New Zealand’s home ownership decline exacerbates existing inequalities between Māori and the wider New Zealand population. For Māori, papakāinga provide a culturally appropriate solution to housing issues. However, in the Greater Christchurch Area, modern papakāinga are largely absent from the landscape. As someone who can attest to the benefits of growing up within a papakāinga, I feel a personal responsibility to offer support to my community-mana whenua in the Greater Christchurch Area-to also gain such benefits. As part of this research, I draw on my own experience as a rangatahi Ngāi Tahu who was raised in a papakāinga, as well as a MURR intern with Ngai Tahu Property, to answer the question ‘In the Greater Christchurch context, what are they key elements that should guide the creation of papakāinga, so that they meet the aspirations of mana whenua?’.

This research adopts a Qualitative Research approach to identify the key elements that should guide the development of papakāinga in the Greater Christchurch Area that reflect the aspirations of mana whenua. This is done by triangulating data gathered through three different methods: best practice papakāinga case studies, a community survey, and a semi structured interview with a technical expert. These data sets are then triangulated to identify which key elements can ensure papakāinga developments meet the aspirations of mana whenua in the Greater Christchurch Area.

The first element is how vitally important the geographic location of papakāinga is. Secondly, papakāinga need to be both environmentally and culturally sustainable by design. Finally, more technical support needs to become available to support mana whenua to design and build papakāinga. These elements are then further analysed to provide recommendations for how these findings may best be responded to. Recommendations include reconsidering the current locations of Papakāinga/Kāinga Nohoanga and Māori Purpose Zones under relevant Local Authority planning documents, implementing existing best practice urban design principles which are relevant to papakāinga design, and investigating alternative ways to connect whānau members to existing technical guidance such as creating ‘whānau champions’ that can educate others using kanohi ki te kanohi methods.