Wetland Square, Market Pier: Designing for heritage in the New Zealand regional landscape Journal Paper
- Author
- Rachel Sari -Dewi Murray, Sam Kebbell and Martin Bryant
- Year
- 2015
- Journal / Source
- Interstices
- Volume
- 17
- Pages
- 73-78
- Keywords
- swampland, farmland, drainage, wetland swamp
- Summary
- From swampland through farmland to urban sprawl, the regional landscapes which once lay quietly at the peripheries of our cities are now experiencing radical urban growth and drastic environmental degradation. In the last 150 years, it is estimated that 90% of New Zealand’s indigenous wetlands and swamp forests have been destroyed in the face of development (Robertson, 2015: 1). With wetlands drained, streams channeled and riverbanks stripped of their protective riparian forest, New Zealand’s lowland ecosystems have suffered extensive and irreparable damage. The speed of this landscape transformation is so drastic that the changes which took place across just one century in New Zealand occurred over four in North America, and twenty in Europe (King, 2010: 26).