back in use and mounting the large scale theatrical productions it has been famous for.
A video of an address by David Ayers, Mayor of Waimakariri District, at the 2015 Seismics and the City forum. The talk is about providing opportunities for input and feedback.
A video about the rezoning of 252 residential properties in the central city, Richmond, and Linwood. The video includes footage of Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee announcing the rezoning at a CERA press conference. It also includes an interview with Lynn Anderson, whose central city property was rezoned red.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "ChristChurch Cathedral, Cathedral Square (climb the tower? Not any more)".
The urban environment influences the way people live and shape their everyday lives, and microclimate sensitive design can enhance the use of urban streets and public spaces. Innovative approaches to urban microclimate design will become more important as the world’s population becomes ever more urban, and climate change generates more variability and extremes in urban microclimatic conditions. However, established methods of investigation based upon conventions drawn from building services research and framed by physiological concepts of thermal comfort may fail to capture the social dynamics of urban activity and their interrelationship with microclimate. This research investigates the relationship between microclimate and urban culture in Christchurch, New Zealand, based upon the concept of urban comfort. Urban comfort is defined as the socio-cultural (therefore collective) adaptation to microclimate due to satisfaction with the urban environment. It involves consideration of a combination of human thermal comfort requirements and adaptive comfort circumstances, preferences and strategies. A main methodological challenge was to investigate urban comfort in a city undergoing rapid physical change following a series of major earthquakes (2010-2011), and that also has a strongly seasonal climate which accentuates microclimatic variability. The field investigation had to be suitable for rapidly changing settings as buildings were demolished and rebuilt, and be able to capture data relevant to a cycle of seasons. These local circumstances meant that Christchurch was valuable as an example of a city facing rapid and unpredictable change. An interpretive, integrative, and adaptive research strategy that combined qualitative social science methods with biophysical measures was adopted. The results are based upon participant observation, 86 in-depth interviews with Christchurch residents, and microclimate data measurements. The interviews were carried out in a variety of urban settings including established urban settings (places sustaining relatively little damage) and emerging urban settings (those requiring rebuilding) during 2011-2013. Results of this research show that urban comfort depends on adaptive strategies which in turn depend on culture. Adaptive strategies identified through the data analysis show a strong connection between natural and built landscapes, combined with the regional outdoor culture, the Garden City identity and the connections between rural and urban landscapes. The results also highlight that thermal comfort is an important but insufficient indicator of good microclimate design, as social and cultural values are important influences on climate experience and adaptation. Interpretive research is needed to fully understand urban comfort and to provide urban microclimate design solutions to enhance the use of public open spaces in cities undergoing change.
Following the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake a comprehensive damage survey of the unreinforced masonry (URM) building stock of Christchurch city, New Zealand was undertaken. Because of the large number of aftershocks associated with both the 2011 Christchurch earthquake and the earlier 4 September 2010 Darfield earthquake, and the close proximity of their epicentres to Christchurch city, this earthquake sequence presented a unique opportunity to assess the performance of URM buildings and the various strengthening methods used in New Zealand to increase the performance of these buildings in earthquakes. Because of the extent of data that was collected, a decision was made to initially focus exclusively on the earthquake performance of URM buildings located in the central business district (CBD) of Christchurch city. The main objectives of the data collection exercise were to document building characteristics and any seismic strengthening methods encountered, and correlate these attributes with observed earthquake damage. In total 370 URM buildings in the CBD were surveyed. Of the surveyed buildings, 62% of all URM buildings had received some form of earthquake strengthening and there was clear evidence that installed earthquake strengthening techniques in general had led to reduced damage levels. The procedure used to collect and process information associated with earthquake damage, general analysis and interpretation of the available survey data for the 370 URM buildings, the performance of earthquake strengthening techniques, and the influence of earthquake strengthening levels on observed damage are reported within. http://15ibmac.com/home/
As businesses in Christchurch start to think about what, if any, help they can expect from the government following Tuesday's devastating earthquake, some small businesses around the city are starting to reopen.
The public at the inaugural New Zealand Sandcastle competition held at New Brighton beach. The organisers of the Christchurch sandcastle competition hope the event will bring cheer to the earthquake-hit city.
The public at the inaugural New Zealand Sandcastle competition held at New Brighton beach. The organisers of the Christchurch sandcastle competition hope the event will bring cheer to the earthquake-hit city.
The public at the inaugural New Zealand Sandcastle competition held at New Brighton beach. The organisers of the Christchurch sandcastle competition hope the event will bring cheer to the earthquake-hit city.
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "109 Cambridge Terrace".
About two hundred of those who lost loved ones in collapsed buildings in Christchurch's 2011 earthquake, heard an apology from the city's mayor, Lianne Dalziel yesterday. A royal commission in to faulty buildings found serious errors by engineers and the Christchurch City Council 185 people died during the earthquake on the 22nd of February, 2011. David Selway who lost his sister Susan Selway in the CTV Building, said it was good to hear a heartfelt apology from the mayor for the role her council played in signing off the building as safe.