Abstract:
The inadequacy of current approaches to managing floodplain inhabitation
was highlighted in the 2010-11 Queensland, northern New South Wales and
Victorian floods; the most costly floods in Australia’s history. Despite technological
advancements and the prevalence of flood mitigation infrastructure, floods continue
to have widespread adverse physical, social, economic, and emotional impacts. This
situation is mirrored internationally and is anticipated to worsen as scientists predict
an increase in the severity and prevalence of natural disasters such as flooding. In
response to this, management of floodplain inhabitation must shift from flood
prevention to adaptation.
Adaptation is a key term in ecological resilience, defined as the capacity of a system
to adapt and persist in the face of disturbance (Holling 1976). Hendstra et al (2004)
suggests that in the context of disaster-resilient cities, resilience can be defined as
the “capacity to adapt to stress from hazards and the ability to recover quickly
from their impacts” (Henstra, Kovacs, McBean, & Sweeting, 2004, p. 5). Analysis
of ecosystems reveals that interdependence across scales, variety, redundancy,
adaptability and feedback are the key resilience principles enabling the system to
adapt and maintain stability during flooding.
At present there is a sparsity of literature exploring spatial resilience approaches
to improving floodplain inhabitation. Whilst amphibious approaches improve
individual resilience, there is a lack of innovative solutions to improve community
and city resilience to flooding. Resilience approaches have the potential to reduce
safety concerns, financial losses and the emotional stress associated with residing
on Australian floodplains. Such approaches acknowledge the interconnected nature
of riverine floodplains and their inhabitants. However resilience principles need
to be given a physical spatial function within specific social contexts. Architecture
provides a platform to test new and retrofit adaptable approaches to promote a
more suitable spatial relationship with the river. This thesis will take the theory and
literature of resilience and apply it to a site-specific spatial context: Maitland.
Maitland city is built on one of the most flood prone regions in New South Wales
(Keys, 1999). Despite the Hunter Valley Flood Mitigation Scheme, which consists
of 170 kilometers of levees and flood control structures, flooding continues to occur
in and around Maitland. Regardless of these flood risks, Maitland City Council
is proposing large scale residential development on the floodplain to encourage
population increase. Maitland will be used as the primary case study for investigating
the opportunities socio-spatial resilience interventions have for improving the longterm
inhabitation of the floodplain. This thesis proposes a multi-scaled approach
to examine flood hazard and exposure at the individual, community, city and
regional scale. As spatial designers it is imperative that architects play a part in this
explorative process
