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How we do it: Projects
Flood Recovery: Many Communities, Many Paths
Helping communities across Tāmaki Makaurau organise, imagine and act together after the storms
Project Overview
The extreme weather events of early 2023 had a serious effect on communities across Tāmaki Makaurau, leaving people with damaged homes, disrupted routines and uncertain futures. Within months, Auckland Council and the Crown committed more than $2 billion to storm recovery and resilience works, including the buy-out of high-risk Category 3 homes and major "Making Space for Water" projects.
Flood recovery now sits inside this complex programme of investment, policy and process. Catalyse has supported community-led recovery in several of these places alongside Auckland Council's Flood Recovery Office. Each community has its own story, pace and pathway, and our role has been to help them organise, imagine and act together, not just to "bounce back," but to build lives they value in realities that now look different.
Objectives
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Communities affected by the storms are being asked to make big decisions about property categories, buy-out schemes and future land use, often while still living with the emotional and financial impacts of the floods. Without a trusted go-between, residents can struggle to navigate categorisation frameworks, funding criteria and technical detail, while agencies risk missing crucial on-the-ground insight and losing trust.
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Catalyse's role has been to act as a connector between local government and community: turning abstract frameworks like property categories and buy-out schemes into clear, grounded choices people can respond to, designing engagements where residents can see how their input shapes funding decisions and implementation, and building trust by documenting what we hear and making the line between community input and final decisions visible. The aim is better-informed choices, more equitable use of recovery funds, and communities who feel they have a real say in the future of the places they call home.
Approach
Across every community, recovery has been less about rebuilding what was, and more about taking steps toward what could now be, living good lives in places where flooding will likely happen again. A few principles guide this work everywhere we go:
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Start small, go deep, and do things together, focusing at neighbourhood level where hope takes root and change is felt in daily life.
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Make space for lived experience alongside technical expertise, weaving memory and knowledge so solutions fit both people and place.
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Work with imperfect allies, using humility to build coalitions where different skills and voices can shine.
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Move at a human pace, building trust, agreeing on "enough" of a plan, and then taking action together.
What this looks like in practice differs from place to place.
Pūhoi – Love Pūhoi and local storytelling
In Pūhoi, we walked alongside local leaders who created the Love Pūhoi campaign, turning a community photo exhibition into a collective act of storytelling, pride and future action. This helped residents name what they cherish, what feels at risk, and what they want to protect and grow as recovery unfolds, and brought people together to collectively prioritise future planning and investment.
Pukekohe – Planning with the awa
In Pukekohe, we supported conversations that placed the awa at the centre, ko au te awa, ko te awa ko au, exploring how people and water can coexist in ways that honour past, present and future. Through workshops and hui, residents considered how flood recovery could also be an opportunity to heal relationships with local waterways and design for long-term resilience, directly informing how upcoming resilience funding is understood and used locally.
Piha – Imagining a resilient seaside future
In Piha, we worked alongside the local organising group to help plan an engagement approach that they led themselves, supporting local leadership to shape what recovery looks like for their seaside community.
Epsom – Turning over a new leaf
In Epsom, we've used creativity to help residents process grief and possibility following significant flooding impacts, where numerous homes have been deemed unliveable. Through workshops with local schools, community groups and at local events, locals have created 221 hand-painted "wish leaves." These will form a kinetic mural on a highly visible site where homes are being removed due to ongoing flood risk, a temporary public artwork reflecting what people love about Epsom and their hopes for the future, while keeping conversations about land use, resilience and community commons visible in everyday life.
Mt Eden – Reimagining a neighbourhood of change
In Mt Eden, the removal of many homes due to unacceptable flood risk has reshaped the local landscape and raised big questions about future land use, commons and connection. Our work has brought residents together at neighbourhood scale to reimagine how these spaces could support flood resilience, everyday community life and new forms of shared commons. Ideas generated through this process were demonstrated in a vibrant pop-up gathering on one site, and collated to inform how locals, Auckland Council and partners invest in these transformed places.
Impact
This work shows up as better-informed choices, more equitable use of recovery funds, and communities who feel they have a meaningful say in the future of the places they call home. In Pūhoi, residents have moved from individual storytelling to collectively prioritising future planning and investment. In Pukekohe, conversations about the awa are directly shaping how resilience funding is understood and used. In Epsom, 221 wish leaves are becoming a shared, visible artwork on a site that could otherwise have felt like only a loss. In Eden, ideas generated by residents are now informing how Council and partners invest in transformed sites.
Insights
Recovery planning works best when it starts at neighbourhood scale, where hope takes root and change is felt in daily life, rather than trying to solve everything at a regional or city-wide level first. Lived experience and technical expertise need each other: memory and knowledge of a place have to be woven together with categorisation frameworks and funding criteria for solutions to actually fit. Progress also depends on working with imperfect allies and building coalitions humbly, and on moving at a human pace, agreeing on "enough" of a plan and then acting together, rather than waiting for a perfect one.
