Hamilton Swift Consultants
When GH bush was President of the USA, in 1989, there was an earthquake
at Loma Prieta, in California, which we usually call the San Francisco
Earthquake of 1989.
Charles Eadie was a town planner in a small city of 50,000 people only a
few miles from Loma Prieta. His city, Santa Cruz, took a pounding, much
worse than in San Francisco.
In the Santa Cruz area there were 63 deaths and $8 billion in damage.
But the earthquake damage was severe only in patches, so the whole
California region was still functional although some parts were severely
damaged. Downtown Santa Cruz was badly damaged.
From my notes: Too quick again - parts missing.
The emotional toll.
A fundamental assumption that the earth is stable and can be relied on
is shattered.
Recovery is difficult and stressful.
Tough decisions need to be made.
Time pressure
Necessary to take risks. Difficult to define acceptable risks.
Community wide stress.
Heroic efforts.
Need for compassion and support.
75% of the business owners and 80% of the householders are NOT insured.
These people were demanding access to their property, and the civil
defense controllers had declared a red zone.
Three days later, GH Bush arrived in Santa Cruz. His whole entourage of
about 50 people walked through the red zone, there were camera crews and
body guards and the CIA people were stationed high up in the damaged
buildings nobody was allowed to enter. It's all shown on TV.
This caused a huge uproar from the property owners. There's an obvious
disconnect here.
Businesses DEMANDED access to their businesses. For most of them without
insurance, whatever they could recover was all they had to start again.
Permission was granted of individuals to enter damaged premises in a
controlled way. That went on for five weeks.
Recovery is plural.
Multiple things are happening at once.
Everyone is trying to figure out what to do and is making decisions for
better or for worst.
The recovery manager should try to enable effective actions.
Things Change After the Disaster
There is urgency.
Economic problems are severe and political problems, or divisions that
were contained before the disaster now surface and hinder progress.
Luckily, the STATUS QUO is not an option. People have to unite and get
things done.
There is limited information.
Huge uncertainty.
New opportunities exist, but that's frightening too.
Santa Cruz hired an economist to advise the City. His advice was
useless. He couldn't see what the problem was. "All you need to do is
rebuild and sustain revenues that are 50% higher than previously." So
much for experts.
Bureaucrats struggled to find an effective role.
The normal tools were not relevant or not functioning.
The normal town planning rules no longer made any sense.
They were overloaded with requests that they couldn't process.
LONG TERM recovery begins immediately.
Political division threatened to stop all recovery effort in Santa Cruz,
but necessity forced a compromise. 18 people from the business community
and 18 from the non-business sector would form a decision-making body to
initiate the clean up and create a recovery plan. This group was so
dysfunctional it spent most the first month deciding what to call
itself. It's now commonly called the "Gang of 36".
It was decided that the decision of the Gang of 36 would be final and
that other local politicians wouldn't challenge everything they proposed.
To work. The city had lost three major department stores. A strong group
on the Council had opposed growth in the University for many years.
There was a need to create some early "wins" to encourage reinvestment
in the City.
An easy early win, was to approve the expansion of the University.
One of the department stores was willing to rebuild. That offer was
accepted and once that was approved slowly other businesses also made
commitments. To get this to happen the Gang of 36 had to approve the
use of multiple financial tools. They had to find ways to reduce the
risk for investors. The had to write very specific rules to give
investors confidence.
It wasn't that the business community wanted to build sub-standard
buildings. They wanted to rebuild well, but they wanted assurance that
other buildings and civic amenities would meet that standard.
The Gang of 36 discovered the importance of civility and respect for
each other. Collaboration was essential and work was hard. They did
learn how to get along with each other, and to share the knowledge that
came to the table.
You have to SELL the merits of your city.
The financial success of early projects creates a flow of further
investment.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Christchurch has the opportunity to do something really wonderful.
Something BOLD.
There are multiple opportunities.
Bold - might be an iconic building.
Bold - might be the development of new industries.
Bold - might be to make the city "sustainable."
Bold - might be to become a knowledge hub.
* * * * * * * * *
Thoughts for Christchurch.
Do you have good leadership and governance?
Is the future vision aligned with market forces?
Does the city share a strong unifying narrative?
Is there a clear strategic path for implementation?
Is there shared community buy-in for the plan?
Will the character of the place you are building generate civic pride in
the community and draw in new people who choose to live here?
Will the new city attract new investors and new businesses?