An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 8 February 2013 entitled, "Vote for me!".
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 24 February 2014 entitled, "VIPs, flowers and hail".
A story submitted by Brenda Greene to the QuakeStories website.
Signs posted the fence cordoning off High Street. They read "Welcome to Limboland, just waiting!", "Christchurch Economic Recovery Abandoned", and "We're raising $50,000 for our City C96 FM".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "The food caravans that used to operate in the Arts Centre, now travel to several places in the city. Here they are in the quad at Canterbury University with the lunchtime queues".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Jeremy Stewart of Alice in Videoland holding 'When a City Falls', the film recently released about the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes".
Photograph captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Jeremy Stewart standing in his lice in Videoland store which is just awaiting the cordon to be pushed back so that customers can come calling".
A story submitted by Patti-Ann Oberst to the QuakeStories website.
An entry from Deb Robertson's blog for 3 August 2012 entitled, "Scrap Basket Quilt Number Six".
Introduction This poster presents the inferred initial performance and recovery of the water supply network of Christchurch following the 22 February 2011 Mw 6.2 earthquake. Results are presented in a geospatial and temporal fashion. This work strengthens the current understanding of the restoration of such a system after a disaster and quantifies the losses caused by this earthquake in respect with the Christchurch community. Figure 1 presents the topology of the water supply network as well as the spatial distribution of the buildings and their use.
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 8 September 2010 entitled, "Exhaustion and fear".
A story submitted by Trent Hiles to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Peter Low to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Kerry Grant Donnelly to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Serra Kilduff to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Anonymous to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Philip Broderick Willis to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Kathleen Himiona to the QuakeStories website.
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.
Orientation: Large-scale events such as disasters, wars and pandemics disrupt the economy by diverging resource allocation, which could alter employment growth within the economy during recovery. Research purpose: The literature on the disaster–economic nexus predominantly considers the aggregate performance of the economy, including the stimulus injection. This research assesses the employment transition following a disaster by removing this stimulus injection and evaluating the economy’s performance during recovery. Motivation for the study: The underlying economy’s performance without the stimulus’ benefit remains primarily unanswered. A single disaster event is used to assess the employment transition to guide future stimulus response for disasters. Research approach/design and method: Canterbury, New Zealand, was affected by a series of earthquakes in 2010–2011 and is used as a single case study. Applying the historical construction–economic relationship, a counterfactual level of economic activity is quantified and compared with official results. Using an input–output model to remove the economy-wide impact from the elevated activity reveals the performance of the underlying economy and employment transition during recovery. Main findings: The results indicate a return to a demand-driven level of building activity 10 years after the disaster. Employment transition is characterised by two distinct periods. The first 5 years are stimulus-driven, while the 5 years that follow are demand-driven from the underlying economy. After the initial period of elevated building activity, construction repositioned to its long-term level near 5% of value add. Practical/managerial implications: The level of building activity could be used to confidently assess the performance of regional economies following a destructive disaster. The study results argue for an incentive to redevelop the affected area as quickly as possible to mitigate the negative effect of the destruction and provide a stimulus for the economy. Contribution/value-add: This study contributes to a growing stream of regional disaster economics research that assesses the economic effect using a single case study.
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 10 May 2011 entitled, "Wobbling again".
A story submitted by David Hopkins to the QuakeStories website.
A story submitted by Greg Cole to the QuakeStories website.
A photograph of a sign reading, "Christchurch Economic Recovery Abandoned - to red tape". The photograph is captioned by BeckerFraserPhotos, "Sign seen on a fence near the corner of St Asaph Street and High Street".
Detail of damage to a house in Richmond. The brick wall is badly cracked and twisted. The photographer comments, "These photos show our old house in River Rd and recovery work around Richmond and St Albans. More ruptured brickwork".
On 14 November 2016, a magnitude (Mw) 7.8 earthquake struck the small coastal settlement of Kaikōura, Aotearoa-New Zealand. With an economy based on tourism, agriculture, and fishing, Kaikōura was immediately faced with significant logistical, economic, and social challenges caused by damage to critical infrastructure and lifelines, essential to its main industries. Massive landslips cut offroad and rail access, stranding hundreds of tourists, and halting the collection, processing and distribution of agricultural products. At the coast, the seabed rose two metres, limiting harbour-access to high tide, with implications for whale watching tours and commercial fisheries. Throughout the region there was significant damage to homes, businesses, and farmland, leaving owners and residents facing an uncertain future. This paper uses qualitative case study analysis to explore post-quake transformations in a rural context. The aim is to gain insight into the distinctive dynamics of disaster response mechanisms, focusing on two initiatives that have emerged in direct response to the disaster. The first examines the ways in which agriculture, food harvesting, production and distribution are being reimagined with the potential to enhance regional food security. The second examines the rescaling of power in decision-making processes following the disaster, specifically examining the ways in which rural actors are leveraging networks to meet their needs and the consequences of that repositioning on rural (and national) governance arrangements. In these and other ways, the local economy is being revitalised, and regional resilience enhanced through diversification, capitalising not on the disaster but the region's natural, social, and cultural capital. Drawing on insights and experience of local stakeholders, policy- and decision-makers, and community representatives we highlight the diverse ways in which these endeavours are an attempt to create something new, revealing also the barriers which needed to be overcome to reshape local livelihoods. Results reveal that the process of transformation as part of rural recovery must be grounded in the lived reality of local residents and their understanding of place, incorporating and building on regional social, environmental, and economic characteristics. In this, the need to respond rapidly to realise opportunities must be balanced with the community-centric approach, with greater recognition given to the contested nature of the decisions to be made. Insights from the case examples can inform preparedness and recovery planning elsewhere, and provide a rich, real-time example of the ways in which disasters can create opportunities for reimagining resilient futures.
A PDF copy of minutes from a meeting between Anglican Advocacy (formerly the Anglican Life Social Justice Unit), landowners, and the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA). The meeting took place on 14 August 2012.
An entry from Jennifer Middendorf's blog for 22 February 2012 entitled, "12:51".
A story submitted by Jeremy Ellen to the QuakeStories website.
An entry from Deb Robertson's blog for 30 July 2014 entitled, "Searching for hope..."The entry was downloaded on 3 November 2016.