Designing for urban resilience

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the inaugural lecture by Penny Allan, a Landscape Architecture professor at Victoria University of Wellington.  Titled Designing for Disaster, Professor Allan’s talk drew extensively from her expertise in the area of urban design, particularly that which emphasises resilience, intelligently planning for disruptive events to mitigate their negative impacts on our lives.

I’ve noted in a previous post, that resilience is often considered one of the three pillars, along with sustainability and liveability, that underpins effective urban design – in that particular case, Water Sensitive Urban design (WSUD).  A follow-on blog on the Urban Nexus raised resilience as part of a short-list of city-centric analytical themes highlighting the significance of place awareness within the urban context.  In the case of disruption like that associated with a natural disaster, I suggested that a well-developed sense of place could serve as a pathway back to the familiar or, when place triggers were irreparably damaged, to new levels of locational awareness.

With these ideas in mind I was keen to attend Professor Allan’s lecture and to see, either blatantly or subtly, if she acknowledged sense of place as a key element of her treatise on resilience design.

In many ways Professor Allan’s lecture was a call to action within the professional community, to more deliberately incorporate resilience into the urban planning process.  By including robust design principals that acknowledged the possibility of disruption as a matter of course, such informed planning would well prove its worth in the event of disaster.  Historically she suggested, much of this work was implemented after the fact, when a disaster had recently shaken, shifted or submerged traditional thinking along with the physical surroundings and for a time anyway, opened minds to new ways of rebuilding.

Therein lies the problem of course.  Prior to a disaster, the effects of a significantly disruptive event and the urban planning considerations that might need to be considered are speculative.  They are associated moreover with an event that might never happen at all, certainly not within the lifetime of several generations into the future.  Motivating a politician with the power or a developer with the budget to incorporate resilience design, potentially at greater monetary cost or project duration, is a difficult task to say the least when facing those realities.

As with any such large scale and long-incubated problem, the solution resides ultimately within a shift in thinking.  No amount of justifying the status quo makes that go away.  At some point minds have to be changed and completely new ways of thinking about and doing things have to be implemented as practice.

In the case of urban design, that means adopting, not just as academic exercise but as genuine, in-the-city-offices operational practice, new ways of conceptualising cities and the lives of the residents and visitors within its boundary and extended areas of influence.  It means taking that new level of thinking, incorporating it into best practice design and then applying that design as an integral and invaluable part of the planning process.

There are numerous models of cities, how they form, grow, ultimately embed themselves within and across the natural landscape and I’m certain I studied most all of them as part of my geography qualifications, but in her talk Professor Allan made an interesting observation about a couple of well-known models and their expression locally, in Wellington’s history.  She suggested that Wellington’s inception and subsequent maturity was influenced more by the so-called machine growth model rather than an organic growth model.

A detailed discussion of these models and their manifestations in the Wellington context is beyond the scope of this blog (and frankly, well beyond the abilities of my academic memory), but there was one observation in the lecture – the juxtaposition of an urban grid on a highly variable and steeply-sloped local topography – that highlights the underlying ideas nicely from a planning perspective and also creates some interesting linkages to the role of place awareness in such processes.

A look at early maps of Port Nicholson/Wellington demonstrates clearly the adoption of a traditional, European-based grid layout and one that had been devised with no real consideration of or even awareness of the local topography.  As the original settlement was planned for across the harbour from the current Wellington CBD, at the site today of Petone, the introduced plan might have represented a more logical fit.

Positioned in a fairly broad valley at the mouth of the Hutt River, the local topography there is relatively flat and conducive to a geometric grid of streets and properties.  But that location and its proclivity to serious flooding resulted in a move of the settlement across the harbour to the much more topographically varied and current site of central Wellington.

The grid remained however, and the result of this enforced, somewhat dogmatic attachment to traditional urban planning approaches of the day, as Professor Allan noted, was the unique layout that is modern Wellington.

There is a clear argument here to be made for a more environmentally sensitive approach to urban planning and the lack of consideration of local geography. The presence throughout Wellington of impossible grades, blind approaches, woefully-narrow streets and an utter reliance on a single, risk-exposed primary transportation artery into and out of the city all speak to that.

But likewise the collocation of foreign approaches to a city plan and indigenous geography make for a very interesting urban context indeed.  The experience of Wellington I think would not be the same without the dramatic harbour views afforded a large majority of its commercial and residential properties, the intricate and hidden spaces distributed liberally and waiting to be discovered amongst its hilly real estate and the endlessly fascinating ways people have positioned their houses within that topographic context.

And it is this perspective I believe that Professor Allan was in the end espousing.  For in the final moments of her talk she made the case for the return of something “organic” within urban design, not so much as the expression of a formal urban growth model, as a recognition of local natural environmental conditions which must be part of the design and planning of cities situated in those environments.

Her argument, couched as it was in the broader context of urban resilience, centred on the fact that a design approach incorporating the local natural provides a heightened level of protection, an increased capacity to cope with the disruption of a disaster.  Green belts for instance provide buffers, shock absorbers if you will to the physical effects of floods, tsunami run-up, fires and earthquake building destruction – spaces to gather away from the direct effects of these events.  Even purposefully designed wide roads, as she demonstrated through the example of the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, provided an invaluable space for people to gather and continue their lives, still in their familiar neighbourhoods but away from the direct danger of compromised buildings, fires and the lingering effects of aftershocks.

In the rush for continual advancement, motivated by a desire to persistently push the envelope of building design, Professor Allan argued, basic considerations of urban existence are often overlooked.  It might represent a shift in thinking, or perhaps a return to approaches lost some time ago in the seductive whirl of modern technological developments, but there needs to be a reconsideration of a city as a construct meant to support the well-being of its residents and visitors.

And it is the disruptive effects of a disaster that at once so effectively highlight the importance of that idea, whilst also representing the potential to overwhelm it.  All the more reason therefore to incorporate a common-sense, resilience-based approach to design, one that leverages the inherent, locally-forged benefits and protective capabilities of the natural environment as a core element of planning.

In doing so, Professor Allan noted, not only are the effects of disasters mitigated on a practical level, but community connections to landscapes are acknowledged and reactivated.  It is intelligent resilience design she suggested that serves as the all-important bridge between the well-considered ideas of planning and the urgent and overwhelming realities of recovery.

While her closing idea of connections to landscapes was clearly related, I acknowledged numerous points made by Professor Allan in the course of her lecture that resonated closely with sense of place.  I don’t recall a literal use of that phrase, but it was certainly present as an underlying idea for much of what she had to say and likewise could springboard into its own discourse from several of the topics she covered.

The Wellington urban grid superimposed on generally steep and highly variable local topography, for instance.

Without requiring much research, this situation can reasonably be considered a lack of place awareness amongst the settlement’s planners.  Not too surprising in the historical context as New Zealand was quite literally on the opposite side of the globe, transport to this place by ship was arduous to say the least, and in its differences from northern Europe the land and indigenous peoples were utterly alien.  So very little therefore in the way of direct experience or even accounts of those with direct experience to employ in the development of a meaningful sense of place.  But as Professor Allan demonstrated, Wellington exists as a testament nonetheless to the significance within urban planning and design of a connection to and an awareness of local geography.

As with all things related to sense of place, however, the story is not that simple.  For the city came to be, succeeded despite its far-flung location, matured, changed, integrated with its landscapes in new ways and everything in terms of place awareness has become increasingly nuanced.

By its very nature sense of place is emergent and therefore evolves along with the conditions that give it life.  Whilst the grid plan may not have been the best approach to the hilly settlement on the shores of Wellington Harbour, it is what the residents have had to work with and it has shaped just what Wellington has become these 175 years later.  And that in turn has influenced the various levels of place awareness amongst its resident communities.

I would argue that whilst there is certainly room for improvement, Wellington compared to many cities does incorporate the natural environment as part of its layout.  Regional, community and conservation parks are commonplace, greenbelts permeate the urban core and progress is being made to expand and connect even more of these natural corridors throughout the metro region.  And of course nearly everywhere is access to the ever-present foreshore and coast.

Again, though there are obvious problems that persist, I think awareness of potential natural disasters and therefore an acknowledgement at least of the need for resilience planning is quite high amongst Wellingtonians.  Sitting astride an active earthquake fault will have that effect.

Professor Allan noted one particularly illustrative example in her talk: the painted tsunami “blue lines” marking evacuation safe zones at the south coast.  Based on the contour associated with the maximum potential run-up height for a tsunami following a major earthquake, the blue lines are physical reminders, straddling streets and footpaths, of the potential for a natural disaster in this location.

Leveraging the scarce stretch of flat terrain in the area, South Coast communities like Island Bay have been densely settled.  But it is that same topography, with relatively gentle run-ups from the coast, combined with the high frequency of earthquakes locally, that expose those dense populations to inundation by a tsunami surge.

The actual effectiveness of the blue lines as an evacuation aid and the accuracy of their placement on the landscape has been called into question, but these physical markers have undoubtedly lifted levels of cognisance.  They have in the first case highlighted what is often the overlooked danger of a tsunami when compared to the potential disruption of its source earthquake.  But in doing so they have also increased awareness of the local environment, in this case the south coast area of Wellington.   As such they serve as something of a resilience-based urban design element and as a connection point for heightened sense of place.  In doing so they demonstrate the way these ideas are closely linked and the way place awareness permeates all such considerations that involve the local urban context.

Employing Professor Allan’s ideas that cities need to be re-considered as systems for well-being, and that when considered from the perspective of disaster resilience and the potential therefore to promote adaptive behaviours not only protecting but improving quality of life, I remain firmly convinced that sense of place has a critical role to play.

Whether or not it is a realistic attitude in a given disaster situation, a primary motivation for those dealing with the associated massive level of disruption to their lives is a return, as rapidly as possible, to some level of normalcy.  In that context, where so much has been so drastically altered in just a moment of time, normalcy often means little more than the familiar.

Our sense of place is deeply rooted and when it is taken from us and likewise when it is shown to us once again, we know it.  To understand exactly what has been taken or what we might slowly recapture and reestablish over time, however, requires awareness – an awareness of the subtleties of our physical landscapes and built environment, the visual cues, the ambient sounds and smells, the touch of the wind; an awareness too of our presence in those places and that of others with whom we interact or those we merely observe.

All of these components of heightened place awareness lead us to more meaningful and therefore more resilient connections to our locations.  And it is that tapestry of connections, the inherent desire to maintain them for our individual and collective well-being, that forms the basis and serves as a critical driver for purposeful and successful urban design.

Pecha Kucha – Moving Towards Water Sensitive Urban Design in Wellington

The following is the text from my talk this past weekend at Pecha Kucha: The Winter Session, Wellington 2015.  I co-presented at this event with artist Kedron Parker and ecologist Paula Warren, fellow members of the study group associated with an online water sensitive urban design (WSUD) course offered through Monash University.

I spoke about the state of and potential for WSUD in Wellington, from the perspective of the connections I’ve been exploring between sense of place and urban design, particularly in regards to enhanced liveability.  Much of my inspiration came from my coverage of this idea in a previous blog.

 

As Kedron mentioned and at her invitation, I completed the online course and was one of her study group’s participants. I’m a geographer and as such am very interested in the idea of place, our inherent sense of place, and the implications of that awareness; last year I started up a blog on that topic. Within the course, the concept of liveability – described as one of the key drivers of successful urban design – resonated in particular with my thoughts about place.

When considered holistically, these ideas of place and liveability are about connections to our local contexts; about knowing and sensing what I call our geography of habitation, and in that way more fully participating as residents. In the locational context of Wellington, water plays a significant role in that regard. And as an element of urban design, water ticks many boxes, not only as a potential enhancer of liveability, through interactions with public art installations courtesy of artists like Kedron, but also as a resource that can be sensibly managed, through practices like harvesting and stormwater management, to improve the sustainability and resilience of our city.

But it takes effort to foster these design elements, and our challenge in this regard comes from our historical practice. Traditionally we’ve developed our built environment over the top of and masking the natural; when the decisions that resulted in our current urban experience were implemented, managing these resources was all about control. As a result here in Wellington many of the elements of our local water cycle are out of sight, and therefore out of mind.

Were you to ask Wellingtonians about signs of their local water cycle, most would probably mention the harbor. For good reason – it is large, obvious, easily accessed; a well-known and well-used urban amenity; a star attraction that highlights this city as a wonderful place to live. But in terms of our water cycle, it is but one element – an important one to be sure – but one step along the path.

Wellington’s combination of physical geography and climate results in an intricate network of streams for instance, with the important function of transporting fresh water through the landscape and into the harbour we all enjoy. While it’s significant, both in terms of scale and potential to carry either clean water or pollutants to our harbour, that network is in fact hardly acknowledged within our cityscape.

The streams are still there, they still run with water, are inhabited with eels and fish, but are now relegated to underground pipes. As such they are out of reach to us, a lost connection to our geography, for some of us our history, and in terms of WSUD, a missed opportunity at enhanced liveability.

But there is good news because there are plenty of ways to change that, to re-establish meaningful connections with our local water cycle. So over to Paula now to talk about how, through our choices and basic WSUD practice, we can make that happen, improve the liveability of our city, and in doing so maybe heighten our deeply felt sense of this place…

Place through the lens: Matiu/Somes Island II

Some additional place-laden photography from Matiu/Somes Island, situated in Wellington Harbour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Place through the lens: Matiu/Somes Island

Some photography from Matiu/Somes Island, in Wellington Harbour. With its deep and complex history, relative abundance of protected native flora and fauna, and unique location – positioned within the midst of a significant urban area yet effectively isolated – this island location always provides a strong sense of its place for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A deeper community and place

The ways in which place is linked to, or in some cases deliberately employed by, communities are varied and I previously commented on the use of place to purposely perpetuate the identity of a neighbourhood where I live.  Another example, to which I also have some connection, is to be found in a more broadly defined community, that of the city of Wellington.

In the five years I’ve lived in Wellington I’ve never owned a car, a testament to both the compact geography and walk-ability of this city, as well as the exorbitant cost associated with the purchase of most any consumer goods in this expensive country.  As a result I travel to and from the CBD almost exclusively on foot.

Residing in the suburb of Thorndon, my walk into the city often involves a trek down the elevated bluffs lying to the west and north of downtown.  Along the way I cross the commercial district of The Terrace until I emerge via a series of tunnels and stairwells onto the flats of the city ringing the waterfront.

One such path down the slopes into the city takes me through the Clifton Terrace Car Park and along the gentle grade of Woodward Street, a route that passes beneath The Terrace via a pedestrian tunnel.  As such tunnels go, this one is nothing special – it’s walled with mundane and hospital-sterile tiles, marked here and there with graffiti, floored with worn and dirty paving and in general, showing its age.  Clearly and unapologetically designed with no more than a utilitarian purpose in mind, it has been described as “bunker-like.”

But it’s that which lies beneath this uninspired stretch of urban landscape which provides an association with a sense of place.  The particular collection of paved paths, tunnel, stairs and streets that I follow to reach the waterfront is no accidental or random alignment.  It in fact traces the alignment of the Kumutoto Stream as it makes its way from its spring source in the hills beyond the city, through the CBD and at last to the sea.  That waterway still flows in fact, buried now in pipes beneath an urban skin until its final emergence at Kumutoto Wharf on the Wellington Harbour waterfront.

Nearly a year ago now, a local artist was commissioned to temporarily transform the tunnel for its pedestrian users – to a certain extent at least – and create a more apparent and visceral connection to the stream that runs beneath it.  Speakers were installed within the tunnel, continuously playing the sounds of running water, birdsong and the like, captured from a rural riparian area and meant to call to mind Kumutoto Stream as it had once been.  A sign was also erected at the uphill end of the tunnel, explaining the project and noting the presence and historical significance of the subterranean waterway and local geography.

When I first came upon this installation on one of my regular commutes into the city, I was struck by its presence on several levels.  My first thought was that it was an outcome of the Big Data – Changing Place exhibition held about a year prior at the National Library.  During the lead-up to that exhibition, I had provided some input and feedback to the curator in an advisory role, primarily exploring the way that geospatial technologies and global data could provide unexpected ways to connect with local place.

One example highlighted in the exhibit was the use of historic maps and other data sources to effectively uncover the landscapes of cities prior to urban development.  In the host city of Wellington, the series of naturally and culturally significant streams that bisected the city on their way to the sea were considered particularly valuable as a means of demonstrating this idea.  It was envisioned in fact that the City Council might see fit to provide at the very least signage and markers to highlight the presence and alignments of these historically important water courses, now running invisibly beneath the feet of Wellington’s citizens and visitors.

I was surprised then to find out, after sending a photo of the tunnel project sign and inquiring with my contact at the National Library, that he had no knowledge of it.  This work it seems was the result of a distinct effort by a different group, to perpetuate very similar ideas, and therefore spoke to me of the significance of those ideas.

I was also struck by the way the project was described on the posted sign.  No boring public-speak here about urban redevelopment and city improvement efforts as is typical with such government project propaganda.  Instead, a thoughtful discussion about things like the various levels of disconnection experienced by those moving through the local urban landscape.  I found out later that this text sourced directly from the commissioned artist, which itself is an unusual concession in my experience.

The ideas expressed on the sign resonated with my own thoughts about place and suddenly this relatively small urban art installation had become particularly meaningful to me.  It didn’t precisely replicate my idea of place, but was very easily aligned to it.  This to me is the most productive arrangement, for it allows an even greater expansion and discernment of the idea of place than was possible before.  It also speaks I believe to the conscious use of place to strengthen and promote the local community even if, in this case, the community is a city.

In this instance, the creative use of sound with which to evoke a sense of Kumutoto Stream and a sense of this place as it had been prior to Wellington’s urban development, is particularly potent.  It is those sounds, of water rushing over rocks, of insects, of birds, that we inherently associate with a stream and which therefore provide us an intrinsic level of connection.

In the 1860s, Kumutoto was apparently the first such waterway in the emergent city of Wellington to be culverted.  As such it is particularly important as a symbol of the transition of the local environment and of the potential for exploring the significance of place and its resiliency in the face of change.  While perhaps not openly acknowledged I suspect it was the subsequent loss of those sounds, the sudden quieting in the natural sense of the place, that represented the change most meaningfully for locals.

By recapturing those sounds and therefore evoking the sense of place that was once the Kumutoto Stream at this location, this public art installation has provided a powerful tool for those wishing to reconnect with and participate in the identity of a community.  For many passing beneath The Terrace on their way somewhere else, the broadcast stream sounds will provide little more than an instant’s awareness with which to consider the strange juxtaposition of the natural with the very urban and confined space of the tunnel.  Others, with ear buds in place and oblivious to any external sounds, will miss the experience altogether.

But for some the sounds will cause more than a fleeting moment’s pause.  They will strike a chord of place such that thoughts are genuinely altered.  A more considered reading of the project sign might follow and after that discussion with others or research to uncover more information about this location.  The process of establishing a place awareness will have begun.

The connection, as it sometimes is with place, might be direct.  The tunnel at The Terrace, for instance, also marks the location of an historic Māori pa, positioned on a ridge above the flowing water.  Or, as it also is with place, it might not arise from something as tangible as family or historic linkages, but come from somewhere else, represent something else.

For some that might be enough.  But for others still there might emerge the desire and will to leverage that sense of place to actively promote and champion the idea of community.  In that way those so motivated might spread the word and open the experience to a much wider group, all of whom on some level share an identity with this city.

And in this is revealed again the power and significance of place.

The conscious sense of it, speaking to us as individuals, in such a personal way, while also shaping actions of many, on a much broader scale, is testament to its reach.  But more than that, while it simultaneously operates within these differing scales of experience and participation, it also links them as one.  It provides a means for each of us as individuals to engage with the wider group, while also adding a deeper, more resonate level of identity, of meaning, to that community.

Community and place

Place, the awareness of it, is multi-scalar.

While it is typically experienced as something highly personal, emergent within the consciousness of an individual, it is also recognised at wider-reaching levels like those associated with community.

The reasons behind this broader-scale acknowledgement, as with those associated with individual awareness of place, are varied. But what can distinguish place at this particular scale is its deliberate use. Place often springs upon an individual without warning, without conscious effort. Whereas in the context of community it can in fact be used intentionally, as a tool, to promote an agenda, to provide a political voice or to give life and significance to a plan.

In this circumstance, the sense of place is captured and put to work. The wild sense is domesticated, or at least an attempt is made.

And that’s not a bad thing. A tangible sense of place can in fact serve as a critical component in the definition of a community. It can bring members of that geographic group together in a way that significantly strengthens their idea of community and gives meaning to their definition of community. It can serve as that common ground, in this case shared perception, that links them uniquely and supports the idea of a collective voice. It can provide them membership in the true sense of the word.

Place is, in this instance, an individual and potentially very personal awareness distributed amongst a group. And it’s a particularly powerful link, a bond that creates a strong foundation upon which other aspects of community can be explored, built and realised.

That shared sense of place can embrace within it the otherwise disenfranchised and help bring them into the fold. It can motivate and serve as a call to participation amongst those who might otherwise operate in isolation, assuming their sense of place was singular and of no particular interest to others. It can draw them into the group of community, in a natural way, bound by the significance of and connection to a particular location. And once part of the community, the sense of place they share with others can help establish and support them as genuine contributors.

This simultaneous spanning of experiential scales from the highly personal and individualistic to the expanded boundaries of a broader group and community exists as a profound characteristic of place. It is quite amazing really and in my opinion speaks to its significance.

And this particular quality of place does not go unrecognised. I’ve seen numerous examples where communities have leveraged a sense of place, used its shared experience and awareness to strengthen the bonds amongst, and therefore the unified voice of, a group of residents, to create and bolster a geographic identity.

By way of example, I live in the Thorndon neighbourhood of Wellington. When I moved here four years ago, I was aware of the existence of such a neighbourhood, knew its approximate boundaries or at least its topological positioning on the map of Wellington neighbourhoods and possessed the odd fact that it was for instance the birthplace of one of New Zealand’s most celebrated writers, Katherine Mansfield. But my knowledge of it beyond that, on the level of anything like community awareness, was absent.

In those intervening years I have been struck by just how powerful is the sense of community amongst Thorndon residents and though I may not have previously articulated it as such, just how effectively the shared sense of place here is employed to strengthen and grow that community identity.

Though fairly small, Thorndon boasts more than one active residents association, producing on a fairly regular schedule outputs like newsletters while also convening community meetings. I’ve read those newsletters and have attended a couple of those resident association meetings, all the while surprised at the level of passion with which this community, really its unique and shared sense of place, is considered and held. I leaned a good deal about the history of this neighbourhood and that it was inhabited by many whose roots here ran deep.

And I learned that some who actively participate in these resident groups, the community leaders I would call them (though they may not embrace that title themselves), have been quite deliberate and vocal in their use of place to communicate and promote a local agenda to the broader political structure of the city of Wellington, within which they are situated and must necessarily operate.

Some of the interactions between neighbourhood and city could be characterised as contentious, as for instance the ongoing push against Wellington City Council to revisit its zoning guidelines which, some local voices claim, is currently facilitating a gradual and destructive spread of commercial properties. The cost they explain is a diminished residential tone to the neighbourhood. This they consider an undermining of the character of Thorndon, a commercial gentrification of sorts, as it introduces the detrimental effects of increased traffic and displaces the unique to Wellington and place-defining residential architecture of this area.

Yet in the midst of this rather quarrelsome interaction there has emerged a community improvement project, financed and implemented by the city I assume, which clearly demonstrates common ground. Whilst it may not directly address the spread of commercial properties, it most definitely recognises and speaks to a locally generated sense of place identity. Interestingly, it interjects that proclamation of identity, based on an acknowledgement of unique historical roots, right into the location at the heart of the commercialisation debate.

It is a sense of place that has unmistakably been employed here and which serves as a common means with which to span, on some level at least, the differing geographies and associated political perspectives of the city of Wellington and one of its neighbourhoods. This role as common platform for shared thinking is a hallmark of location-based approaches to problem solving and highlights that peculiar power of geography woven within the idea of place.

The project area in question is commonly described as Tinakori Village. I’m not aware that name represents anything official – I’ve not seen it reflected consistently on maps – but it is most certainly accepted and in common use, amongst the locals if no one else. That in itself is an interesting idea, the use of location names and relationships to sense of place, worth exploring at another time.

Tinakori Village is a commercial zone, running as a straight line along either side of the neighbourhood’s primary thoroughfare, Tinakori Road, and representing the setting for most of the retail activity in the immediate area. These businesses consist primarily of antique shops, art galleries, pubs and restaurants, and spa or wellness facilities. So certainly what some would consider upscale establishments and not necessarily the type of places one would feel compelled to visit every day. Yet I’ve found that the area is consistently well visited, with foot traffic as well as the expected vehicular traffic plying the main transportation artery between heavily populated neighbourhoods to the north and west, and downtown Wellington.

Some months ago, heralded by construction warning signs that sprouted at either end of Tinakori Village, the city embarked on a significant improvement project in the area, which resulted primarily in the upgrading of footpaths and kerbs along several local streets. The steady drone of construction equipment and activities became a characteristic of the neighbourhood during this time. When it was completed, the improvements to the stretch of Tinakori Road footpaths within the Village emerged as the centrepiece of this work.

Beyond the upgrades to the footpath paving and kerbs within Tinakori Village, there were other improvements as well, including the addition of benches and significantly, strips of stone pavers inscribed with quotes from historical and noteworthy residents of Thorndon. These inscriptions were a unique addition to the project and clearly meant to highlight the contributions of local historical figures, their settings of white stone contrasting sharply with the black of the newly paved footpaths surrounding them.

The quotes that now grace the ground underfoot in Tinakori Village are sourced from a mix of creative Thorndon residents, including but not limited to writers and painters and composers. A complete list was recently published and promoted in one of the resident association newsletters, providing not only a handy reference but also an endorsement and recognition of the level of support and agreement between the neighbourhood and the city. This acknowledgement is based on a shared sense of place.

The creative individuals behind the quotes represent a widely ranging collection of professions, interests, experiences and perspectives, but they share in this case a common bond of residence. They share a connection on some level with this place, this community called Thorndon. And it is that bond that links them now, not only to the physical footpaths in the Tinakori Village but also to one another, though their lives might have run their respective courses in wholly separate worlds.

And flipping that around, their quotes, snippets of thoughts from a far-ranging group of former residents, reinforce a specific and localised sense of place for those less notable currently residing in the neighbourhood, as well as those from the outside, shopping or otherwise passing through. That expression of place might trigger a curiosity in those passers-by to know more, while it feeds a level of pride amongst the local residents and sparks a genuine desire to share who they are, to convey the unique history in which their present manifestations have been forged.

This sense of place then is at once a creator, definer and promoter of specific identity, while also a powerful means of connection and communication with others. In this way it serves humanity on a profound level.

Such is the power and significance of place, spanning across time, across geography, to inspire not only the individual and their highly personal levels of awareness but also the broader community and the reflection of its identity – both as a reinforcement to itself and as a proclamation to the world outside itself.