Shifting relationships to place: a relational place-based perspective on SES resilience

ABSTRACT

Disasters literally and figuratively shake the foundations of place in a community. If place is seen as both a construction of and contributor to identity, then the impact of disasters can result in not only physical displacement but can also fundamentally displace community and individual identity. Despite this, resilience theory, a widely used approach for dealing with disaster, provides little empirical or theoretical background on the role of place in shaping response and recovery from disruption. On 22 February 2011, the ground beneath the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, shook, destabilizing the physical and psychological landscape and displacing the foundations of place identity for many communities. Through the case study of Project Lyttelton, a grassroots community organization close to the epicenter of the 22 February earthquake, this paper seeks to understand and explore the nuances of place and identity, and its role in shaping resilience to such displacing events. We argue that place is an integral component of social systems that requires consideration within resilience frameworks in order for social factors to be properly integrated. From this, we make the case for increased awareness of the connections between these processes and the related consequences for post-disaster realities at both the community and policy level.

KEYWORDS:

• Socio-ecological resilience
• displacement
• relational place identity
• Christchurch earthquake

Acknowledgements

This paper was originally presented at the Place and Displacement Conference held by Victoria University, Melbourne in November 2012. The authors wish to thank the residents of Lyttelton and the Project Lyttelton organization for their participation in the research, as well as the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In total, over 12,000 aftershocks of varying magnitudes have occurred in the region at the time of writing. For clarity in cases where events were specific to a particular earthquake we have indicated the month that this occurred in.

2. Transition Towns are community groups based around a re-localization philosophy as a reaction to the threats of peak oil, climate change and financial collapse. Transition Towns often carry out locally based actions such as community gardens, alternative currencies and awareness raising activities (Haxeltine & Seyfang, 2009; Transition Network, 2014).

3. Interviews were undertaken with human research ethics approval from Victoria University of Wellington, ID:19311.

4. Participant identities are hidden through use of pseudonyms, gender neutral names have been chosen for the anonymous survey responses.

5. The Lyttelton Timeball Station was a Victorian-era tower that indicated the time to ships in the harbor. It was one of only five known working-order Timeball Stations in the world. An ambitious rebuild plan secured funding in 2013 (New Zealand Historic Places Trust, 2013).

6. A participant used the term “bioregion” to describe the physical location of Lyttelton town within Banks Peninsula in relation to the resources available within that region.