New Zealand Local Weather Forum
Weather Discussion => International => Topic started by: Suezy on April 09, 2012, 09:18:43 PM
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Quake lessons shared in L'Aquila
Last updated 15:00 09/04/2012
REUTERS
Canterbury is not the only community recovering from disaster. Professor PAUL DALZIEL reports from a recent visit to L'Aquila in Italy.
In the early hours of April 6, 2009, the city of L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy was struck by an earthquake that claimed 309 lives and caused severe damage to almost all buildings in the city's historical centre.
Three years later, the inner city is still cordoned off and its citizens are feeling powerless in the face of long delays in decisions about how to rebuild the city and return evacuated residents to their homes.
Last month I was invited to take part in a forum at L'Aquila, hosted by the OECD and the University of Groningen, to explore options for the economic recovery of the city and the wider region. I was accompanied by representatives from New Orleans in the United States, Tohoku in Japan and the Van province in Turkey to share our respective experiences of how communities recover from a major natural disaster.
The forum was a moving event. It was preceded by a public session in which local citizens voiced their frustrations at being shut out of their homes and their city centre for so long.
The forum was then chaired by the Italian Minister of Territorial Cohesion, Fabrizio Barca, and involved a series of presentations from OECD and Groningen researchers and from local office-holders about possible ways forward. The day finished with a speech by the Prime Minister, Mario Monti, in which he made specific commitments for the rebuild.
L'Aquila is a university city, so I was asked to focus on how our city's three universities (Canterbury, Lincoln and Otago) and CPIT have been key elements in the Christchurch response.
Pride of place in my account was a description of the Student Volunteer Army, who demonstrated in a completely practical way the strong connections between these institutions and Christchurch communities. I also described how the City Plan aims to support and promote education in the city and how university and CPIT staff members are contributing to aspects of our recovery.
The audience was particularly interested in the Re:Start Mall. In contrast to the L'Aquila situation where the city centre has been inaccessible for three years, our Re:Start Mall allows citizens and visitors to experience that the heart of the city still beats. It is an important example of how business-led recovery is not simply a matter of economic urgency, but contributes to a community's wider sense of well-being.
Another feature of the Christchurch response that attracted attention is the way responsibilities have been divided between business organisations (such as the Recover Canterbury scheme of the Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce and the Canterbury Development Corporation), the Christchurch City Council (especially the City Plan) and the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.
Co-ordinating responses from different levels of government has been very difficult in L'Aquila; Christchurch has been far more successful.
Based on our Christchurch experience, I drew three conclusions:
~ Business recovery programmes should be business-led.
~ Business recovery must build on fundamental and lasting strengths in the local economy.
~ Business recovery can be strengthened through partnerships between businesses and tertiary educators/researchers.
These conclusions were reinforced by the OECD-Groningen study, which explicitly warns against approaches based on rebuilding the city as it was and only then looking for ways to move forward. Instead it offers a vision for L'Aquila's redevelopment as "a smart city" and the re-branding of the Abruzzo region as "a place of science, sustainability, heritage and beauty".
It adds: "Implementing this new vision is fundamentally about shifting the emphasis from physical reconstruction to economic and social development; from the short and medium term to the medium and long term; from a rather fragmented to a socially integrated approach; and from a local and largely domestic view to a wider national and international perspective."
Christchurch is fortunate in this regard. Before the earthquakes we had in place a Canterbury Regional Economic Development Strategy (CREDS) and a Christchurch Economic Development Strategy (CEDS) that identified our long-term strengths and opportunities. These strategies were based on widespread consultation; we do not have to reinvent that particular wheel in planning for our economic and social development.
Feedback on the L'Aquila forum has been very positive. The OECD is now taking steps to create a wider network of post-disaster regions to learn from our experiences to avoid costly mistakes. It hopes that Christchurch will participate.
Like every region struggling with a large natural disaster, we will make some errors along the way. It is clear, however, that we have also maintained a momentum for recovery that is not always possible in other parts of the world. Our experience offers important lessons for others to follow.
* Paul Dalziel is Professor of Economics in the Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit at Lincoln University.
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Photo below SLOW PROGRESS: Firemen touch the marble statue of Madonna after removing it from the top of a church in Paganica, near L'Aquila. The inner city is still cordoned off, three years after an earthquake.