communicate was integration, the bringing together of collective knowledge and wisdom from the general public and key stakeholders, which is everything above the braid. Below the braid were our internal working processes, including technical and community reference groups.

The simple story of the braid is that we really began in 2016 by focusing on four key input areas. We’ve got the community needs analysis and community research above the braid, and below we had a number of studies that looked at the technical constraints and solutions, and the contextual analysis we could draw from our partners, and also other agencies like the DHB. We worked quite intensively with Community and Public Health: they were fabulous. They had the well-being index and a number of research projects that could help inform us. The health relationships also helped prepare us for public engagement where we sometimes had to work with people with clear mental health challenges, and those who for all their good intentions were not in a rational state to contribute. So we needed psycho-social support.

Given the relationships below the braid, we needed to work with Waka Kotahi to be aware of the plans for transport links, and with education to take account of school reorganisations following red zoning, and as that process worked through, its impact on early childhood services and primary health care. The inputs above the braid included work that was commissioned formally: the well-being focus of people was important and trying to understand the social and cultural impacts and mental health impacts. Then with community needs assessment we were starting to analyse not only the different stakeholders but also the different connections of place. So for example, Brighton had particular issues they were dealing with, maybe similar to Southshore but quite different to Wainoni. We also had communities of interest and communities of practice, not geographically-bound: like tertiary or secondary education, or Scouting.

We had a whole range of inputs expressing community need. On the first day that Ivan was appointed for example, he met the Minister, then went out to Tuahiwi marae, to Ngāi Tūāhuriri, then to the City Councillors, to acknowledge the partners. Later that week we met with I think eight of the most vocal community advocates for eastern Christchurch. We asked the question ‘what do you want us to know?’, and they were quite clear that we were not welcome, that we did not have a social licence to operate in east Christchurch. This was due to how they saw CERA having come in over the top of them; people were bruised. So one of the things that a community needs assessment was at the time was knowing that we were going to have to work really hard. We had the formal mandate but not the informal support. This had to be earned, by fronting up to groups, and listening. There had also been bruised egos in the city council, from having been sidelined in the CERA era.

So what then did the engagement process look like?

It was drawn from David Snowdon’s Cynefin framework (it’s a Welsh word meaning ‘habitat’) (Snowden and Boone 2007). It starts with what’s your context, what are you dealing with here? What degrees of complexity are there: do you know the interrelationships, or are there things still moving, with little evidence base from which to draw, or are you dealing with chaos? Chaos was what we were dealing with in the weeks, months following the February 2011 earthquake. In this case, were dealing with a complex environment, in which we knew that we didn’t know everything. So we were always open to new information, and our assessment process was more like a developmental assessment.

In terms of Figure 2, it was not possible to map dates onto the process as we had tried to do in one of the earlier versions. Unexpected things would happen; for example in 2017, there was a change of government which then changed our governance make-up. The new Minister wanted everything stopped in order to assess every significant work programme. So we were dealing with uncertainty and complexity. The Cynefin framework uses a ‘probe-sense-respond’ process: shorten your steps, make sure you do an assessment after each one to make sure you understand where you’re at, what’s changed and whether a change of direction is needed. We knew the process was going to be fluid, which is why we showed it as a weave: there’s strength and flexibility within the weave. Within Samoan and Māori cultural narratives, there’s a tight/loose balance that is robust enough to do the job, but flexible enough to go with things. If things get rough and you’re out in the sea in a double hulled waka, the bindings that are attaching those two hulls need to give and take. That was the metaphor, and in some of our communities that was a really powerful story to tell.

So what were the key stages?

These are shown in Figure 2, and began with visioning and research events. These were a big public focus, and we had a couple of thousand people who connected with that. It was launched at the new Haeata school campus. That information was then taken in to develop the vision and objectives for the red zone. The technical and community advisory groups helped inform this.

A critical decision was to go with an Integrated Assessment Method, a multi-criteria analysis method that is robust, and the way for us to determine what criteria would be applied to the planning. The first stage involved assembling a group of 50 plus people, representing a range of community and professional interests. They met four times at the Bridge Club, starting with advising what criteria needed to apply, and what relative weightings. From that a shortlist of options was created. At this stage we had some creative input as well from a youth design workshop, whose participants were drawn from organisations we’d connected with so far. They tested a shortlist of ten design options for the future of the red zone.

The second stage of the integrated assessment involved applying those options to the criteria and weightings framework. This step informed the public exhibition, held over some days in an empty retail space in Cashel Mall in the central city. We sought feedback and got plenty of it. From this, we created the draft regeneration plan, before going back to the integrated assessment group to test that plan against the criteria and options, after which we created the final draft plan, tested it with the partners, incorporated their comments, then went into the public domain for the third and final time. Before the plan was submitted to the Minister, it had a final testing with the integrated assessment group.

At this point, it was paused while the East Lake Trust (which had wanted to build an international rowing lake) took us to the Ombudsman for judicial review. He found that Regenerate Christchurch ‘did not act unlawfully’, and that there was a coherence in the process that led to the regeneration plan. That whole process had taken a couple of years; the integrated assessment thread was probably 15 months.  

How well did the process work?

It drew on people with experience. We looked at a number of different processes (eg citizens’ panel or jury). Because there were so many advocates wanting different things, we needed a method that could withstand a legal challenge, which we expected from one lobby group or another. Integrated Assessment had been used in the development of the LURP (post-earthquake Land Use Recovery Plan), the Lyttelton Port Recovery Master Plan and the Canterbury Water Management planning process, and others. So we knew that it had relevance, It would be able to withstand a legal challenge, if we did it right. A number of us were working in different roles through the recovery process, and because I was working as an independent facilitator/contractor: I was the lead facilitator for the LURP, the port recovery plan, so I had familiarity with the processes. The port plan was challenged in the Environment Court and withstood that challenge.

It worked well in that it was a defensible process, and withstood that legal challenge from the East Lake Trust. It worked well from my perspective as we had the participation of people who represented every significant perspective that you could put on the land and water of the red zone: I’d go back to the participant donut model (Figure 1) were we identified those people who’d bring a perspective. But our invitation said that we realise you represent particular advocacy or people, but you aren’t here to represent those, you’re here to make decisions in the best interests of the whole. So it was framed with a dialogue approach where you bring a deep inquisitiveness into the perspectives of others. They had to be open to a broader understanding as it would be a process of trade-offs. It’s a powerful tension for people, to have to manage your own perspective with that of others. So people were there for the betterment of the whole, and it’s quite a mature conversation that needs to be facilitated.

We designed, planned and facilitated that method well. We evaluated in between each of the steps. We had really good people in the team to make that happen; it was also very useful to have Martin Ward, who had developed the integrated assessment model, lead the process, which he did independently and authoritatively. He guided us through it as a team. He has an evaluation speciality, he understood our context, and I’d previously worked with him in the LURP and Lyttelton Port processes.

In retrospect?

This process was a oncer: it was never going to happen again. We didn’t expect to get everything right, we just needed to operate on a principled basis. We set out to agree on what we were trying to achieve and the direction of travel, applying our expert judgment every day, based on what we know to achieve that. So I wouldn’t change the approach, and anything we might change is probably due to hindsight as contexts always alter.

I ended my role at Regenerate Christchurch early, when the draft plan was submitted in 2018 for the Minister’s consideration. By that time, we had worked through a number of projects, of which the red zone was the biggest. Eventually after four years, Ivan shut down the organisation, a year early. By then, the Ōtākaro Avon Regeneration Plan had received ministerial approval, after being delayed for some months due to the East Lakes appeal to the Ombudsman.

More recently, I have drawn on this experience in my work this year after the cyclone and flood damage with Hawkes Bay local authorities, and the Far North district council. I’ve also been working in the Taranaki town of Waitara, where there are real problems with the effects of coastal erosion on residential properties

Reference

Snowden, D. J. and Boone, M. E. (2007). A leader’s framework for decision-making, Harvard Business Review, November, 1-8.

Interview with Eric Pawson at 75 Watford Street, 11 August 2023

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Figure 2