Why this topic?

My Personal Story Leading to this Research

Christchurch, in New Zealand's South Island, is my birthplace and spiritual home. My research "journey" began in 2010-11's earthquake ruins. Oddly though, Christchurch has seldom suffered earthquakes, despite New Zealand's seismicity. This made the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck on September 4, 2010 all the more surprising. And so began nearly 11,000 earthquakes over 18 months. 

Damage & loss

The physical damage report from the second major earthquake in February 2011 goes something like this: 

• 1,000 km of highways, 500 km of wastewater systems, 100 km of water pipelines. 

• Three-quarters of the city's structures destroyed beyond repair. 

• 7,500 houses beyond repair with whole communities requiring relocation. 

• Over 650,000 residential insurance claims. The earthquake series ended up being the fourth costliest insurance incident worldwide.

Yet physical destruction masks individual and societal anguish and a loss of liberties, so the human damage report involved loss of lives, quality of life, jobs, money, opportunity, time, energy, access to resources, mobility, relationships, and certainty. 

People rebuilt their lives, and became creative

My family's house was damaged and an insurance write-off, taking three years to resolve, but ours was just one story. Residents became citizens, working to redefine their community while discussing what constitutes a decent society in cafés, meeting rooms, lecture halls, and conferences. By night, folks worked on insurance claims and mending in their damaged homes. A greater purpose pervaded. As the city recovered, uniforms were replaced with suits.

If necessity is the mother of all invention, crisis certainly creates those conditions. The beauty of humanity at its best with initiatives like Gapfiller, which filled lots where central city buildings had been with fun ideas like the Dance-o-Mat, or a bicycle powered movie theatre, exemplify human creativity. Street art, formerly known in the city as graffiti, exploded. Popup container malls emerged, a "Cardboard Cathedral" was built, and a temporary sports stadium was erected. Citizen engagement, such as through the wildly successful "Share an Idea" campaign showed the green shoots of recovery, though all knew we were in for the long haul.

I found creativity too...

My interest in catastrophe recovery arose from seeing that my community faced a human development project, something usually situated in distant and underprivileged 'other' areas. As an infrastructure finance specialist with experience in international development, I was aware of my city's infrastructure fragility since it resembled these "developing" situations. Losing utilities like turning on a tap, flushing a toilet, having a liveable home, and an accessible business or school shocked many. The relationships between infrastructure and people's wellness were crucial, understudied and yet were strikingly visible to me.

A friend reminded me of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as I pondered long-term infrastructure rehabilitation. This philosophy helps define human needs and wants. From this, I created a Built Environment Hierarchy of Needs (BhoN). The BHoN notion was transformational because for each degree of need, a "Built Service" arose. Physiological needs are met by water, electricity, and housing; security needs by hospitals, defence, and police stations; belonging needs by community and recreation facilities, faith-based centres, and libraries; and esteem and self-actualization needs by performing arts centres and universities. Each infrastructure type has a "home" level and serves "upper" levels, such as electricity linking homes and the local church. The paradigm transferred focus from infrastructure's materiality, which is dominated by engineers, to people.

Explaining the BHoN to people led me to be appointed as the General Manager, Infrastructure for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority. The video below best describes this work and the BHoN, also well described in a write-up by USC on the Maslow reimagining..