A discussion of resilience and sustainability: Land use planning recovery from the Canterbury earthquake sequence, New Zealand

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe term 'resilience' is increasingly being used in a multitude of contexts. Seemingly the latest 'buzz' word, it can mean many things to many people, in many different situations. In the natural hazard context, the terms 'sustainable planning', and 'resilience planning' are now being used, often interchangeably. But from a natural hazard perspective, is a resilient community a sustainable one? In order to be sustainable, does a community need to be resilient? The purpose of this paper is to answer these two questions, and stimulate discussion on how the two terms are being used. The paper provides an overview of resilience and sustainability within a land use planning and natural hazard context, and discusses how they are interrelated. The New Zealand legislative requirements for resilience and sustainability are outlined, followed by the presentation of an example from the earthquake impacted city of Christchurch, New Zealand. This example outlines the planning response to the earthquakes, and the sustainable and resilient planning options being implemented. The discussion shows that a resilient community should also be a sustainable community, in order to meet legislative requirements, andmore importantly -to ensure the needs of future generations are met, economically, socially, culturally, and environmentally.

Governance in Shaky Societies: Experiences and lessons from Christchurch after the earthquakes

“…The unexpected earthquakes and the local low level of preparedness were particular for the case of Christchurch. The interwoven social and ecological processes, along with the scale and nature of the Canterbury earthquake sequences, overwhelmed both national and local public, private and civil society institutions (Saunders and Becker, ).…”

Towards the Development of an Integrated Sustainability and Resilience Benefits Assessment Framework of Urban Green Growth Interventions

“…The variety of relationships and equilibria between sustainability and resilience have been studied in the literature [9,10], where sustainability is seen as a normative concept promoting justice between generations, while resilience as a descriptive, desirable or sometimes even undesirable (in persisting, negative situations, such as environmentally-degraded water bodies) concept [11]. However, the right combination of sustainability and resilience aspects could provide strategies that allow them to be implemented in their full potential: a city cannot be sustainable without being resilient, and vice versa [12].…”

Defining the resilience dividend: accounting for co-benefits of resilience planning

“…More importantly, the authors find both actions yielded an additional co-benefit: residents perceived that the efforts increased tsunami awareness and preparedness. Saunders and Becker (2015) argue that sustainability is necessary for resilience-otherwise, communities are doomed to repeated cycles of disturbance and recovery without at least reducing the intensity or magnitude of losses. They state the goal of resilience planning should be to build "even better" than before the disturbance in a way that yields benefits across "social, economic, cultural, and environmental" dimensions.…”

“…15 To illustrate the approach, Butler et al (2014) conduct a case study in eastern Indonesia and compare this implementation with a hypothetical application in Australia. 16 See also Saunders and Becker (2015). 17 The SRBA methodology shares some similarities to the NIST Planning Guide, in the sense that it provides a step-by-step approach to resilience planning (see Section 6), and aims to highlight the direct and indirect (cobenefits) of sustainability and resilience planning.…”

“…29 28 In this context, resilience indicates climate change mitigation and adaptation specifically. 29 The idea that land use planning in particular can have important co-benefits for DRM is also addressed in Saunders and Becker (2015). Plaza-Bonilla, D. et al, 2015.…”