New Zealand Centre for Sustainable Cities

Alison is involved in a NZ Climate Change Centre initiative to ‘ignite social knowledge around climate change”. Having hosted the ‘Degrees of Possibility’ workshop this consortium are now completing a report and recommendations for a NZ social science research agenda addressing climate change. Alison also leads a project documenting how people and organisations are making sense of and responding to climate change in New Zealand. Alison is placing video interviews on line, as an experiment in fostering dialogue on climate change through social media. Media in NZ (both mainstream and social) have been reviewed to gain insight into attitudes and responses to climate change issues. In addition a database of organisations taking action on climate change has been compiled to assist networking across these organisations.

Alison is also exploring how the Auckland Spatial Plan takes account of ‘significant future changes’. Through the use of document review, stakeholder and peer engagement, interviews and workshops the creation of the Auckland spatial plan is being monitored, informed and assessed. Specific attention is being paid to how significant future changes e.g. climate change, population change, peak oil and food security issues are (or are not) addressed.

Alison was a member of the Low Impact Urban Design and Development team where change management was recognised as an integral part of implementing LIUDD in practice. Alison and other social researchers worked alongside the research team and stakeholders, in case studies to understand the processes of change required. Examples of change in NZ councils were documented with the aim of helping end-users adopt the research findings with the minimum transition costs.

Alison has been involved with formative, process and impact evaluations for the Ministry of Health, Housing New Zealand and Auckland Regional Council. Her study of community action projects (Maori, pacific and mixed ethnicity) across sectors is available at http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesmh/3929?Open. She has also assisted in the development of a community engagement strategy for Metro Water and worked on a number of social infrastructure projects, including the development of the Mt Albert Recreation Precinct 2000 and Mt Roskill Migrant Services Centre, 2000.

Alison helped establish and co-ordinates The Evaluating Sustainability Network (evaluatingsustainability@googlegroups.com) an informal network of evaluation professionals with an interest in evaluation of environmental / sustainability projects associated with Aotearoa New Zealand Evaluation Association.