Urban New Zealand: Natural Hazards Central.

Nigel Tisdall wrote an interesting piece in last Sunday’s Observer about the 1931 earthquake that struck Napier, New Zealand. Or, more to the point, the explosion of art-deco architecture that flowed out through the cities re-building:

‘If you believe clouds have silver linings, Napier's is surely rimmed with neon and chrome, the shiny new materials of the art-deco age. For this was an earthquake that also gave back, tilting the coast up by a couple of meters and draining a huge lagoon that is now filled with fertile farmland, the city airport, and some choice stretches of 30s and 40s suburbia. Downtown Napier, meanwhile, was quickly rebuilt in a colourful, confidence-raising art-deco style that married symbols of renewal – sunbursts, fountains, flowers – with robustly quake-proof buildings limited to two storeys. Out went brick parapets, gables and heavy facades; in came chrome speed-lines, ziggurats and naked women reaching for the stars’.

Indeed, as of 2007, Napier has been nominated for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the first cultural site in New Zealand to be nominated. However, New Zealanders don’t seem to be ‘resting on their laurels’ though – an earthquake is all too likely to strike again. As well as obvious architectural limitations of building urban spaces in geological sensitive areas, Wendy Saunders of GNS science has been looking into urban design and natural hazard mitigation. Taking into consideration land-use, the need for community networks to reduce risk and respond to disaster as well as more direct (built) design measures that would mitigate the effects of an earthquake.

All interesting stuff if you’re both an urban design geek and also still pandering back to your undergrad natural hazards lectures…