The acting Vice Chancellor, Professor Ian Town, speaks to Checkpoint about the massive losses sustained because of the Christchurch earthquake.
Blog from Christchurch business-owner Nicky Arts detailing the rebuild of the Christchurch CBD following the earthquakles of 2010 and 2011.
A scanned copy of a black and white photograph depicting the Students' Union building at the University of Canterbury town site in 1969.
Repair work on Christchurch's iconic Town Hall, badly damaged in the earthquakes, has nearly hit the halfway mark.
For the first time in six years, music has filled Christchurch's Town Hall, which suffered significant damage in the February 2011 earthquake.
A page banner promoting an article titled, "Town Hall in balance".
The pace of town appears leisurely as pedestrians meander across High Street, while several trams slowly move past them c. 1929. There are a large number of men on they bicycles – perhaps th…
One of the areas most affected by the February earthquake was the port town of Lyttelton, south of Christchurch.
People who want the Christchurch Town Hall restored are optimistic the City Council will today commit to saving the earthquake damaged building.
A temporary village has opened in the small Canterbury town of Waiau to help residents who lost their homes in the Kaikoura earthquake.
A graphic illustrating a comment by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa about the Christchurch Town Hall.
Its budget may have blown out by almost a third more than the original figure, but this weekend the doors to the Christchurch Town Hall will re-open for the first time since the 2011 earthquakes. It was touch and go whether the 47 year-old building would even be repaired after the 6.2 quake eight years ago today. 167-million-dollars later and the city is finally getting its town hall back. Conan Young was allowed inside for a sneak peak ahead of Saturday's official opening.
Boarded up windows on the former Christchurch City Council building in Tuam Street. The photographer comments, "This guy always meets his sales target".
So much of the archaeology that we deal with on a daily basis, particularly from an artefacts perspective, is associated with the everyday domestic lives of Christchurch’s 19th century residents that it becomes quite easy to forget about the other … Continue reading →
During the year 1857, developments moved closer towards making colonial Christchurch a working city. The Bridle Path opening in March, provided emigrants direct access to and from Lyttelton, on a s…
An entry from Ruth Gardner's Blog for 08 January 2014 entitled, "Touring the Town".
A video about the earthquake damage to the Christchurch Town Hall. The video shows footage of a tour through the inside of the Town Hall, recorded on a GoPro camera. It also includes interviews with Councillor Glenn Livingstone and Councillor Tim Carter about their impressions of the damage and the work that will be needed to fix the building.
Ian Town speaks at the Community Engagement Awards.
Ian Town speaks at the Community Engagement Awards.
Bob Batty is a town planner in Halswell.
A scanned copy of a black and white photograph of graduation day at the University of Canterbury town site in 1972. The photograph depicts students dressed in regalia, moving in a procession through the quad.
A page banner promoting an article titled, "Leaving town".
Provincial towns and rural communities around the country say they will be financially ruined under proposals to strengthen buildings following the Christchurch earthquakes. Dale Williams is Mayor of Otorohanga, Dave Cull is Mayor of Dunedin and Lawrence Yule is Mayor of Hastings and president of Local Government NZ.
“The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” – Fyodor Dostoevsky One of the challenges faced by any new colony is what to do with the non-conformists, renegades, and criminals. The ideal, of course, … Continue reading →
A PDF copy of pages 80-81 of the book Christchurch: The Transitional City Pt IV. The pages document the transitional project 'Roger Sutton/Man About Town'.
A video of a press conference with Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, in the Christchurch Town Hall. Clinton talks about Canterbury's recovery after the 4 September 2010 earthquake. She also answers questions from members of the public.
A compilation of photographs of notable entranceways to cities and towns.
Kaiapoi, just north of Christchurch, has unveiled a bold new plan for the parts of the town wiped off the map in the Canterbury earthquakes. The plan proposes having house boats on the river that runs through the town, there'll be a place for campervans to park up and a covered sports facility is on the cards.
On 14 November 2016, the Mw 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake caused widespread damage along the east coast of the South Island, New Zealand. Kaikōura town itself was isolated from the rest of the country by landslides blocking off major roads. While impacts from the Kaikōura earthquake on large, urban population centres have been generally well documented, this thesis aims to fill gaps in academic knowledge regarding small rural towns. This thesis investigates what, where and when critical infrastructure and lifeline service disruption occurred following the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake in a selection of small towns, and how the communities in these areas adapted to disruption. Following a robust review of literature and news media, four small rural towns were selected from North Canterbury (Culverden & Waiau) and Marlborough (Seddon & Ward) in the South Island, New Zealand. Semi-structured interview sessions with a special focus on these towns were held with infrastructure managers, emergency response and recovery officials, and organisation leaders with experience or expertise in the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake. Findings were supplemented with emergency management situation reports to produce hazard maps and infrastructure exposure maps. A more detailed analysis was conducted for Waiau involving interdependence analyses and a level of service timeline for select lifeline services. The earthquake impacted roads by blocking them with landslides, debris and surface rupture. Bridges where shaken off their abutments, breaking infrastructure links such as fibre landlines as they went. Water supplies and other forms of infrastructure relied heavily on the level of service of roads, as rough rural terrain left few alternatives. Adapting to an artificial loss of road service, some Waiau locals created their own detour around a road cordon in order to get home to family and farms. Performance of dwellings was tied to socioeconomic factors as much as proximity to the epicentre. Farmers who lost water access pulled out fences to allow stock to drink from rivers. Socioeconomic differences between farmland and township residents also contributed to resilience variations between the towns assessed in this study. Understanding how small rural towns respond and adapt to disaster allows emergency management officials and policy to be well informed and flexible with planning for multiple size classes of towns.
A page banner promoting earthquake-related articles titled, "Shattered Suburbs" and "Ghost Town".