A photograph of Jessica Halliday of FESTA giving a speech at the public launch of Agropolis. The launch was part of FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of plants in a raised garden bed at the public launch event for Agropolis, which was part of FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of a freshly-made spread in a jar on a table at Agropolis, for the public launch event as part of FETSA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of a woman with soil in her hands, before the opening of Agropolis, an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food. Agropolis was the venue for several events throughout FESTA 2013.
A photograph of Jessica Halliday of FESTA giving a speech at the public launch of Agropolis. The launch was part of FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of fresh bread, pickles and spreads on a table at Agropolis, for the public launch event as part of FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of a City Care truck delivering mulch to Agropolis before the public launch event. The launch was part of FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of fresh bread, pickles and spreads on a table at Agropolis, for the public launch event as part of FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of six CPIT Architectural Studies students wearing orange high-vis vests and hard hats in Cathedral Square. They are about to start installing Urban RefleXion, a large-scale sculpture for Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales was a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of six CPIT Architectural Studies students wearing orange high-vis vests and hard hats in Cathedral Square. They are about to start installing Urban RefleXion, a large-scale sculpture for Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales was a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
A photograph of six CPIT Architectural Studies students wearing orange high-vis vests and hard hats in Cathedral Square. They are about to start installing Urban RefleXion, a large-scale sculpture for Canterbury Tales. Canterbury Tales was a carnivalesque procession and the main event of FESTA 2013.
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A photograph of people jumping in a pile of soil that has been placed on a white sheet, as part of the launch event of Agropolis during FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of people jumping in a pile of soil that has been placed on a white sheet, as part of the launch event of Agropolis during FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of people jumping in a pile of soil that has been placed on a white sheet, as part of the launch event of Agropolis during FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
A photograph of people jumping in a pile of soil that has been placed on a white sheet, as part of the launch event of Agropolis during FESTA 2013. Agropolis is an urban farm on the corner of High Street and Tuam Street. Organic waste from inner-city hospitality businesses is composted and used to grow food.
This paper analyses the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, which has been through dramatic changes since it was struck by a series of earthquakes of different intensities between 2010 and 2011. The objective is to develop a deeper understanding of resilience by looking at changes in green and grey infrastructures. The study can be helpful to reveal a way of doing comparative analysis using resilience as a theoretical framework. In this way, it might be possible to assess the blueprint of future master plans by considering how important the interplay between green and grey infrastructure is for the resilience capacity of cities.
We measure the longer-term effect of a major earthquake on the local economy, using night-time light intensity measured from space, and investigate whether insurance claim payments for damaged residential property affected the local recovery process. We focus on the destructive Canterbury Earthquake Sequence (CES) 2010 -2011 as our case study. Uniquely for this event, more than 95% of residential housing units were covered by insurance, but insurance payments were staggered over 5 years, enabling us to identify their local impact. We find that night-time luminosity can capture the process of recovery and describe the recovery’s determinants. We also find that insurance payments contributed significantly to the process of economic recovery after the earthquake, but delayed payments were less affective and cash settlement of claims were more effective than insurance-managed repairs in contributing to local recovery.
The city of Christchurch, New Zealand, incurred significant damage due to a series of earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. The city had, by the late 2010s, regained economic and social normalcy after a sustained period of rebuilding and economic recovery. Through the concerted rebuilding effort, a modern central business district (CBD) with redesigned infrastructure and amenities was developed. The Christchurch rebuild was underpinned by a commitment of urban planners to an open and connected city, including the use of innovative technologies to gather, use and share data. As was the case elsewhere, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant disruptions to social and economic life in Christchurch. Border closures, lockdowns, trading limitations and other restrictions on movement led to changes in traditional consumer behaviors and affected the retail sector’s resilience. In this study, we used CBD pedestrian traffic data gathered from various locations to predict changes in retail spending and identify recovery implications through the lens of retail resilience. We found that the COVID-19 pandemic and its related lockdowns have driven a substantive change in the behavioral patterns of city users. The implications for resilient retail, sustainable policy and further research are explored.
Following the briefing for the University of Canterbury staff working bee, university staff and Urban Search and Rescue workers gather outside before the cleanup begins.
A city’s planted trees, the great majority of which are in private gardens, play a fundamental role in shaping a city’s wild ecology, ecosystem functioning, and ecosystem services. However, studying tree diversity across a city’s many thousands of separate private gardens is logistically challenging. After the disastrous 2010–2011 earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, over 7,000 homes were abandoned and a botanical survey of these gardens was contracted by the Government’s Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) prior to buildings being demolished. This unprecedented access to private gardens across the 443.9 hectares ‘Residential Red Zone’ area of eastern Christchurch is a unique opportunity to explore the composition of trees in private gardens across a large area of a New Zealand city. We analysed these survey data to describe the effects of housing age, socio-economics, human population density, and general soil quality, on tree abundance, species richness, and the proportion of indigenous and exotic species. We found that while most of the tree species were exotic, about half of the individual trees were local native species. There is an increasing realisation of the native tree species values among Christchurch citizens and gardens in more recent areas of housing had a higher proportion of smaller/younger native trees. However, the same sites had proportionately more exotic trees, by species and individuals, amongst their larger planted trees than older areas of housing. The majority of the species, and individuals, of the larger (≥10 cm DBH) trees planted in gardens still tend to be exotic species. In newer suburbs, gardens in wealthy areas had more native trees than gardens from poorer areas, while in older suburbs, poorer areas had more native big trees than wealthy areas. In combination, these describe, in detail unparalleled for at least in New Zealand, how the tree infrastructure of the city varies in space and time. This lays the groundwork for better understanding of how wildlife distribution and abundance, wild plant regeneration, and ecosystem services, are affected by the city’s trees.
The Canterbury earthquake sequence of 2010-2011 wrought ruptures in not only the physical landscape of Canterbury and Christchurch’s material form, but also in its social, economic, and political fabrics and the lives of Christchurch inhabitants. In the years that followed, the widespread demolition of the CBD that followed the earthquakes produced a bleak landscape of grey rubble punctuated by damaged, abandoned buildings. It was into this post-earthquake landscape that Gap Filler and other ‘transitional’ organisations inserted playful, creative, experimental projects to bring life and energy back into the CBD. This thesis examines those interventions and the development of the ‘Transitional Movement’ between July 2013 and June 2015 via the methods of walking interviews and participant observation. This critical period in Christchurch’s recovery serves as an example of what happens when do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism is done at scale across the CBD and what urban experimentation can offer city-making. Through an understanding of space as produced, informed by Lefebvre’s thinking, I explore how these creative urban interventions manifested a different temporality to orthodox planning and demonstrate how the ‘soft’ politics of these interventions contain the potential for gentrification and also a more radical politics of the city, by creating an opening space for difference.
A photograph of community members giving feedback on the Sumner master plan.
A photograph of community members at a meeting to discuss the Sumner master plan.
A photograph of a speaker giving a presentation on the Sumner master plan.
A photograph of community members at a meeting to discuss the Sumner master plan.
A photograph of community members at a meeting to discuss the Sumner master plan.
Indigenous Peoples retain traditional coping strategies for disasters despite the marginalisation of many Indigenous communities. This article describes the response of Māori to the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2012 through analyses of available statistical data and reports, and interviews done three months and one year after the most damaging event. A significant difference between Māori and ‘mainstream’ New Zealand was the greater mobility enacted by Māori throughout this period, with organisations having roles beyond their traditional catchments throughout the disaster, including important support for non-Māori. Informed engagement with Indigenous communities, acknowledging their internal diversity and culturally nuanced support networks, would enable more efficient disaster responses in many countries.
The suburb of New Brighton in Christchurch Aotearoa was once a booming retail sector until the end of its exclusivity to Saturday shopping in 1980 and the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake. The suburb of New Brighton was hit particularly hard and fell into economic collapse, partly brought on by the nature of its economic structure. This implosion created an urban crisis where people and businesses abandoned the suburb and its once-booming commercial economy. As a result, New Brighton has been left with the residue of abandoned infrastructure and commercial propaganda such as billboards, ATM machines, commercial facades, and shopping trolleys that as abandoned fragments, no longer contribute to culture, society and the economy. This design-led research investigation proposes to repurpose the broken objects that were left behind. By strategically selecting objects that are symbols of the root cause of the economic devastation, the repurposed and re-contextualised fragments will seek to allegorically expose the city’s destructive economic narrative, while providing a renewed sense of place identity for the people. This design-led thesis investigation argues that the seemingly innocuous icons of commercial industry, such as billboards, ATM machines, commercial facades, and shopping trolleys, are intended to act as lures to encourage people to spend money; ultimately, these urban and architectural lures can contribute to economic devastation. The aim of this investigation is to repurpose abandoned fragments of capitalist infrastructure in ways that can help to unveil new possibilities for a disrupted community and enhance their awareness of what led to the urban disruption. The thesis proposes to achieve this research aim by exploring three principal research objectives: 1) to assimilate and re-contextualise disconnected urban fragments into new architectural interventions; 2) to anthropomorphise these new interventions so that they are recognisable as architectural ‘inhabitants’, the storytellers of the urban context; and 3) to curate these new architectural interventions in ways that enable a community-scale allegorical and didactic experience to be recognised.
A story submitted by Candy Green to the QuakeStories website.