Planning for a Positive Future: Natural Hazards, Risk, and Climate Change Adaptation - Lara Clarke | S3E2 - Still Curious

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lara Clarke (00:00):
New Zealand is basically a red zone.
We sit along two tectonicplates.
We've got lots of geologicalactivity going on that results
in earthquakes and volcanoes Andwe also have a lot of coastline
and we also get quite a bit ofrain.
We accept quite a lot of naturalhazard risk just by being in New
Zealand so we have to think ofit in the frame of risk

(00:21):
tolerance That's a reallyinteresting conversation to
start having with communitiesyou get such a diverse range of
values and that's fundamentallyplanning right That's
placemaking How do we aspire tolive in the place that we live
in.
There's lots of different toolsthat we can use in the policy
toolbox to force People and touse scientific metrics around

(00:41):
how risky something is and whythey can't be there and what the
consequences are But if we wantto positive process that's
repeatable we have to reallyrecognize the values and
encourage people to see changein a positive thing.

Danu Poyner (00:58):
You're listening to the Still Curious Podcast with
me, Danu Poyner.
My guest today is Lara Clark, aplanner with over 10 years of
experience in the field, workingon projects across the public
and private sectors.
With a background in bothgovernment processes and
business realities, Lara has aunique perspective on the
intersection of policy scienceand community engagement.

(01:21):
Today's conversation is allabout planning, placemaking,
policy, and people.
Being a professional plannerwasn't plan A for Lara, but once
she stumbled into the field,there was no looking back.
And she's since moved fromopportunity to opportunity in an
effort to explore the professionfrom every angle.

I was really interested and happy doing what
I was doing.
I had a huge amount ofdiversity, fantastic colleagues
and clients, but once that seedwas planted, it was all over.
I, I had to pursue that area ofinterest and I had to follow it
through

Planning is a complex and multidisciplinary
profession.
And especially in Lara's area ofnatural hazard risk and climate
change adaptation, it involvesbringing together a mix of
deeply specialized scientificexpertise.
Planning is also all aboutpeople and how they live, their
aspirations and how futuregenerations might experience the
world.

(02:17):
So for Lara, planning especiallyinvolves communication, empathy,
and an ability to include andengage the public in
conversations about what theyvalue.
Through exploring these issuesfrom positions in local
government, private practice andacademic research institutions,
Lara has been driven tounderstand the nature of the
barriers that prevent us as asociety from practicing and

(02:39):
achieving a better approach tomanaging climate risk and
adaptation.

I think fundamentally to me, the
barriers are around politicalbravery and leadership and
having the right evidence tosupport the right choices.

Lara's path has been different to most in the
profession.
Weed brings its own challenges,but also means she has an
integrated and more holisticperspective than many others,
too.

It's really lovely to engage with the concept of a
grokkist and feel that there'sother people out there that
think in a slightly abstract anddifferent way, and it's really
encouraging to look at all thepositive applications rather
than just thinking that you area tangential thinker who's a bit
of a nuisance,

Enjoy.
It's my conversation with LaraClarke coming up after the music
on today's episode of the StillCurious Podcast.

(03:55):
hi Lara.
Welcome to the podcast.
Such a pleasure to have you onthe show.
How are you doing today?

I am really well.
Thank you.
It's great to be here.

So You are a planner based in Auckland, New
Zealand with over 10 yearsexperience in policy and
statutory planning processes,you've had a variety of roles in
projects spanning government,private sector, and academia.
And your particularlyspecialized in the area of
natural hazard risk reduction,in the context of mitigating and

(04:23):
adapting to the impacts ofclimate change.
For anyone who knows what all ofthose words mean, that's of
course very impressive.
But for anyone who doesn't knowwhat all those words mean, I
wonder if you would mind saying,you know, what you think is the
most important thing for someoneto understand about what you do.

I think in essence, planning and what I do in
planning, is all about howpeople live, how they like to
live now, what their aspirationsare and how they hope that
future generations mightexperience the world.
Climate change and naturalhazard risk are just a couple of
lenses or inputs orconsiderations, but there's a

(05:00):
whole range of different thingsthat we need to consider with
planning.
And ultimately we wouldn't bedoing planning if we were not
people.
It really is around people andhow we interact with our world.

I really like the way that you've framed that.
I wanna talk about all thosethings in a little bit.
But first, I guess I just have asimple question.
Was being a planner always yourplan A.

No, I don't think so.
I don't think I ever really hada plan A or a plan B or a plan C
for that matter.
Very early on I wanted to be amarine biologist, and I think it
was from watching things likeFlipper and various other sort
of water-based things as achild.
And I always enjoyed science andI always enjoyed interacting
with people.

(05:43):
But other than that, I don'tthink I'd really thought about
crafting a career.
I sort of stumbled intoplanning, without even really
realizing that it was aprofession per se, or something
that you could at least study tobecoming.
I started with a health sciencedegree with a view to doing
physiotherapy and eventuallyequine physiotherapy but I think
I discovered that perhaps mylove of science, doesn't

(06:06):
necessarily equal expertise inscience.
And so I ended up switchingcourses, finding planning at the
last minute, not reallyunderstanding what I'd signed up
to, and never looking back.
I found the degree itself reallyinteresting.
I think the diversity ofdifferent disciplines and
different opportunities thatthere are through planning.

(06:26):
You say you're a planner, butthat's a huge umbrella term for
policy and planning and urbandesign and all of the different
a spects to it.
And to start with as well, I didthink about health planning and
stepping back towards thatscience or that health sector
lens and thinking how could youapply those skills in that sort

(06:46):
of policy context too.

I can really tell that the science angle is really
important to you, but I'm alsostruck by the way that you
framed planning in a veryhumanistic kind of way.
So I'm quite curious about theintersection of those two things
as we go along.
I do have to ask about equinephysio, though.
That was just a little thing youdropped into the conversation.
What does an equine physio doactually?

Well, an equine physio is really very similar to
a human physio.
They just have four-leggedpatients.
So it's really around thinkingof equine as athletes, and
ensuring that they arewell-balanced and in their best
zone to provide their bestperformance.
One of the unique things aboutworking with horses as well, and
because you need to have afoundation in human

(07:32):
physiotherapy to be an equinephysiotherapist, and that you
can work with the team so youcan work with the horse and the
rider.
So if you're looking at movementand performance, or just comfort
and enjoyment, it's quite aninteresting relationship to be
working with both the horse andthe rider.
I also love horses.
I have my own horse and havealways enjoyed horse riding as a

(07:52):
hobby.
It was thinking of a way tocombine what you love with your
work.
I'm not sure in the equineindustry that that always works
out very well.
It's an awful lot of hard workin my experience.
I don't look back and wish I haddone that Now.

I think it would be really great to flesh out some
of the examples of things thatyou've been involved in and what
it actually looks like to be aplanner in practice, and how
some of those differentexpertises that are involved
come together.
Maybe you can begin at thebeginning and walk me through
your journey.

I started out we had a bit of a financial
downturn.
Jobs weren't actually very easyto come by for my cohort.
So I started out as anarchitects assistant.
That was launching into a levelof detail and built design that
I had really no concept of.
That was a really interestinggrounding in the reality of how

(08:47):
architects and how I think thebuilding industry perceives and
interfaces with planning.
That really helped me tounderstand the s and the
perceptions around planning.
From there I went to AucklandCouncil, and that was and still
is a great learning environmentfor young planners.
I started out on the planninghelp desk, so that was really

(09:08):
talking to the general public.
I don't always like to followthe common path.
And there's a lot of expectationaround what you do in serving
your time and just doing thingswhich are process based.
So an opportunity came up in themonitoring and compliance team,
which is quite a different partof the policy sphere.
And I was really interested toexplore that and come back to

(09:29):
why we do things.
And if you are approvingdevelopments or considering
different land uses, how do youmake sure that all of the
potential effects that you'reidentifying are actually managed
well and what works, what is notfeasible?
From there, I did take a moretraditional path to then being a
planner, and I joined a privateconsultancy who did a lot of

(09:51):
land development, what we callgreenfield development, so
developing new areas of land,changing the land use from rural
to urbanizing or suburban landuses.
That is the private sector andunderstanding the financial
realities, the drivers, themotivators, the demotivators, I
think is essential.
From there I moved to policyplanning, so that's creating the

(10:11):
plans which we then implement inthose regulatory settings.
It was the development of theAuckland unitary plan at the
time, and that scale of planmaking is not something that you
see every day.
and it was an amazingopportunity to be involved in
that sort of a process and alsoplay a role in that process that
quite a junior planner wouldn'tnormally have had the

(10:32):
opportunity to play.
That's where I first came acrossnatural hazards and climate
change in depth, and worked withsome absolutely incredible
planners who had been lifelongplanners in the policy sector
and had a really amazing depthof understanding, but also got
to work alongside and inopposition to a lot of very,
very well respected plannersacross a whole range of

(10:54):
different areas and sectors andconsultancies.

I might just pause there to ask you to explain a
little about what the Aucklandunitary plan is and why it's
significant.
Auckland is a little unusual inthat it's a really big uh, local
government area with unitarycouncil, and that's not so
common in itself.
But maybe you can explain whatthe unitary plan is and why it's
such a big deal.

So, um, Auckland was made up of a regional
council, and seven districtcouncils.
In the New Zealand context,regional and district councils
have different responsibilitiesand, for the Auckland region,
that was posing quite an issuefor a lot of infrastructure
providers and delivering largeprojects.
So through amendment to thelocal government act, there was

(11:39):
basically the amalgamation ofthe Auckland region.
So that brought togethermultiple district councils and
the regional council into aunitary authority.
It's probably one of the largestamalgamations that was ever
attempted.
This meant that we had to bringtogether a stack of planning
documents which was actuallytaller than a person.

(12:00):
So it was bringing togethermultiple different sets of rules
and agreeing on one regional setof rules for all of our
management of our resources, soland, air, and water, and the
way that we deal with effectsbased development.
Lots of different subject areasand an absolutely huge number of
people involved from lawyers toexperts, to community.

Yeah, I can see why there's a lot at stake in a
process like that and why itwould be an exciting
opportunity.
You mentioned that that's whereyou became aware of the natural
hazard angle.
Maybe you can, explain just to a10 year old, what are natural
hazards and what does it mean toreduce the risk of them?

Natural hazards are things like floods or storms or
wind, really process in ournatural world that can be
hazardous or can harm somethingthat we care about.
So it It's a natural process ora natural event until it harms
something or until it affectssomething that we care about,
and then it becomes a hazard.

(13:01):
So a river flowing down a valleyis just a river and a flood, but
if we build our house there,then that flood becomes a
hazard.
Risk is probably one of the mostdifficult terms to explain.
Succinctly, is about how oftensomething might happen or when
it might happen.
That's called likelihood.
If something could happen, likea meteor could hit the earth, we

(13:23):
might say that it's not verylikely, but it could happen.
If we're saying it's going torain at some point in the next
day in Auckland, we could saythat that quite likely and
probably going to happen.
The other component that we needto think about is consequences.
Is it a big issue if that?
Or is it actually fine?
And you've got your umbrella.
So that's looking at whether itmight happen, what happens when

(13:46):
it does, and that gives us anoverall equation of what is the
risks to us

So If I wanna build my dreamhouse, uh, somewhere and
someone tells me it's on afloodplain, but uh, the floods
only happen every once in ahundred years or something, then
that's a low likelihood risk,but a high consequence in what I
understood.

(14:11):
Just say that.
And then do I get to decide,okay, I want to have my house
there, or does a planner decide,well, you might want your house
there, but you can't have it.
How does that work,

Well, in a simple sense, if you want to do
something and you are wanting totake a risk, there is a
likelihood that it could happenand it's going to result in some
form of effect on you.
In some situations that's up toyou and you decide that, and you
are going to be the main personthat has to deal with those
consequences.
But in other situations, if youmake that choice, the

(14:45):
consequences aren't just to you.
So your house might get brokenapart by the flood and it might
wash down the river and smashsomebody else's house.
Or you might have something inyour house that gets into the
water and results in issues forthe natural environment.
Or you might need someone fromthe fire service or from LANZA

(15:05):
to come and rescue you from yourhouse, and they're putting
themselves in danger to do that.
So when you are wanting to dosomething that might affect
other people as well, or mightaffect the environment or might
affect other things that peoplevalue, then other people start
to have the ability to, to kindof, I guess, have a, a social
bearing on whether you should dothat or not.

(15:27):
If you wanted to build yourhealth in a flood plain You
might be allowed to do that ifyou just change your design a
little bit so that you areperhaps not going to end up with
your house washing away or youmight not need rescuing.

I guess then there's a, another version of
this where maybe not talkingabout a new area where we're
building things that we'retalking about an existing area
where people are already livingand we need to do things to that
area to prepare for climatechange or try and stop it or
deal with it when it happens.
But then maybe the people wholive there don't want some of

(16:02):
those things to happen cuzthat's their place and they're
having a lovely time.
That's what happens then.

We've got loads of areas like this, but let's just
step back for a moment andconsider where New Zealand sit
in a global sense.
New Zealand is basically a redzone.
If you look at it on a globalscale.
We sit along two tectonic platesWe've got lots of geological and
all sorts of activity going onthat results in earthquakes and

(16:28):
volcanoes.
And we also have a lot ofcoastline and we also get quite
a bit of rain, which is quitedifficult to, uh, understand in
the climate context.
We accept quite a lot of naturalhazard risk just by being in New
Zealand, so we have to think ofit in the frame of risk
acceptability, or risktolerance.
Mm-hmm.

(16:48):
and different communities havedifferent tolerances.
One of the first things we needto do to start talking about
risk and exposure andconsequence is to actually
understand our hazards.
And then there's a whole fieldaround how we communicate that
to people.
It's not just in having aconversation about whether
someone's allowed to keep livingsomewhere.

(17:09):
It, it's got to do with visitorsto places.
It's got to do with all sorts ofdecisions we make in our lives.
What is it that we value?
and what do we have to lose?
That's a really interestingconversation to start having
with communities because letalone the difficulties in
engaging a whole range ofdifferent people in the
community, but you get such adiverse range of different

(17:31):
values and the ways that peoplelike to use the area and that's
fundamentally planning, right?
That's placemaking.
How do we aspire to live in theplace that we live in?
Do you ask people to move andframe it in a negative way or do
you start planning for changeand you frame it in a positive
way?
How do you get people to want torelocate?

(17:52):
What are the values that theyhave for their community and how
could they have that samequality of life, sense of place,
community?
How can they tickle those boxesif they to choose a less risky
location and what are the s thatprevent them from making that?
There's lots of different toolsthat we can use in the policy

(18:12):
toolbox to force people to dothat and to use scientific
metrics around how riskysomething is and why they can't
be there and what theconsequences are.
But if we want to positiveprocess that's repeatable, we
have to really recognize thevalues and what we manage and
how we encourage people to knowand encourage people to see

(18:33):
change in a positive thing.

I like that framing positive process that's
repeatable.
But back to your story

sure.
So, I picked up In the naturalenvironment team.
So we looked at the portfolio,if you like, of natural hazards.
I was also involved insupporting some of the
region-wide policy direction orwhat's called the regional
policy statement, looking atclimate change.
These were areas that I'd alwaysthought were interesting.
But I'd never really taken adeep dive into what did they

(19:01):
mean.
One of my transferable skills,which relates back to my
interest in science is that I'mquite happy to pick up quite
technical areas, and get intothe detail and the depth in the
science that sits behind thetechnical stuff, which the
policy needs to interface with.
In Auckland at that time, therehad just been, probably some of

(19:23):
the first regional studies andregional mapping undertaken for
coastal inundation.
Coastal inundation is a stormevent, so it's a storm tide.
With those coastal inundationmodels, there'd also been a
climate change, sea level riseconsideration.
So clearly, this had beenidentified in a planning
document.
To have a a region-wide study ofthe scale, was quite a

(19:46):
significant step forward in manyways.
And then sitting alongside thatwas the need to also consider
geological hazards like landstability, how does Auckland sit
in terms of our other hazardscapes?
We've got lots of differentmaunga and volcanoes across the
region.
We've also got other challengesand issues around wildfire,
catchment flooding, and then,coastal erosion in that suite of

(20:10):
coastal hazards.
It's around not only thehazards, but the risk, what we
put where, and ultimately whoshould tell you, or should you
be told, at what point in timewhere to live or where to put
something?
How do we perceive risk?
How do we communicate risk?
And what's fair in anintergenerational sense as well?

(20:31):
It was really at a time when thewhole climate change topic was
starting to grow, which it hasexponentially over the last 10
years.

I'm struck by range of experience that you've had
with working in the, thebuilding industry.
You started out with, talking tothe general public is of course,
always a good foundation forany, anything that you're
involved in and a bit of aneye-opening experience, and then
the local government experienceand then the private sector.
You've framed planning as abouthow they wanna live now, and how

(21:00):
they wanna live in the future.
And there are of coursequestions about who decides that
and how is it decided, and whyis it decided?
And so all of these processesare bearing on that.
And you've seen some of thoseprocesses from lots of different
angles.

It kind of comes back to planning as a profession
or as a process as well, that wedetermine that we need to find
some way of capturing what themajority of people might be
interested in and capturing somerational concepts of what we
should be doing in terms ofenvironmental stewardship or
thinking about futuregenerations and future

(21:35):
generational equity.
And we wrap around that thispolicy development lens.
There's so many competingvalues.
I think In New Zealand, theprocess of planning has really
just been around developing aprocess to identify those and to
clarify them and to weight themand to implement them.

(21:55):
Planning in New Zealand is anincredibly litigious process.
It's very rooted in legislationand legislative process.
It doesn't have the same mana,in a way as I see planning,
having in some other countriesand other jurisdictions where
there's a little bit morerespect for a balanced opinion

(22:17):
or an overall consideration or aplanning opinion.
We are far more particular aboutthese things and we like to have
particular evidence bases and weare very interested in exact
policy wording and things likethat rather than maybe the
intention.
It can be positive in some ways,but I think it really narrows
our view.
We lose some of the biggerpicture context.

(22:40):
That sounds surprising in that Ithink perhaps New Zealand has a
reputation, at least among thegeneral public of, of being a
bit of a forerunner in some ofthese kinds of areas, like with
holistic legislation, like theResource Management Act, and
other environmental protections.
I think we do have an amazinglyinteresting legislative setting,

(23:02):
and very progressive in manyways.
And I wouldn't disagree that theResource Management Act was
really cutting edge andpotentially continues to be very
cutting edge.
And that the way that we shouldbe balancing our treaty
obligations and the way that weshould be thinking about the
management of our naturalresources and our consultative

(23:22):
processes are really strong.
But maybe because they're sostrong, in some cases people
rally against them.
One example would be somethinglike the way that we look after
trees in our urban areas.
We used to have provisions underthe Resource Management Act,
which enabled councils toprotect a lot of urban trees.

(23:44):
That became such a hurdle and adifficult process for property
owners and for infrastructureproviders to do anything with
trees in our urban areas, thatwhat actually ended up happening
was a lot of those blanketprotections were removed at a
national legislative level.
And that was a very bluntinstrument to resolve attention
at the local level.

(24:04):
Was there anything wrong withthe policy and the legislation,
or was it the way it was beingimplemented, which leads to
these head on challenges andultimately maybe a bit of a loss
for both sides, that you'relosing the trees, but you are
also losing an asset in thefuture too.
I think It ends up playing outin national politics what should
be quite a straightforward thingin some ways.

Yeah.
The intergenerational part of itthat you've mentioned, must
really exacerbate that, becausethere so many ways of thinking
about the future and in manyways politics is how do we wanna
live now and in the future?
And no one can agree on whatthat even means and how we would
do it.
So I can see how that would playout in the sphere of planning.

(24:46):
When you think aboutintergenerational equity, which
is a nice phrase you mentioned,how do planners think about
that?
Is there a, a standard?
Is there a protocol?
Is it more contested than that?
What can you tell us about that?

Sure.
I think that's a really goodquestion and something that is
at the forefront of planner'sminds a lot of the time.
Obviously, if you're working fora client, you have your client's
proposal and what they're tryingto achieve in mind.
When you are working for localgovernment or central
government, you perhaps have aslightly broader view around the
things that you should beconsidering.

(25:22):
That's not to say thatconsultant planners representing
a client's interest shouldn'talso be thinking of those
things.
It's just that they've usuallydone that at the start.
The Resource Management Act doesrefer to future generations.
I can't say that I've ever gonelooking per se for what that
actually means.
From a natural hazardperspective, through a
subsidiary policy statement, thenational coastal policy

(25:44):
statement, there is talk of atleast a hundred years.
That's one of the few mentionsof timeframes that might get you
to cast your mind 10, 20, 30,50, a hundred years into the
future.
What we think of generally isaround preservation,
restoration, and how we lookafter our natural resources.

(26:05):
It's much more difficult tothink about future generations
and future values if you arethinking about areas which are
very subject to culture andsubject to changing society.
I often now come back to one ofthe newly coined terms around
decision making underuncertainty, is that frame for

(26:26):
what do future generations want?
is it really around just keepingoptions open as much as
possible, and in a climatechange frame, talking about path
dependencies and things likethat.
Preserving as much as we canthat future generations have
choice and aren't left with themistakes of the past.

I feel like there's a couple of concrete examples
sitting in your mind when you'retalking about this.
I wonder if we can, Youmentioned sea level rises as one
example before, maybe that'sone.
Is there something specific thatwe can talk about to see how
this plays out?

I guess a medium scale would be, if we think
about Auckland's C B D or thecentral business district, there
are areas that are are low lyingand close to the coast, we might
continue for many years todefend these areas and to decide
to keep using them.
Our approach towards adaptationin these areas might be more of

(27:21):
what we call accommodationpractices.
How do we live with ourincreasing exposure to, or the
impact from some of the hazardswe are experiencing.
How much we invest in that, notonly in a, a physical sense with
our infrastructure and theamount of money that can go into
those sort of protectionschemes.
There's also the sense of placethat you establish and the

(27:43):
heritage of tomorrow that youestablish by doing that too.
Will it even be possible forgenerations in the future to
decide that actually enough isenough and we need to completely
reconsider the location of ourcity or how we use these areas.

There's so much that goes into it.
I'm curious how you do inpractice draw a ring around what
you are going to consider and,what set of considerations are
prioritized and at what level ofabstraction?
How does that actually work?

Well, I guess cue policy framework, really.
Yes, there's infinite number ofpossibilities and scenarios that
you could be thinking of thatyour policies at a national
level and at a regional and alocal level start to form that
scope or those boundaryconditions within which you
operate.
So if you're thinking oftimeframes or you're thinking of

(28:38):
whether you should beconsidering effects on a species
of insect that hasn't yet beendiscovered, you then refer to
your policy construct or yourbest practice approaches or the
frameworks that direct and scopeand shape and stop.
With planning, you can beplaying with the box within
which you operate, and that'sthe policy planning and the

(28:59):
central government legislativeframing, or you can be playing
with the processes in the boxand the information that you use
to reach those decisions.

And which do you prefer?
The box or the processes in thebox?

I think I probably enjoy them equally because
they're equally important.
If the box doesn't enable goodprocess, and if you can't look
at the box and decide thatyou've got a good outcome and
what's in the box looks good,then you need to change the size
of the box or the shape of thebox.
of In the planning policydevelopment sphere, that's where

(29:34):
you need good monitoring andevaluation.
That's where you need goodresearch.
That's where you need thatfeedback loop so that you can
look in the box and say, doesthis look good?
What are the criteria by which Iassess whether this looks good
and if it doesn't look good, howdo I change it?
What are the inputs?
What are the outputs?
What are those boundaryconditions?

Thank you.
You mentioned earlier that youdon't always follow the common
path.
I'm wondering if you can explaina bit more about what you mean
by that and what has beendragging you through all of the
experiences that you've had sofar.

Sure.
I have never left a job becauseI didn't enjoy it.
in fact, I've found leaving someof my more recent roles
incredibly difficult because Ihave been enjoying what I've
done so much.
But I think I'm alwaysinterested in what are the s
that stop this working?
How do we do a deep dive intothis part of the process to

(30:31):
figure out what works well andwhat doesn't?
I've tended to follow thoseopportunities and challenges as
they've organically presentedthemselves to me.
It's usually been something I'vebeen interested in and in
opportunities of risen, whichhas resulted in me moving
between roles and moving betweenjobs.
It's maybe as much a curiosityabout, a technical area or a

(30:54):
subject matter as it is aboutthe process, and understanding,
yeah, what, could we do better?
How could you change a processprocess?
How could you make it moreconducive to the outcome or even
interrogating, is that theproblem?
And actually start to drill downinto, well, if you could change
something, what would youchange?

(31:15):
To result in a differentoutcome?
I think that's probably drivenmy changes and my interest in
things.

I'm curious about that process, how it arises for
you, when you're experiencingit.
Is it something that kind ofhits you in a flash of
inspiration, or does it creep upon you over time?
Do you have the realizationfirst and then an opportunity
comes up?
Or does the opportunity make youhave the realization?

(31:41):
How does it work?

Yeah, I've actually never thought of that before.
So, that's a fantastic question.
I'm always curious and I alwaysam interested in what if you
took a different path, thosepick a path, books you read as a
child or imagining differentfutures or, what if you had made
a different choice on adifferent day?
I also catastrophize as well inthat setting.

(32:02):
So it's probably not always themost healthy approach to things.
I'm always thinking about whatwould I do next?
What would I find interesting?
What is a contemporary issuethat I'd be interested in?
And then usually something willarise.
So you could say that I'malready looking for it, or you
could say that it's coincidence.
Then something usually comes upand there'll be some connection

(32:24):
or some link that I already haveto that area.
It might be a person, it mightbe something I've heard about.
It might be a topic I'minterested in.
Or it might be an opportunity toget in and explore a different
part of a process and expand myknowledge and skills that then
leads me to tip over the edge.
And as soon as I've done that Ijust become more and more and

(32:45):
more interested in thatopportunity.
As a bit of an aside, you know,when you do those personality or
working style tests, I rememberreading one recently and it
said, as soon as you findsomething new, you've left
behind the stuff you are doing.
You'll leave things unfinishedbecause your focus shifts.
That really resonated with meand in a work setting, it's

(33:08):
something that I have to workhard to combat as well.
Otherwise, I'm an 80 20 person.
And it's that last push to getsomething finished that's often
the hardest.

Yeah.
Once you get to 80% and then youkind of like, well, I feel like
I've solved this now, or it'sfinished in some ways, really
hard to get it done.
This is definitely a grokkisttrait, I think, and we haven't
really talked about this yet,but I'm curious, does the term
grokkist resonate for you at allor how so?

Admittedly, I had never heard of the term until I
met you.
And then when I started readingabout it, I thought, wow, that
certainly resonates with me.
And I was really interested tohear more about what you do and
and listen to some of the otherinterviews that you've had as
well.
I can't help thinking, doesn'teveryone think like this?
And then realizing that perhaps,no, not everybody does think

(33:58):
like this.
And then starting to wondermore, well, everyone want to
think like this if they could?
And is it just circumstance andeveryday life that maybe stops
some people from letting theirmind wander?
I'm just quite good at indulginga wandering mind.

Well, I think that's an excellent point and I
might just throw back yourquestion to you, given what
you've told me already about,how you said you had to kind
check yourself a bit with workso that that way of being
doesn't cause problems at work.
But you also said that your pathwas an uncommon approach.
So maybe not everyone does thinklike that.

(34:38):
What kind of issues does itthrow up for you?

I've probably become more cognizant of it in
the last couple of roles thatI've had, in the planning
context, because we work withina regulatory setting where
you're trying to get results forclients within a certain
timeframe.
People become quite happy withthe box and happy with the
process, and if people startquestions or raising matters,

(35:04):
which could conceivably bewithin the realms of something
that people should beconsidering, but they don't
normally think about thosethings, it makes people quite
uncomfortable.
And combine me being quiteextroverted with asking those
questions, it has served to, afew people over time that I'm

(35:24):
raising things that aren'tissues, but actually I've
resolved them just as quickly asI raised them.
But other people don'tnecessarily know that that's
going to be so easily resolved.
I'm just putting it out thereand thinking across tangents.

So you're a nuisance then, is what you're
telling me,

basically, yes.
yeah, I'm a nuisance.
But then if I'm working for aclient and I'm doing this, it
usually means I'm very wellprepared for any questions that
come back to me because I'd besurprised if I hadn't thought of
it.
But in a interpersonal workingrelationships with people as
well, I have had to be morecognizant of it, to make sure

(36:01):
I'm following through tasks.
When you are looking after ateam of people, being engaged
with what people are doing andmaking sure that you are not
constantly identifying newthings and more challenges, but
actually learning that a lot ofpeople work in a different way
and that you really do need tohave clear parameters and

(36:21):
celebrate those milestonesrather than always looking for
something new.
I think that that's something asa team leader and as a manager,
I had to be far more cognizantof, yeah.

The way that this is often characterized, like
once you find the new thing, youof drop the old thing, makes it
sound a bit skittish orfragmented or even like a short
attention span.
But I guess the point isconnections, right?
Grokkists really are people whoenjoy finding the connections
between things and especiallythe kinds of connections like

(36:53):
you're saying, that other peopleare not normally thinking about.
And so I often say that thegrokkiist's signature gift is
synthesis.
It's about putting different,sometimes contradictory things
together in original ways tocreate a higher level of
meaning.
And what that means is when youpick up the new thing, you don't
put down the old thing, you keepit with you and you carry with

(37:16):
you all of the things and you'rekind of constantly making
connections between them.
It seems like you have done verymuch, uh, to accumulating a
whole range of different things.
And I wonder how you manage tocarry them all.
There's so many.

Um, that's a really lovely description.
I think that that's very trueand I think it can appear to
people as short attention spanor changing your mind and your
focus.
But in fact, I wouldn't be whereI am today without every part of
what I've built.
It's like, um, opening doors.
You've got more doors open andmore things that you know, and

(37:55):
that informs the opinion thatyou give or the advice that you
provide.
So in a setting working with astakeholder, I might think back
to a private client that I hadand go, actually, you should be
talking to this person becausethey might have some funding for
the thing that you're trying toachieve.
Or they had a similar challengeor from the research setting

(38:19):
saying, this is a researchmethodology that I'd apply to
dealing with this problem.
Or there might be lots oftransferable things or
connections or people or themesthat I, cobbled together in my
head.
And I've always found that ifI've been trying to write a
justification for something orsome sort of a spiel, or in a

(38:40):
more cynical way, some BS aboutsomething, I find it quite
effortless to build a story andto form that narrative, whereas
other people seem to strugglemore to put those things
together.
In terms of how do you carry allthat with you and how do you
accommodate all of that?
I think I reached capacity inone of my previous roles with

(39:01):
how many things I was trying tojuggle at any one time.
I think back to back meetingsonline, with a huge variety of
people across a huge differentrange of technical areas, was
very challenging.
I enjoyed it, but it's notsomething I could sustain for a
really long time.

So, we had the architect's assistant to the
help desk at the council, to theregulatory process planner to
monitoring and compliance.
And then you said somethingparticularly interesting to me,
which is, after that, when youwere in private practice is when
you became a real planner.
What was everything before?
Was that not planning?

No, it definitely was planning.
But in terms of having the jobtitle planner, I was always
planner of the help desk.
I didn't actually do planning.
And I think doing planning, isreally, in a New Zealand
context, being a policy planneror a regulatory planner, those
are kind of the traditionalplanning roles.

(40:02):
You're actually can callyourself a planner once you've
done that regulatory planning.

So that's kind of what makes you a, a capital P
planner in other people's eyes.
When did you become a planner inyour eyes?

Yeah, that's a really good question.
Ultimately when I look back, Iwas a planner at the end of my
degree.
It had the academic framing, ithad the concepts, it had the
history of planning, as aconcept, as a profession.
Then when we graduated, everyonewent, oh God, they didn't teach
us anything about what weactually need to do on a daily
basis to be a planner with acapital P.

(40:39):
And so I think there's a lot ofpeople out there who would
probably think, I don't reallyknow what I learned at
university.
I And depending on what yourrole is in planning over your
career, you may never know, maynever necessarily appreciate the
academic foundation and some ofthe conceptual thinking that you
develop there.
But because I've had such adiversity of roles and one of

(41:02):
those being back in academia asI now really do appreciate that
understanding planning as aprocess, as a profession, as an
approach to how we manage urbandevelopment and urban form and
placemaking.
What we do in New Zealand withour focus on legislation and

(41:23):
policy, those are tools andthat's one way of doing
planning, but it's not the beall and end all.
I meet a lot of planners whohave practiced overseas and they
have, I think more of thatphilosophical academic
understanding of what being aplanner is than is supported by
our more regulatory focusedapproach.

That would seem to leave open the tantalizing
possibility that what somecapital P planners do is not
planning.

Yes, but I guess it is because it is a process
that's been constructed overtime through lots of legislative
framing that should give you agood process.
Right.
I often have interestingdiscussions with my husband,
that that kind of regulatoryrole could be automated.

(42:13):
don't really need a planner todo some of those process-based
things.
But I guess that's a challengeto many professions, right?
What is that added extra Xfactor that a computer couldn't
add to that?

You spent some time in academia.
And I'm gonna go out on a limband guess that this is because
you saw that maybe there were sthat you wanted to question
about the nature of theprofession.

yeah, I think my interest was actually probably
born quite a lot through myinvolvement with the unitary
plan process where we were insuch a tight regulatory
timeframe.
It was like, wow, gosh, it wouldbe so great if there was some
research out there thataddressed this question or
helped to support what seems tobe quite a logical assumption.
And what's wrong with theresearch sector that that's so

(43:00):
difficult for us to actuallyaccess that research.
Then I actually went off andworked in another private
consultancy for several yearsbefore I circled back around to
the research setting.
That was probably one of themost difficult years that I
spent, was the first year in theresearch sector because my
expectations versus the realitywere so different.

(43:21):
I thought that scientists andresearchers just sat in an
office and followed whateverthey wanted to and tried to make
it useful and talked to peopleabout it.
Yet the whole science system isso complex and the methods and
the approaches and egos, theconstructs, it's an incredibly

(43:43):
political and difficult world tonavigate.
But at the same time, when Ijoined the research institute
that I joined, I thought,setting aside what I'm
interested in and setting asidethe research topics that I'd
like to explore, what value canI bring to this organization and

(44:03):
to science system research andplanning research in New
Zealand.
And went off on a bit of atangential journey to becoming a
team leader and to wanting tounderstand research funding and
getting involved in trying tobuild more links to stakeholders
and making sure research wasactually useful.
It was a really interesting sidestep from planning.

I wanna spend a bit of time in that sidestep, if
that's okay.
I'm curious, just first of all,Given the trajectory that you've
been on and up until that point,how you did move into that
research space, that's notalways easy to do, and they are
quite different worlds.
How did that opportunity comeabout and how did you approach
it?

Uh, okay.
Well, it was one of those thingswhere considered something in
the past and then an opportunitycrops up in the future.
I'd seen a job advertisement atGS science is where I was
working, to work as an actualhazards planner.
And some of the research thatI'd relied on and found really
useful and really accessibleduring my time in the unitary

(45:06):
plan was that of Dr.
Wendy Saunders.
And she was a natural hazardresearcher at GNS.
So I had um, several yearsearlier, applied for a role at
GNS, and been unsuccessfulbecause I didn't have a
background in research.
I was coming entirely frompractice and there was a more
suitable person.
So it came about several yearslater, when the manager from

(45:28):
that department contacted me tolet me know that there were new
vacancies available and was Istill interested?
I was really interested andhappy doing what I was doing.
I had a huge amount ofdiversity, fantastic colleagues
and clients.
But once that seed was planted,it was all over.
Um, I, I had to pursue that areaof interest and I had to follow

(45:49):
it through.
It was a big learning curve,because what I thought I'd be
doing versus the processes thatyou have to navigate to achieve
that was quite different.
But I was always up for achallenge and wanted to achieve
what I set out to achieve, andmaybe in a slightly different
way to what I originallyintended, but I hope I still

(46:10):
took some steps towards that.

Maybe we can just explain uh, what GNS science do,
and what that means.

So GNS Science or Geological and Nuclear Sciences
Science, are Crown Institute.
We've got several CrownInstitutes in New Zealand.
Other ones which people may haveheard of more frequently in niwa
who look after water andatmosphere.
There's land care research wholook after plants and bugs and

(46:39):
dirt.
And then we've got severalothers that are more industry
based.
Crown Research Institutesoperate as part of New Zealand
science system alongside theuniversities.
Crown Research Institutes havetheir own legislation and they
really are mission led research.
It's meant to be research thatis tied to where New Zealand's
heading, the challenges that wehave, the opportunities that we

(47:02):
need to address.
Whereas the universities providea slightly more blue skies
approach to research.
It's more the questions that wemay have in 20 years time or the
things that we don't yet knowthat we need to know.
So GNS look basically at Earthsystem research, so it's all
geological processes, anythingthat's under the ground or the

(47:22):
ground itself.
And they also look therefore atnatural hazards.
So primarily geological hazards.
Um, and they also look at thatthings like groundwater and
geothermal resources cuz that'sof course in the ground, and do
a lot of climate research andpaleontology.
One of the main things that Iwent into GNS with was looking

(47:43):
at the social harm or the socialimpacts of natural hazards.
Because we found during theunitary plan process that it was
far more tangible to quantifyand to convey the impacts that
could be had on property andactual property loss and damage,
and risk to life in terms ofactually being in a risky area.

(48:04):
It was much, much more difficultto articulate and to find
evidence to support the socialimpact of being exposed to
hazards.
The kind of the mental andwellbeing impacts that are
associated with living withrisk.
And to articulate, quantify,qualify what that means and use
that to inform policy.

Yeah.
Well, that sounds like a reallyfascinating opportunity and also
a kind coming together of someof the threads that had been
going on for you.
Is kind of like a return to thescience that you had started off
with and then coming togetherwith the social side.
How did that go?
Um,

I didn't really get very far to be honest.
I was very lucky with some ofthe connections that I'd built
in before I went into theresearch sector and that gave me
some opportunities to look in asort of related field, which was
around climate change andadaptation.
What are the barriers, from apracticing planning and

(49:05):
implementation sense to actuallyachieving a better approach to
managing risk and adaptation.
But I think probably.
barriers that I found, andsomething that I always would've
liked to have done had I stayedin the research field was
understanding a little bit moreabout research design and
method.
Because coming from practice,it's not something that you'd

(49:29):
apply in an everyday sense to aplanning problem or to scoping
an issue, but the structure andthe way that you go about it in
an academic setting is like thaton steroids.
It's just so much more detailedand it's so much more structured
and there's a theory thatunderpins everything.

Yeah.
Research in an academic contextis not what people would
recognize as what we wouldnormally think of as just doing
research.
It's like systematicinvestigation, and the emphasis
is very much on the systematicpart and being able to give a
good reason why you're doing itthis way and not one of 300
other ways.

(50:08):
What are the barriers in the wayof implementing the things
you've been talking about?

I think fundamentally to me, the
barriers are around politicalbravery and leadership, and
having the right evidence tosupport the right choices.
Up until now there's been alittle bit of a gap, which we
are now in a really goodposition to address.
We've got a much better conceptof what that looks like.
But I think that that sort oflitigious framing and the need

(50:35):
to have a really evidence-baseddecision was let down by not
having the level of informationthat we probably needed to have.
I think the other big hurdlethere is general understanding
and education around risk andhazards in climate change.
That there are so many andissues that everyone has to

(50:55):
contend with it an everydaybasis.
Climate change, it's a realbuzzword now, but it's just one
of many things.
perhaps quite a long way downthe list for a lot of people on
an everyday basis.
But also around that, thatdecision making doesn't always
have to be a negative.
It can be a positive and we arenot perhaps very good at a

(51:16):
proactive approach to managingrisk.

what did you then go on and do after the GNS
experience?
What was the next opportunitythat popped up that you had to
chase?

From GNS, I ended up speaking with some former
colleagues at Auckland Counciland understood that they were
needing a new project or programleader for a series of
adaptation plans which are beingdeveloped for the Auckland
region for Shoreline adaptation.
And really with the researchthat I'd just been working on,
identifying the challenges toimplementing some of this stuff,

(51:50):
I started to feel in theresearch setting, like a little
bit of an imposter.
It had been probably three, fouryears since I'd been practicing
in this area.
And I wanted to be able to speakmore knowledgeably about the
barriers and the challenges, andso I thought, what better
opportunity to actually go backand orientate myself in the real

(52:10):
world than to be leading andinvolved with one of several
programs across New Zealand,Aotearoa, which is trying to
achieve this.
It was like the perfectopportunity to learn by doing,
which I think I probably enjoyand do better at than learning
academically.

Yeah.
Again, do you find that you areable to consciously bring
together those different threadsof experience in a in a
practical way?
How is that working for you now?

At the moment there's quite a good opportunity
to bring those streams togetherbecause practices are just
starting and academia has beenlooking at these issues for a
number of years, but not reallyhad much of a chance to try and
implement them.
In many respects we're actuallyworking more closely together,
the research academic world andthe practice world, because we

(52:59):
are saying, well, how do we doit?
And they're saying, well, whatare your challenges and how are
you trying to do it?
And we are starting to actuallywork together a lot more, which
is really pleasing to see.
But it's also perhaps reflectiveof the challenge and the wicked
nature of the problem that's gotthat segue coming together,

I understand you recently spent some time
teaching, undergraduate planningstudents at the University of
Auckland, which is of course howwe know each other.
So I'm curious, as someone whospent all of this time exploring
the profession from thesedifferent vantage points in
practical detail from allangles, what was it like
teaching a young crop ofaspiring planners?

I really enjoyed it.
I think it was particularlychallenging because we were
building the course as we went,and so it would it would be
really interesting to reflect onexactly that question this time
next year, having had theopportunity to see how it goes
second time round.
I really like being askedquestions by the students that I
struggle to answer or reallyhave to think about answering.

(53:59):
Because I think you don't putyourself in those positions
professionally very oftenbecause you wouldn't want to be
you know, you, you want to bewell prepared for things, but
students will come up withreally left field things and
they have a very fresh and newunderstanding of the profession
and the bounds or the box withinwhich it might sit.
One of the other things thatsurprised me actually was how

(54:21):
well they responded to lookingat wicked problems and urban
planning and actually some ofthe processes that they
implemented, the things thatthey considered, their
reflections on the process andwhat they came up with are
really just as good, if notbetter than a lot of practicing,
professionals in that field.
So that was really refreshing insome ways and inspirational

(54:44):
because they will be the onesthat take us for the next step.

Yeah, I think so.
And particularly, you know, WhenI talk to people of that age
group, they're really savvyabout complexity and how
everything fits together.
And they're really impatientwith, what you would describe as
path dependency earlier.
Why we can't get out of thesekind of ruts that were in it
being really narrowly focused onparticular things.

(55:10):
you know, when you were younger,you used to rail against the
older generations and the messthat they'd made.
And, why couldn't they dobetter?
And now I feel like I'm movinginto the age group where I might
be part of the problems.

Well, I was just thinking as you were speaking
then, it's a case of saying,when you are young, you're like,
you've got to do better.
This is ridiculous.
Why are we are subject to thesecultural societal norms.
Why can't these old people seethese issues and just resolve
them?
And then I think you enter thatrealm of saying, oh, but it's
too hard for this reason and Iguess that's coming back to your

(55:43):
description of a grokkist andsaying, well, why is that a
barrier?
How can you change it?
And what journey do you go on totry and find a solution to that
and say, yes, there's thisreason why culture or society
precludes this being a viableoption.
So do we want to change that?
Why do we want to change it?

(56:03):
How do we change it?
How long does it take to changeit?
What do we need to change it?
Rather than just being thehopeful, optimistic thinker,
it's, well then put that intopractice.

Absolutely.
And so that leads me to my nextquestion then, which is
something off the back ofsomething you said earlier.
One of the experiences you hadgave you the opportunity to
think about if you could changeone thing about this, what would
you change?
I guess I wanna ask you thatquestion now, from your current
vantage point about the planningsystem and where we're at with

(56:35):
risk and climate change.
If you could change one thingwhere we're at, and why it is
the way it is, what would it be?

Oh, gosh, what a fantastic question.
I think I would change, whateverit is.
And I don't think there's justone thing.
I think there's probably lots ofthings, that lead to the silos
that we have.
If I'm looking at it in terms ofthe planning profession.
If everyone could have adiversity of experience and
actually enjoy that across lotsof different aspects of planning

(57:06):
appreciate and have insightsinto how different processes
work and the reasons why, Ithink that that would just make
a huge amount of difference.
In the climate change andnatural hazard sphere, I would
say it's breaking down the silosbetween different agencies and
institutions, why do we draw aline between planning and
emergency management?
We assume things of each other,but we hardly ever go and talk

(57:29):
to one another.
It's breaking down some of thosesilos or finding a better way of
addressing that.
That will probably be the thingthat I reckon could have a
really big difference.

Oh, that's very much a grokkist answer.
I think.
Let's break down the silos andmake more connections between
them for sure.
I guess That kind of comes tothe nature of professions in
general, maybe not justplanning.
You end up with this, what Ilike to call politics of
expertise, where, you know, ifyou professionalize something

(57:58):
and create a class of expertsand a body of knowledge around,
That's great because now you canhave this set of standards and
shared language and policylayers to actually do things
through the mechanisms, but italso brings into play a whole
bunch of new power dynamics thatcan ignore or exclude or
override the interests ofeveryday people who presumably

(58:23):
who the profession was supposedto benefit in the first place.
Is that something that you havea perspective on?

definitely.
Um, The first thing that comesto mind is this is something
that I've always been interestedin and maybe was inspired by
some of my early interactionsgrowing up on Waiheke Island,
and my father was a bit of a, Iguess you'd term as sort of
environmental activist, and wasquite involved in lots of

(58:49):
planning processes, seeking toprotect environmental values,
but also a lot of amenity valuesaround, you know, what is
Waiheke what are the elements ofit that we appreciate as people?
Natural character and landscapesand things like that.
I really saw how the system andhow expert opinion could be used

(59:10):
in a really negative way.
And it becomes a battle ofprofessionals and you lose sight
of who you're doing it for andwhy you're doing it.
And when I graduated, I was afounding member of a group that
actually started a bit of amovement towards planning aid.
So we were looking at theScottish examples and lots of
overseas examples where,basically like legal aid,

(59:31):
there's planning aid to helppeople engage with planning
processes and to to advocate forpublic participation in
planning.
And it not being something thatyou necessarily need to go and
get a planner to help youunderstand how a policy might
apply to you.
That policy should be written sothat you can understand it.
And those processes should beaccessible to people.

(59:53):
Your question also leads me tothink of both my father and my
husband, but they kind of think,sure I can do that.
And they have the determinationor the need to decide that they
are going to learn that skill orachieve that thing or interface
with that process themselves.
Because surely they have therequisite skills and surely it
shouldn't be so hard.

(01:00:14):
But that's not something thatmany people have either the
determination or the confidenceto do or the time.

Danu Poyner (01:00:21):
Well, that's right.
And I think, you know, it's beencommented that the ability to
participate in civic life inthat way is a kind of privilege
of its own that comes with timeand economic security.
So there's layers to how thatworks as well.
coming back to what you weresaying about the, the general
understanding in the communityof risk and natural hazard seems

(01:00:44):
to be uh, a natural place foryour focus to be now, given
everything you've said aboutplanning, and, and, it's how
people, live and so I'm curioushow you're thinking about this
barrier of public participation,and education and understanding
and just what's on your mind andwhat's holding your interest in
that at the moment?

Lara Clarke (01:01:03):
Okay.
Um, it's a, an everyday issue oropportunity if you like, for my
role, because we have quite alarge component of community
engagement, but also engagementwith partners, and with
stakeholders, how do we go aboutdoing that?
What is effective?
How do we evaluate it?
One of the things I'd say isthat providing information

(01:01:24):
that's clear and concise, andaccessible, and it's not in a
high pressure or a negativesetting is a really good first
step.
So basically being there to talkto people about things, not at
the point of a crisis or notwhen they're facing losing their
house or not when they've justbeen inundated by water.
But One of the other keychallenges that's been on my

(01:01:45):
mind has been how we interfacewith people and how we engage.
We've seen a huge shift towardsonline and social media.
Our ability to keep up with thatas local government or central
government, is how do youinterface with people on those
platforms?
What's the best way?
There's so much out there that'spresented as fact or science or

(01:02:08):
evidence or information.
And so much of that is reallytouched by opinion.
And by the way that people wantto present that to you.
How do we provide informationthat seems fair and objective,
and let people access it intheir own time?
But when there's so many otherpressures on people's time, do
you make it their priority?
How do you grab people'sinterest?

(01:02:29):
there was a presentation I sawrecently at the New Zealand
Coastal Conference where apractitioner, she told a story
and that had such a profoundimpact on the audience rather
than just trying to convey factsand information.
She told a story about climatechange and about what had
happened.
And through that story conveyedan awful lot of information.

(01:02:52):
And it came back to me that weneed to be thinking less about
what we want to share andthinking more about how we want
to share it.

Yeah, it's very much the zeitgeist, isn't it?
But there's this book um, calledDemocracy and Expertise by a guy
called Frank Fisher, and he'slooking at public participation
in processes like planning.
What stuck out to me from thatwas his finding that it's
actually the public and ordinarypeople who make change.

(01:03:23):
More so than it is policy makersultimately and governments, it's
actually ordinary people whodrive the change.
But that only happenssuccessfully when there is an
expert facilitator is the termhe uses, which is someone who's
got an insider outsider role whoknows the profession and can

(01:03:44):
speak the language and has thesocial capital to move within
the insider track of the world,but who takes a position of
interpreting and translating andcommunicating, facilitating with
the public and the ordinarypeople so that they can navigate
that world through the expert.
And it's important that theexpert is not taking the

(01:04:05):
position of authority or poweror controlling that.
They are facilitating.
And his point is most of thesuccessful changes that have
come about from ordinary peoplehave had that expert facilitator
role operating when you look atthem.
And I just thought that was areally interesting observation
from a grokkist standpoint,because that is the grokkist

(01:04:26):
skillset and probably thegrokkist orientation to the
profession that you are involvedin as well.

Your description of that book, I'd be really
interested to read it.
Is something that a consultantthat I worked with while I was
at g said, that culture eatspolicy for breakfast.
We really need to be focusedmore on social license and
culture and behavioral scienceand understanding how we view
things like science and how weview things like risk.

(01:04:55):
And how does that interface withpeople's values.
I think the response to Covidhas been really interesting from
that social science perspective.
How have people responded tothat?
How have we gone with makingdecisions under uncertainty?
How do we reflect on that?
And has that changed our cultureor has it resulted in a
different culture?

(01:05:15):
I think that that's just soimportant to understand culture
and influence and making surethat we communicate with the
people that we are trying toultimately plan for.

Yeah.
That's the other thing that I'vebeen chasing lately is this
interest in co-design as aparadigm for dealing with these
kind of difficult problems thatinvolve institutions and public
participation.
There's this nice, uh, you know,There's another book, it's
called, beyond Sticky Notes,doing Co-Design for Real And I

(01:05:48):
was really, really struck bythat.
If you go as a professional oras an organization into a room
of people who have livedexperience or who are just
trying to live their lives andyou try and hassle them with
these design thinking workshopsand thing.
It's very off-putting andalienating.
I'm really inspired by the wholeset of practices and language

(01:06:10):
and techniques that are comingout around doing co-design in
this kind of respectful andinclusive way.

That's something that's also holding my interest,
the hugely complex butincredibly interesting history
of Tamaki of Auckland, from thegeology and how it's physically
formed but most prominently atthe moment for me, the cultural
landscape.
You mentioned co-design and howyou want to approach a project
and how you want to meaningfullypartner with Mana whenua or with

(01:06:42):
other partners.
I think so much of it isactually parking what you want
to tell them and developing arelationship and understanding
from your partner or yourstakeholder's perspective why
they're interested and whatgrinds their gear, what grind
the stake is, what is their painpoint?
What gets them excited?
What are they passionate oraspirational about?
And starting from that point,rather than just starting from

(01:07:05):
what you want, which is such atraditional western policy
construct in the way thatcentral and local government
tend to approach things.
It's a paradigm shift, isn't it?
It's actually changing theculture of the way that we do
things.

You mentioned right back at the start, about a
desire to combine what you lovewith what you do for work.
And, that didn't necessarilywork out in the example that you
gave at the time, but how do youthink about that now?
Is that, Is that what you'recurrently doing?
Or, or not?

Um, well, I think my work enables me to enjoy a
hobby that I love, so it enablesme to still have horses,
although I probably don't haveas much time to spend with them.
But that's as a result of havingtwo small children as well, as I
would like.
I think the day-to-day job ofbeing an equine physio, I
probably would've become boredwith quite quickly.

(01:07:59):
So I have never looked back as Iwas saying earlier on that one.
I do really love what I do.
So I think even though it wasn'tpart of any particular plan, I
genuinely enjoy going to work.
I enjoy the challenges, I enjoythe people that I'm working
with, and I find the topic areareally interesting.

It comes off you, that, that feeling, I'm really
struck by the energy and theoptimism that you communicate
about what you do, which isinteresting considering so much
of it is about climate change,and that's not always a hopeful
kind of discourse.
You said that planning is abouthow people live and how we want

(01:08:38):
to live in the future.
Given your perspective oneverything to do with planning
and natural hazard riskreduction and climate change,
what you think about how we wantto live in the future?

Um, I think one of the biggest challenges will be,
how we have good representativedecision making, because that's
gonna be a big challenge, is whomakes the decisions, and who
benefits and who really bearsthe brunt of some of the effects
that we might see unfold in thefuture.
And whether you consider that tobe climate change or just

(01:09:14):
environmental change or just thecontinued pressure that we put
on the natural systems on ourplanet, we continue to increase
and consume.
So I think it's really justcommunicating the best we can,
what that risk looks like, whatthat consequence looks like, who
it attributes to, so that yes,there'll be difficult decisions

(01:09:36):
and there'll be decisions thatnot everyone will agree with,
but if they can just be the bestinformed they can be and
undertaken transparently, I hopewe will look back and say, oh,
well we did the best we could Itmight not have been perfect and
we might wish we made adifferent choice, but we can

(01:09:56):
understand why we made thechoice we made.

A lot of the hopelessness uh, that comes from
talking about climate changeseems to come from the sense
that we're not doing anythingand we're making terrible
decisions in the face ofoverwhelming evidence and facts.
So the idea that we could lookback and see some to the

(01:10:20):
decision making is at leastsomething to be hopeful about,
isn't it?

Yeah.
And look, I had a similarconversation with a colleague
not so long ago, and I wasthinking we doing any better?
cynically you could say, no.
We continue to put things insilly places and we continue to
increase our risk and exacerbatea whole lot of issues that we
currently have.
But we are better informed.
We are talking about it.

(01:10:45):
There's general acceptance thatthere are physical processes
occurring on the planet, whichare going to change the way that
we need to live on the planet.
Whether or not you believe thatthat's entirely a result of
anthropocentric activities ornot, I don't really care.
We all seem to be generallyacknowledging that there's
environmental change that we aregoing to have to live with, and

(01:11:05):
I think that's a big stepforward because accepting that
means that we'll actually startdoing something about it.

When you were talking before about not having
the conversation with peopleabout risk at the point of need
or the point of disaster, butearlier on, is that a
conversation that peopleactually want to have, when
they're having a good day andthey're not troubled by
disaster?
Can we get people to have, uh,be interested in that
conversation when it's notimmediately impacting them?

It's definitely more difficult, but I think it
is a case of trying to identifysomething that they're
passionate about or somethingthat they do care about and
working backwards from thatpoint.
So if it's talking about a beachthat they're sitting on, are you
enjoying your day at the beach?
Are you enjoying sitting on dryclean sand here?
Have you thought about whetheryour kids will be able to do

(01:11:54):
this?
It doesn't have to be a negativesituation that they're
experiencing.
It can equally be a positiveone.

I've got one more, which is the question I ask
everyone who comes on thepodcast, which is, if you could
gift someone a life changinglearning experience, what would
it be and why?

Okay.
I think it would be a gift toeveryone, or to the people that
don't experience this alreadythemselves, as the opportunity
to find yourself in a situationwhere you truly are in somebody
else's shoes.
So really properly having aninsight into a different
perspective, a differentviewpoint.

(01:12:36):
Properly engaging in that,because I think we talk at each
other a lot and we listen toopinions, but we don't really
absorb them.
But to really understand, towalk a mile, or a kilometer, in
another person's shoes andreally truly understand all of
the challenges, the barriers,the issues that they face.
If it's a gift to everyone, itmight be the person that's most

(01:12:58):
opposite to them.
Like, having that opportunity toexperience that other worldview,
I think would just be reallyeye-opening for a lot of people.

Thank you for that.
Is there anything that wehaven't covered that you are
itching to talk about?

No, I don't think so.
The one thing that I would add,when we talked about my
experience at the university,and it's maybe a bit of a shout
out to all the universitylecturers out there, and to the
high school teachers and theprimary school teachers and the
early childhood educators.
It's an incredibly difficultthing to maintain your
enthusiasm and passion andrepeat learnings year after year

(01:13:39):
or day after day, a week afterweek.
That's really hard to do.
It's hard to do one time round,let alone year after year.
And so thank you to everyonethat has done that and does
that, it's a unique role to bein.

Yeah.
Well said.
A big shout out to the toilingteachers who managed to turn the
same turf again and again withpatience and grace.
Absolutely.
It's been a great pleasurespeaking with you today.
And I'm very excited to keepfollowing your journey and see
where you get to next and howyou're able to bring all of the

(01:14:15):
things that you've beenaccumulating into fruition.
I think it's a really importantarea that matters to all of us.
And thank you for sharing yourinsights and tolerating my naive
outsider questions about a verycomplex area as well.
I appreciate it very much.

Oh, no, thank you.
It's been fantastic.
You asked some fantasticquestions and it's really lovely
to engage with the concept of agrokkist and feel that there's
other people out there thatthink in a slightly abstract and
different way.
And it's really encouraging tolook at all the positive
applications, rather than justthinking that you are a
tangential thinker who's a bitof a nuisance.

(01:14:55):
Thank you.

Wonderful.
Thank you so much, Lara.
I appreciate it.
See you next time.

All Episodes

Planning for a Positive Future: Natural Hazards, Risk, and Climate Change Adaptation - Lara Clarke | S3E2

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Planning for a Positive Future: Natural Hazards, Risk, and Climate Change Adaptation - Lara Clarke | S3E2