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Risk-based land-use planning is a major tool for reducing risks and enabling communities to design for and mitigate against natural hazard events. Moving towards a risk-based approach to land-use planning involves changes in planning and public communication practice for local government agencies. However, talking to people about how decisions made in the present may increase risk in the future is notoriously hard and requires carefully crafted public discussion. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper explores the case of a local government planning agency (the Bay of Plenty Regional Council (BOPRC)) who adopted a risk-based approach to the development of their regional policy statement (RPS). The BOPRC designed an innovative approach to talking to their communities about future land use and acceptable risk based on a framework and toolkit of resources (the RBPA – risk-based planning approach).

The process addressed several common challenges of risk engagement for land-use planning as it: integrated input from policy and planning professionals, technical experts and community development specialists across local government organisations; used locally relevant community sessions that developed participants’ understanding of risk; linked ideas about risk tolerance to potential policy implications for local government; and built capacity amongst participants for judgment about risk acceptability and options for safeguard.

The process met public engagement planning criteria for robustness, i.e., valid process design and interpretation of feedback, and transparent integration into the final decisions. It enabled public views on natural hazards to be evaluated alongside technical input and incorporated into final decisions on thresholds for acceptable and unacceptable risk.

The approach taken has made significant contribution to risk engagement and land-use planning practice in New Zealand. In 2017, the BOPRC risk-based approach to their RPS received a national award from the New Zealand Planning Institute for contribution to advancing best practice. In 2018, it received further recognition through the Commonwealth Association of Planners Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Commonwealth.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between contemporary sport, social media, digital technology, and sexuality and to explore the historical context of sport and sexuality, before then outlining the decline of homophobia in recent years. Despite this decline, social media is one area where we still see the manifestation of homophobia.

This chapter synthesizes a range of academic literature to chart how – despite improving attitudes toward homosexuality in sport – abuse and discrimination is still prevalent on social media.

Eric Anderson's (2009) Inclusive Masculinity Theory has been the most useful theoretical apparatus to underpin the changing nature of sport, gender, and sexuality. While this has been used in a variety of sporting contexts, these are primarily focused on gay male athletes in the West. Accordingly, there is a gap in knowledge around the experiences of lesbian, bisexual, and trans athletes, as well as those outside of the Western context.

Although there has been some literature to document discrimination on social media, very little focuses specifically on the manifestation of homophobia. Accordingly, this chapter provides an important contribution by being one of the first to tie together the literature on improved cultural attitudes toward homosexuality while simultaneously focusing on the prevalence of discrimination on social media.