Street design in Aotearoa has had limited involvement from iwi, hapū and Māori hāpori to date and yet streets are everywhere, they connect us to each other, they are communication channels and spaces and places to engage with others. What then might a Māori street look and feel like?  The project will take a mixed methods approach rooted in a Kaupapa Māori methodology whereby Māori knowledge is privileged. The project aims to bring together mātauranga Māori – defined here as all types of knowledge – traditional, contemporary, and evolving – held by Māori and design approaches drawn from Western knowledge to elevate Māori aspirations in contemporary urban settings.

Project supervisor: Professor Linda Nikora

Institution: Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga

Raumati intern: Edie Balme (Ngāti Mutunga, Ngāti Tama)

Project supervisor: Professor Linda Waimarie Nikora

Institution: Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga

Raumati intern: Moana Murray (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Wai, Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa)

Project supervisor: Dr Hurinui Clarke & Kari Moana Te Rongopatahi

Institution: Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha

Raumati intern: Georgia Palmer (Ngāi Te Rangi, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Pikiao)

Project supervisor: Associate Professor Anne-Marie Jackson

Institution: Te Whare Wānanga o Ōtākou

Raumati intern: Tane Whitehead (Te Ātiawa me Taranaki)

Project supervisor: Associate Professor Anne-Marie Jackson

Institution: Te Whare Wānanga o Ōtākou

Raumati intern: Emma Jones (Ngāti Porou)

This research programme will examine how we might envision an approach to placemaking that would result in outcomes that facilitate the expression of mātauranga Māori, tikanga, whānaungatanga and orangatanga in urban areas. The programme will do this by examining concrete innovations through a series of case studies. These examples will demonstrate the optimism that transformative urban activity brings in terms of the potential to redress the struggles of the past (Awatere et al. 2008; Harmsworth 2004).

While the terms racism and equity are increasingly commonly used, action that meaningfully addresses racism and eliminates inequities is less common. This programme seeks to uncover how commitments to equity and ending racism are undermined, ‘non-performative’ or symbolic only, and how they may need to be reconfigured in the context of Aotearoa to align with rangatiratanga. Understandings of racism and (in)equity are strongly shaped by contextual factors and dominant, frequently changing discourses. These in turn influence assumptions and logics underpinning research questions, methods, datasets, analytical frameworks, indicators and interventions.

Ngaati Koroki Kahukura are kaitiaki of lands and waters that span from their ancestral mountain, Maungatautari, to their tupuna awa, Waikato, including areas of national significance such as Cambridge (Te Oko Horoi a Taawhiao) and Karaapiro, the site of the last intra-iwi battle of Taumata Wiiwii in the 1800s.