Socio-ecological resilience by design for flood-prone waterfront cities: A comparative study of New Orleans, USA; Brisbane, Australia and Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract

With climate change having increasing impacts on our cities and regions, the need for long-term and sustainable solutions is critical. Natural hazards are increasing in occurrence and intensity, and cities are proposing plans to increase their capacities to resist and withstand these occurrences. Resilience of cities to environmental hazards is often dominated by a worldview of ‘a system in equilibrium’, but this negates the wide diversity of social and ecological systems responding to change around the world. Three cities are used in this chapter as case studies to show how each have similarities in flood and disaster-prone physical landscapes and human influences. New Orleans (United States), Brisbane (Australia) and Christchurch (New Zealand) have had similar colonial-influenced histories, have managed water as both an asset and a liability, and have begun city planning for improved socio-ecological resilience. The case studies illustrate barriers and enablers that are context-specific and require landscape architectural design solutions to contribute to more robust and resilient cities in the face of likely hazards in their part of the world. The three selected cities have numerous experiences specific to their own unique circumstances that are related in this chapter to socio-environmental drivers that enhance their adaptive capacity. By comparing cities with similar histories but divergent experiences specific to their own geomorphological and meteorological hazards, we suggest that cities must find what is appropriate for their particular socio-ecological contexts through resilience by design.