Extract

The effects of climate change on the New Zealand city will be the biggest disruptive event in the history of New Zealand urbanism. This paper discusses whether our existing urban development planning model can adapt to the coming environmental depredation occasioned by climate change or will this urban model have to change. The paper will explore how by re framing the typical urban development site within the wider urban catchment, an understanding of larger environmental problems can be apprehended. Through the use of catchment analysis and GIS modelling, the implications of climate changes for an urban development site can be understood. The consequences of applying appropriate environmental remediation remedies to combat the disruptive effects of climate change on the conventional urban development plan are explored. The investigation finds that an urban development can become a resilient to the effects of climate change by developing an adaptive landscape strategy. Building an indigenous and ecologically viable landscape will help to increase biodiversity, ameliorate the consequences of contaminated stormwater and reduce flooding. This process calls for an interdisciplinary approach of architecture-related disciplines to help improve the performance of buildings and urbanism in the face of the effects of climate change.

Keywords: Climate Change, Urbanism, Catchments, Resilience.

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