Aotearoa New Zealand’s population has grown rapidly from 3.85 million in 2000, to 5 million in 2020. Ethnic diversity has consequently increased. Territorial Authorities (TAs) undertaking statutory consultation and wider public engagement processes need to respond to increased diversity and foster inclusivity. Inclusivity is necessary to facilitate a greater understanding of TA statutory functions, as well as to encourage awareness and participation in annual planning processes, and resource management plans and consents. We examined perceptions, and experiences, of planning within the ethnic Chinese immigrant population of Christchurch. The Chinese ethnic group is a significant part of the city’s population and is in itself derived from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. We surveyed 111 members of this community, via social media and in person, to identify environmental and planning issues of concern to them. We sought to ascertain their previous engagement with planning processes and to gauge their willingness for future involvement. We also undertook a small number of semi-structured interviews with Chinese immigrants to explore their experiences with planning in more detail. Results showed only 6% of respondents had been engaged in any planning processes, despite only 20% being unwilling to participate. We analysed these responses by gender, age, visa category, and length of time resident in Christchurch. Notwithstanding the low level of reported engagement, earthquake recovery (70% of respondents) along with water quality, transport, and air quality were the most important issues of concern. However, there was a general lack of awareness of the ability to make public submissions on these and other issues, and of the statutory responsibilities of TAs. We discuss possible explanations and provide several suggestions for TAs to increase awareness and to improve engagement. This includes further research to assist in identifying the nature of barriers as well as the effectiveness of trialling different solutions.
Successful urban regeneration projects generate benefits that are realised over a much longer timeframe than normal market developments and benefits well beyond those that can be uplifted by a market developer. Consequently there is substantial evidence in the literature that successful place-making and urban regeneration projects are usually public-private partnerships and involve a funder, usually local or central government, willing to contribute ‘patient’ capital. Following the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes that devastated the centre of Christchurch, there was an urgent need to rebuild and revitalise the heart of the city, and increasing the number of people living in or near the city centre was seen as a key ingredient of that. In October 2010, an international competition was launched to design and build an Urban Village, a project intended to stimulate renewed residential development in the city. The competition attracted 58 entrants from around world, and in October 2013 the winning team was chosen from four finalists. However the team failed to secure sufficient finance, and in November 2015 the Government announced that the development would not proceed. The Government was unwilling or unable to recognise that an insistence on a pure market approach would not deliver the innovative sustainable village asked for in the competition brief, and failed to factor in the opportunity cost to government, local government, local businesses and the wider Christchurch community of delaying by many years the residential development of the eastern side of the city. As a result, the early vision of the vitality that a thriving residential neighbourhood would bring to the city has not yet been realised.
The urban environment influences the way people live and shape their everyday lives, and microclimate sensitive design can enhance the use of urban streets and public spaces. Innovative approaches to urban microclimate design will become more important as the world’s population becomes ever more urban, and climate change generates more variability and extremes in urban microclimatic conditions. However, established methods of investigation based upon conventions drawn from building services research and framed by physiological concepts of thermal comfort may fail to capture the social dynamics of urban activity and their interrelationship with microclimate. This research investigates the relationship between microclimate and urban culture in Christchurch, New Zealand, based upon the concept of urban comfort. Urban comfort is defined as the socio-cultural (therefore collective) adaptation to microclimate due to satisfaction with the urban environment. It involves consideration of a combination of human thermal comfort requirements and adaptive comfort circumstances, preferences and strategies. A main methodological challenge was to investigate urban comfort in a city undergoing rapid physical change following a series of major earthquakes (2010-2011), and that also has a strongly seasonal climate which accentuates microclimatic variability. The field investigation had to be suitable for rapidly changing settings as buildings were demolished and rebuilt, and be able to capture data relevant to a cycle of seasons. These local circumstances meant that Christchurch was valuable as an example of a city facing rapid and unpredictable change. An interpretive, integrative, and adaptive research strategy that combined qualitative social science methods with biophysical measures was adopted. The results are based upon participant observation, 86 in-depth interviews with Christchurch residents, and microclimate data measurements. The interviews were carried out in a variety of urban settings including established urban settings (places sustaining relatively little damage) and emerging urban settings (those requiring rebuilding) during 2011-2013. Results of this research show that urban comfort depends on adaptive strategies which in turn depend on culture. Adaptive strategies identified through the data analysis show a strong connection between natural and built landscapes, combined with the regional outdoor culture, the Garden City identity and the connections between rural and urban landscapes. The results also highlight that thermal comfort is an important but insufficient indicator of good microclimate design, as social and cultural values are important influences on climate experience and adaptation. Interpretive research is needed to fully understand urban comfort and to provide urban microclimate design solutions to enhance the use of public open spaces in cities undergoing change.
