The following four essays form part of the body of research undertaken by Penny Allan and Martin Bryant, while at Victoria University Wellington’s Landscape Architecture program in the School of Architecture.
The essays describe findings of research work into the relationship between spatial structure and resilience. The research work was undertaken in four continents around the Pacific Rim, over a period of 5 years. Methodology included primary research on field trips researching community uses of open space in the aftermath of earthquakes in San Francisco (1906), Concepcion, Chile (2010), Kobe, Japan (1995), Napier (1931) and Christchurch (2010/11). In each case we explore the role of open space in recovery and propose opportunities and methodologies for landscape architecture’s involvement. The timescale of the various earthquakes is important: it enabled testing of the hypothesis in both historical and recent events.
Essay 1:
Allan, P. and Bryant, M., 2011. Resilience as a Framework for Urbanism and Recovery. Journal of Landscape Architecture.
This essay investigates the idea of resilience and its attributes as a basis for aligning landscape architecture and recovery planning. It builds its thesis on research from the Chile and San Francisco events. One of the key premises was how the community relies on open space to take an important role in the process of recovery.
Essay 2:
Allan, P., Bryant, M. 2014. The Attributes of Resilience: a Tool in the Evaluation and Design of Earthquake-Prone Cities. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment. 5 (2), pp.109-112.
This essay extends the idea of the resilience framework and examines in detail how socio-spatial resilience attributes are common ideas in urban planning theory. The essay uses the Concepcion
and San Francisco case studies to examine these ideas.
Essay 3:
Allan, P., Bryant, M., Wirsching,C., Garcia, D., Rodruigez, T. 2012. The Influence of Urban Morphology on the Resilience of Cities following an Earthquake. Journal of Urban Design, 18 (2), pp 242-262.
This essay investigates urban morphology in Concepcion, and in particular looks at two resilience attributes, diversity and modularity, and how they are calibrated in urban systems to enhance resilience.
Essay 4:
Bryant, M., Allan, P. Open Space Innovation in Earthquake Affected Cities. 2013. In: Approaches to Disaster Management - Examining the Implications of Hazards, Emergencies and Disasters. Edited by. J. Tiefenbacher. Intech pp 183-204.
This essay examines innovation in open space design after the Kobe earthquake, and how communities and social factors influence the potential for innovative design in open space, which in turns influences community and social well-being.
This body of research was awarded the Charlie Challenger Award, New Zealand’s most prestigious award for Planning and Research in Landscape Architecture in 2012.
