Residents in the Marlborough town of Seddon say they are relieved their post-quake rebuild hasn't been hit by the same delays as Canterbury. Eight months on from the Cook Strait earthquakes, repairs and remedial works are continuing apace in Marlborough.
Continuing on from our last FAQ post, here are the answers to a few more of the questions we face regularly here in Christchurch. 1) Are you doing this for a school project? Yes, seriously. This gets asked more often … Continue reading →
Post-earthquake most people would say it was difficult to find housing in Christchurch. But reports suggest that the market has flattened. And terraced housing and apartments are sitting empty. Christchurch Council finance committee chairman, Councillor Raf Manji, discusses future developments like The East Frame.
All good things must come to an end, and so this post marks the final blog in our Life Before Plastic series (here’s part one, two and three if you’ve missed any). Speaking of endings, today we’re going to be … Continue reading →
Most of the work I do as a buildings archaeologist focuses on the humble 19th century cottage. These types of buildings, their construction methods and materials have become well trod territory in post-earthquake Christchurch, meaning we now have a fair … Continue reading →
The temperatures are heating up, there’s Christmas decorations in shops around the city and we’re on the countdown to summer holidays. In our penultimate blog post for the year we’re going to look back on some of our best artefacts … Continue reading →
When it comes to personal fragrance (continuing on from our post a couple of weeks ago), exactly which perfumes and deodorants we choose to wear can reveal a lot about us, as individuals and as a society. How we define … Continue reading →
Archaeologists and whisky go well together. I agree with that universal truth. However, I fit in the gin lovers team at the office. So, as Jessie did one year ago, I’m writing a post combining two of my favourite things: … Continue reading →
Way back in the winter of 2012, at the height of the post-earthquake demolition, I was pretty excited to learn we were going to get the chance to investigate the site of John and Charlotte Godley’s house in Lyttelton. John … Continue reading →
Following on from last week’s blog, today’s post takes a look at how we date ceramic artefacts, specifically the plates, cups, bowls and saucers we find so often in Christchurch. Many of the issues I mentioned last week with regard … Continue reading →
Hello loyal blog readers, welcome back to another year of posts on the history and archaeology of 19th century Christchurch. I thought we’d start the year off by looking back at one of our more interesting finds from the very … Continue reading →
Following on from last week’s blog post, when we discovered a tea set used by a local 19th century caterer – this time we will take a closer look at what catering may have been like for the Victorians. Prior … Continue reading →
In our last post, Jeremy talked about the site of H. F. Stevens, wholesale druggist, on Worcester Street near Cathedral Square. We excavated the site in 2011 and found a number of artefacts, including the Udolpho Wolfe’s bottles featured last … Continue reading →
Over the past two blog posts we’ve been looking at a large assemblage of labelled bottles found under a house in Akaroa. Today on the blog we’re going to take a step back and look at how the bottles travelled … Continue reading →
Continuing on from last week’s blog, today’s post takes a look (or a sniff, if you will) at the aromas of everyday life inside a Victorian house. Smell is such an intrinsic part of human life, yet so fleeting that it … Continue reading →
Today on The Panel, Wallace Chapman and panellists Julia Hartley-Moore and Phill O'Reilly discuss the idea of restoring passenger rail in New Zealand. Plus, they discuss the shortage of homestays in New Zealand, and the favourite finds by archeologists post Christchurch earthquakes.
This report is the output of a longitudinal study that was established between the University of Auckland and Resilient Organisations, in conjunction with the Building Research Association of New Zealand (BRANZ), to evaluate the ongoing resource availability and capacity for post-earthquake reconstruction in Christchurch.
The ground slipped laterally at this previously unknown faultline across Highfield Road in mid-Canterbury, resulting in a relative displacement of at least 2 metres and the magnitude 7.1 earthquake on Saturday 4 September 2010. Note the now misaligned fence posts, hedge and road.
During the past two decades, the focus has been on the need to provide communities with structures that undergo minimal damage after an earthquake event while still being cost competitive. This has led to the development of high performance seismic resisting systems, and advances in design methodologies, in order respect this demand efficiently. This paper presents the experimental response of four pre-cast, post-tensioned rocking wall systems tested on the shake-table at the University of Canterbury. The wall systems were designed as a retrofit solution for an existing frame building, but are equally applicable for use in new design. Design of the wall followed a performance-based retrofit strategy in which structural limit states appropriate to both the post-tensioned wall and the existing building were considered. Dissipation for each of the four post-tensioned walls was provided via externally mounted devices, located in parallel to post-tensioned tendons for re-centring. This allowed the dissipation devices to be easily replaced or inspected following a major earthquake. Each wall was installed with viscous fluid dampers, tension-compression yielding steel dampers, a combination of both or no devices at all – thus relying on contact damping alone. The effectiveness of both velocity and displacement dependant dissipation are investigated for protection against far-field and velocity-pulse ground motion characteristics. The experimental results validate the behaviour of ‘Advanced Flag-Shape’ rocking, dissipating solutions which have been recently proposed and numerically tested. Maximum displacements and material strains were well controlled and within acceptable bounds, and residual deformations were minimal due to the re-centring contribution from the post-tensioned tendons. Damage was confined to inelastic yielding (or fluid damping) of the external dampers.
The Canterbury earthquakes that happened in 2010 and 2011 have attracted many migrant workers to the region to assist with the rebuilding effort. However, research on the impact of influx of migrants on the labour market outcomes of a local industry post-disaster is limited internationally and locally. The main objective of this study is to examine the impact of the Canterbury earthquakes on the changes in demographic composition and occupational structure for the local and foreign workers in the Greater Christchurch construction industry. Replicating the discrete dependent variable regression methods used in the study by Sisk and Bankston III (2014), this study also aimed to compare their findings on the impact of the influx of migrants on the New Orleans construction industry with outcomes in Greater Christchurch. Customised data from New Zealand Censuses 2006 and 2013 were used to represent the pre- and post-earthquake periods. This study found that the rebuild has provided opportunities for migrant workers to enter the Greater Christchurch construction industry. The increased presence of migrant construction workers did not displace the locals. In fact, the likelihoods for both locals’ and migrants’ participation in the industry improved post-earthquakes. The earthquakes also increased overall workers’ participation at the lowest end of the occupational structure. However, the earthquakes created few significant changes to the distribution of local and migrant workers at the various occupational levels in the industry. Local workers still dominated all occupational levels post-earthquakes. The aggregated education levels of the construction workers were higher post-earthquakes, particularly among the migrant workers. Overall, migrant workers in the Greater Christchurch construction industry were more diverse, more educated and participated in higher occupational levels than migrants assisting in the New Orleans rebuild, due possibly to differences in immigration policies between New Zealand and the United States of America.
In previous blog posts we’ve touched upon the smells of 19th century Christchurch and how, in the absence of an organised sewerage and rubbish disposal system, early Christchurch was, at the best of times, a dirty old town. Inadequate drainage … Continue reading →
Gender matters. And it’s complicated, which is why writing this blog post has been particularly difficult. Why is it so complicated, from an archaeological standpoint? Well, let me try and explain. Historical archaeology developed as a discipline in the mid-20th … Continue reading →
Last week, Jessie’s post mentioned MacLaren’s Imperial Cheese, an early 20th century foodstuff we found in Christchurch. This cheese pot, which looked so insignificant and sounded so odd, represents one of the steps en route to our modern culinary world. Even … Continue reading →
People often ask what we’re learning as a result of all this post-earthquake archaeology. Quite a lot, as this blog reveals. But, to date, the blog has focused on the individual sites and/or stories – there’s not been much of … Continue reading →
Today’s post continues the theme of the last one (a little), in terms of exploring the relationship between products and industries in the past and their connection with our lives today. It’s easy to scoff at some of the things … Continue reading →
HITLab NZ's Andreas Dunser and UC clinical psychologists Dr Janet Carter, Dr Eileen Britt and Associate Professor Martin Dorahy, who are creating an earthquake simulator at the University of Canterbury to investigate ways to help Cantabrians overcome post-traumatic stress disorders caused by ongoing seismic activity.
HITLab NZ's Andreas Dunser and UC clinical psychologists Dr Janet Carter, Dr Eileen Britt and Associate Professor Martin Dorahy, who are creating an earthquake simulator at the University of Canterbury to investigate ways to help Cantabrians overcome post-traumatic stress disorders caused by ongoing seismic activity.
Hello everyone! Belated happy new year and welcome back. We’ve decided to begin the year by talking about problems (just to start on a positive note). Well, sort of. We’re participating in an international round-up of blog posts this month … Continue reading →
Shows as asterisks, stars etc a list of curses and swear words used to describe the EQC, delays, Roger Sutton, Gerry Brownlee and insurance companies. Context: The words describe the frustration and stress being experienced by many people in Canterbury post earthquake. Quantity: 1 digital cartoon(s).
This thesis examines the opportunities for young citizens in Christchurch to be engaged in city planning post-disaster. This qualitative study was conducted eight years after the 2010-2011 earthquakes and employed interviews with 18 young people aged between 12-24 years old, 14 of whom were already actively engaged in volunteering or participating in a youth council. It finds that despite having sought out opportunities for youth leadership and advocacy roles post-disaster, young people report frustration that they are excluded from decision-making and public life. These feelings of exclusion were described by young people as political, physical and social. Young people felt politically excluded from decision-making in the city, with some youth reporting that they did not feel listened to by decision-makers or able to make a difference. Physical exclusion was also experienced by the young people I interviewed, who reported that they felt excluded from their city and neighbourhood. This ranged from feeling unwelcome in certain parts of the city due to perceived social stratification, to actual exclusion from newly privatised areas in a post-quake recovery city. Social exclusion was reported by young people in the study in regard to their sense of marginalisation from the wider community, due to structural and social barriers. Among these, they observed a sense of prejudice towards them and other youth due to their age, class and/or ethnicity. The barriers to their participation and inclusion, and their aspirations for Christchurch post-disaster are discussed, as well as the implications of exclusion for young people’s wellbeing and sense of belonging. Results of this study contribute to the literature that challenges the sole focus on children and young peoples’ vulnerability post-disaster, reinforcing their capacity and desire to contribute to the recovery of their city and community (Peek, 2008). This research also challenges the narrative that young people are politically apathetic (Norris, 2004; Nissen, 2017), and adds to our understandings of the way that disasters can concentrate power amongst certain groups, in this case excluding young people generally from decision-making and public life. I conclude with some recommendations for a more robust post-disaster recovery in Christchurch, in ways that are more inclusive of young people and supportive of their wellbeing.