This project will review the trajectory of earthquake prone building regulatory reform in New Zealand, and bring to bear existing sociological and public policy research to enhance implementation effectiveness, equity, and efficiency of the significant changes in the Building Amendment (Earthquake Prone Building) Act to be passed in late 2015 or early 2016. Methods will include: discourse and content analyses of two rounds of submissions to Parliament from local councils, interest groups, and private citizens; economic analyses of the value of earthquake prone buildings that caused death and injury in Christchurch; legislative analysis of the legal fabric into which the new Act will fit. The political and economic trajectory of legislative reform will be of interest to international audiences in earthquake engineering and disaster management. And the firm grounding of our findings within policy, sociological, and economic scholarship of disasters will be of interest to domestic central and local government implementation efforts.