An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 19 April 2013 entitled, "Reading Room".
An entry from Roz Johnson's blog for 23 February 2012 entitled, "Helping Hands".
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 12 April 2011 entitled, "Day 50 - Free at last!".
An entry from Ruth Gardner's Blog for 08 January 2014 entitled, "Touring the Town".
An entry from Roz Johnson's blog for 23 February 2013 entitled, "Flower Cones".
Though there is a broad consensus that communities play a key role in disaster response and recovery, most of the existing work in this area focuses on the activities of donor agencies, formal civil defence authorities, and local/central government. Consequently, there is a paucity of research addressing the on-going actions and activities undertaken by communities and ‘emergent groups’ , particularly as they develop after the immediate civil defence or ‘response’ phase is over. In an attempt to address this gap, this inventory of community-led recovery initiatives was undertaken approximately one year after the most devastating February 2011 earthquake. It is part of on-going project at Lincoln University documenting – and seeking a better understanding of - various emergent communities’ roles in recovery, their challenges, and strategies for overcoming them. This larger project also seeks to better understand how collaborative work between informal and formal recovery efforts might be facilitated at different stages of the process. This inventory was conducted over the December 2011 – February 2012 period and builds on Landcare Research’s Christchurch Earthquake Activity Inventory which was a similar snapshot taken in April 2011. The intention behind conducting this updated inventory is to gain a longitudinal perspective of how community-led recovery activities evolve over time. Each entry is ordered alphabetically and contact details have been provided where possible. A series of keywords have also been assigned that describe the main attributes of each activity to assist searches within this document.This inventory was supported by the Lincoln University Research Fund and the Royal Society Marsden Fund.
A news item titled, "Stop the Consultative Process", published on the Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre's website on Thursday, 13 October 2011.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 9 March 2011 entitled, "Day 16, noon - inside the earthquake red zone".
Website of the St Albans Residents Association Incorporated (SARA), dedicated to the recovery of St Albans and its city, Christchurch after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's Blog for 02 May 2014 entitled, "Widespread Weariness".
An earthquake memories story from Debbie Smith, Health Protection Officer, Community and Public Health, titled, "Long road to recovery".
An entry from Ruth Gardner's Blog for 21 November 2013 entitled, "Play Park".
The recent Christchurch earthquakes provide a unique opportunity to better understand the relationship between pre-disaster social fault-lines and post-disaster community fracture. As a resident of Christchurch, this paper presents some of my reflections on the social structures and systems, activities, attitudes and decisions that have helped different Canterbury ‘communities’ along their road to recovery, and highlights some issues that have, unfortunately, held us back. These reflections help answer the most crucial question asked of disaster scholarship: what can recovery agencies (including local authorities) do - both before and after disaster - to promote resilience and facilitate recovery. This paper – based on three different definitions of resilience - presents a thematic account of the social recovery landscape. I argue that ‘coping’ might best be associated with adaptive capacity, however ‘thriving’ or ‘bounce forward’ versions of resilience are a function of a community’s participative capacity.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 16 September 2012 entitled, "Freedom on Fitzgerald?".
The Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre's "Community Earthquake Update" bulletin, published on Friday 26 August 2011.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 1 August 2012 entitled, "Blueprint Brain-teasers".
A news item titled, "Cool Store Relocation Causes Controversy", published on the Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre's website on Thursday, 13 October 2011.
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.
A news item titled, "Oxford Street Bridge Repaired", published on the Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre's website on Thursday, 29 September 2011.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 25 January 2013 entitled, "Preservation Project".
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 22 February 2013 entitled, "Commemorative Cones".
A news item titled, "Answers to Critical Questions About Buildings", published on the Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre's website on Friday, 01 July 2011.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 10 April 2011 entitled, "Day 48 - Foraging and Fences".
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 2 July 2012 entitled, "Walking on Worcester".
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 6 June 2011 entitled, "Circumnavigating the City".
The "Lyttelton Review" newsletter for 27 June 2011, produced by the Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre.
An entry from Ruth Gardner's blog for 26 March 2011 entitled, "Day 33 - Perambulating in the Park".
None
A map of Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority residential zones in Christchurch.
The Canterbury Communities' Earthquake Recovery Network or CanCERN represents dozens of residents' associations and community groups. Tom McBrearty is chairman, whose own house has been badly affected.