Green Infrastructure For Central Wellington Post-COVID

How will Wellington’s central city develop as we gradually recover from COVID – or can we even assume we are in a post-COVID period? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the fore many questions around how planned development of Wellington will meet population needs in terms of green space and whether the existing population currently has adequate opportunity to relate to our green and open spaces. There are ongoing climate change and biodiversity crises, and all the other sustainability and planning challenges that central Wellington is facing. The speakers will discuss aspects of these questions, with particular regard to a recent study of green spaces in the central city recently carried out for Wellington City Council.

Speakers:

Paul Blaschke is an independent environmental consultant and Honorary Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Otago Wellington. His research interests centre on urban ecology and the roles of green space in urban resilience. He is a member of the New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities.

Maibritt Pedersen Zari is the Deputy Head of School and a Senior Lecturer at the Wellington School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research seeks to redefine sustainable architecture, and urban design through emulating and integrating with ecosystems, changing the goals from sustainable to regenerative development, and integrating complex social factors into design. She has a focus on urban climate change adaptation, particularly in the Pacific. She is author of Regenerative Urban Design and Ecosystem Biomimicry (2018) and co-author/ editor of Ecologies Design: Transforming Architecture, Landscape, and Urbanism (2020).

Amy Hobbs is a Senior Urban Designer at Wellington City Council who trained as a landscape architect and has worked in both public and private sectors.