Resilient cities: Soft infrastructure for tough times

Abstract

The Canterbury earthquakes have promoted a widespread interest in the concept and practice of ‘resilience’. In this session, Dr Vallance outlines some of the key principles of resilience from three almost distinct bodies of work – disaster scholarship, risk manufactured and socioecological systems theory. She will then illustrate the ways in which these have been applied in the Canterbury context to promote recovery, using findings from three case studies: the Waimakariri District Council, the Little River Flood Working Group and Greening the Rubble. The extent to which key ideas and principles might apply in other contexts will then be explored. In a world where change is the only constant, this session will be of interest to those wanting to make their school, community, town or city more resilient.