In just a handful of weeks life as we know it changed. But there is opportunity in that change.

OPINION: In the last few weeks, the world that we know has changed more than any of us thought it could.

We stroll empty streets, past closed shops. We socialise through screens alone. We have experienced the unprecedented use of the word unprecedented. The world and its economies have ground to a halt.

Economists' data tells us that 56 per cent of people in Taranaki are able to continue working, either because they are essential workers or because they can work from home.

That leaves at least 44 per cent of our Taranaki people in the precarious position of not being able to work, and facing a future of uncertainty, not knowing if their job or their business will survive the massive economic shock that is hitting us.

You know better than anyone that this is not just a health crisis, but an economic and social crisis, and I hope you know that we're in this together.

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As a nation we are currently in what emergency management experts call the 'response' phase. We are busy dealing with the immediate effects of the disaster. In the case of Covid-19, the response phase, in one shape or another, will likely be long.

However, at some stage, we will begin the transition to what is called the 'recovery' phase. We will begin to build the world back to what it was.

SIMON O'CONNOR/STUFF It's time to reimagine and regenerate an economy and a way of life that future generations will be proud of, says New Plymouth District councillor Amanda Clinton-Gohdes.

But in the aftermath of this once-in-a-century crisis, we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity not just to recover but to reimagine, to regenerate an economy, a society, that is better than the one that ground to a halt.

I invite you to think of this next phase not as the recovery phase, but as the regeneration phase.

This is a time where we, as a community, can make deliberate decisions about the parts of our economy and our society that were working before, and bring them back to life. We can create parts that are altogether new. And the parts that weren't working? Well, we can decide to throw them out, or we can reimagine them.

Under the pressure to move quickly, it will be easy for central and local government alike to reach towards the same kind of stimulus they have in the past – investing big in infrastructure projects.

In the past, that has meant lots of roads. But in the haste to get the economy up and running after this crisis, let us remember that investment in the regeneration phase will be funded by debt. That means it will not just be us paying for it, but also the next generations.

What kind of investments will they see as wise? What kind of world do they imagine for their future?

Before Covid-19 struck the globe, we had already recognised that we were in a climate crisis, and we were beginning to reimagine our region as a low emissions economy. In the regeneration phase post Covid-19, we have an opportunity to accelerate the pivot of our economy, a chance to ride the tailwind of investment towards a low emissions future.

Undoubtedly, central and local government have a big part to play in the regeneration phase. They have the spending power to make investments that create jobs. But you also have a part to play. After all, governments do not have a monopoly on good ideas.

To reimagine and regenerate an economy and a way of life that future generations will be proud of, we need everyone. We need your ideas, your vision – your vision for improving things that have been, your left-field ideas about things that might be possible.

Taranaki, this is your future, and your future matters. It is time to get involved. Contact the people that you voted for, tell them what you think should be done. Get online, find articles, post ideas about what this regeneration could look like.

Use the hashtags #reimagine and #reimaginetaranaki, to join our community in reimagining our world, in regenerating a way of life that works for all of us, for generations to come.

Amanda Clinton-Gohdes is a New Plymouth District councillor.