<p>Landslides are widespread natural hazards that are responsible for substantial economic and societal damage globally each year. In New Zealand, landslides frequently occur on soil and rock, triggered by high rainfall, seismic activity, and land-use change and/or disturbance. This study focuses on Gisborne, a city where ongoing slope instability issues occurring across the steep slopes within the urban area are affecting several properties. Failure commonly occurs along reactivated slip surfaces, when slow-moving retrogressive slides transition into fast-moving flows during intense rainfall events. However, the extent and rate of slope deformation in the Gisborne area are poorly known. Spaceborne Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) is a convenient method for measuring ground deformation and over the past decade, SAR systems have significantly developed and provide consistent, reliable, high-resolution global data. In particular, the launch of Sentinel-1 in 2014 marked a significant milestone, being the first civilian satellite designed explicitly for InSAR analysis, and it produces free and open access data. In this study, we illustrate the potential of InSAR to detect the slow movement of landslide deposits in Gisborne before rapid acceleration, using Sentinel-1 data. The pre-failure deformation of several previous landslides in Gisborne is measured to determine possible deformation thresholds for rapid acceleration across the urban area.</p>