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The idea of Building Back Better (BBB) has assumed the status of orthodoxy within post-disaster reconstruction. It is enshrined in the guiding principles of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-–2030. Yet, despite widespread desires to do so, cities routinely fall short of this aim. Our chapter asks the all-important question, why? The argument is made that while you can design buildings and precincts, you cannot engineer urban life. Rebuilding a city involves more than physical reconstruction. Regeneration also entails rebuilding lives, neighbourhoods, affective communities, social relations, occupations and aspirations. It also means dealing with social conflicts. In this chapter, we focus on those between old and young, insiders and outsiders, and rich and poor. Although the Canterbury recovery is often posited as the textbook case in how not to build back better, we also offer mechanisms for redress and provide resources for hope.

This paper reports the first reconstruction of storm-generated late Holocene and historical river floods in the North Island of New Zealand. The sedimentary infills of nine palaeochannels were studied in the lower alluvial reaches of the Manawatu River. Floods in these palaeochannels were recorded as a series of sand-rich units set within finer-grained fills. Flood chronologies were constrained using a combination of radiocarbon dating, documentary sources, geochemical markers, and palynological information. Flood units were sedimentologically and geochemically characterised using high resolution ITRAXTM 16 X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) core scanning and laser diffraction grain-size analysis. The longest palaeoflood record extends back ca.3000 years. The temporal resolution and length of the Manawatu record reflects accommodation space for fluvial deposits, channel dynamics and mobility, and high sediment supply. Floods that occurred in the Manawatu during the mid-1800s at the time of European land clearance and in the first decade of the twentieth century appear to be among the largest recorded in the last 3000 years

Nature-based tourism has been viewed as a large and growing segment of the tourism market. Advocates of nature-based tourism argue its potential to generate income for biodiversity conservation and local economic benefit, while detractors fear a risk of ‘loving our parks to death’. Some recent studies have suggested that nature-based tourism may be declining on a per capita basis, especially in economically developed countries. Others have detected no such trend. Nature-based tourism is a key industry within Australia, based strongly on its unique scenery and biodiversity. We compared nature-based visitation and population growth during 1998-2012 for Australia overall and specifically for the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area which is adjacent to the country’s largest conurbation of Greater Sydney. We found substantial declines in domestic per-capita visitation, both nationally and regionally. Because visitation provides the ‘political capital’ for parks to survive, strategies to encourage visitation should be a target for land managers. Since children foster environmentally responsible behaviour in adults, they should be part of the focus for developing diverse experiences that encourage park visitation.