Urban Disaster Resilience

'It's poverty that is at the core of these disasters.' -Sálvano Briceño, Director, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)

2020

"Open for business" and "The gold rush is on" were two phrases used to describe the prospects of Haiti's future after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake effectively turned the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince, into rubble. On January 12, 2010, it took only thirty-five seconds for 1.2 million people to become displaced, about 300,000 to lose their lives, and a city with decades worth of poorly built infrastructure to turn to dust. Haiti's long history of aid dependency and political instability has made the country vulnerable to disasters and the exploitation of foreign governments, which has used neoliberal policies to shift the focus of the post disaster reconstruction from sustainable infrastructure building to an "open for business" mindset (Loewenstein, A. 2017). Before the earthquake, the social, economic, environmental, and political conditions in Haiti were weak and vulnerable leaving the country struggling to build the capacity necessary to cope with disasters and focus the influence of outside powers. The disaster opened the doors to foreign governments and corporations, who claimed to be there to rebuild Haiti, but instead saw Haiti as an opportunity to gain profits.

2020

PCI would like to extend its sincere gratitude and appreciation to USAID/Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA); the CORE Response team for their significant logistical and technical support; participating Haitian government officials (in particular from Comité Interministériel d' Aménagement du Territoire (CIAT) and Ministère des Travaux Publics, Transports et Communications (MPTPC); Laura Jones, Clara Eder, Emily Epsten for their hard work on the study design;

The complexity of cities has been written about since Plato’s Republic and planned since the renaissance architects. Le Corbusier proposed the redesign of Paris in an attempt to relieve it of what Lefebvre called "some putative sickness of society" (Lefebvre 1991) and improve the quality of life for those who lived in the unhealthy and risky city. Cities are affected by natural and man-made disasters in many ways that differ from rural areas. While a rich variety and depth of literature exists about the urban environment and likewise about disaster response in general, less peer reviewed literature exists about urban disaster responses. The complexity of response to such disasters is very different to rural areas, the traditional focus for humanitarian action, as has been highlighted by ALNAP (Ramalingam 2012) and is becoming more and more critical in emergency disaster response as urbanisation increases and over 50% of the world’s population now live in urban areas and with 1 billion people living in vulnerable informal settlements, (Habitat 2003). In this study, firstly, I will examine the underlying causes and the direct and indirect impacts of disasters in urban areas before analysing the distinguishing factors of urban disaster response through a case study of the earthquake in Port Au Prince, Haiti in 2010 and will finally offer some findings from the study before concluding.

International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters

Economic recovery refers to the process by which businesses and local economies return to conditions of stability following a disaster. Its importance and complexity are being increasingly recognized in disaster risk reduction research and practice. This paper provides an overview of current research on economic recovery and suggests a research agenda to address key gaps in knowledge. Empirical studies have provided a number of robust findings on the disaster recovery of businesses and local economies, with particular insights into short- and long-term recovery patterns, influential factors in recovery, and disparities in recovery across types of businesses and economies. Modeling studies have undertaken formal analyses of economic impacts of disasters in which recovery is usually addressed through the incorporation of resilience actions and investments in repair and reconstruction. Core variables for assessing and understanding economic recovery are identified from the literature, ...

Purpose -The aim of this paper is to add a new dimension to urban resilience by exploring how representations of disasters, reconstruction and human settlements are made, and how, by shaping plans and programs, they ultimately influence resilience. Design/methodology/approach -The paper draws on James Scott's notion of "legibility" to ask how different representations simplify complex realities and how they are transformed into plans and programs. The paper first outlines the various broad analytic lens used to examine legibility to portray post-disaster reconstruction, drawing on international literature and policies. The paper then focuses on post-earthquake Haiti and analyzes eight reconstruction plans and reviews design proposals submitted for the Building Back Better Communities program to explore how different stakeholders portrayed the disaster, identified the reconstruction challenges and proposed to address human settlements. Findings -Representations of the disaster, the reconstruction challenge and the housing problem were quite varied. While the plans assumed a very broad view of the reconstruction challenge (one that goes beyond the representations found in the literature), the BBBC program adopted a very narrow view of it (one that the literature condemns for failing to achieve sustainable resilience).

Cities, 2020

From 2010 to 2015, Canaan was perhaps the urban settlement with the fastest exponential growth in the Western hemisphere. Technically, Canaan is not a city-at least not in the administrative sense of the term. Nor is it simply a slum on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Instead, it is a vast, new and almost entirely self-constructed post-disaster settlement. In this city profile, we reveal the causes of this unprecedented urban phenomenon, draw a portrait of its current problems and opportunities, and present a critical review of recent policy, planning and management responses. Canaan emerged in the wake of the 2010 earthquake that partially destroyed Port-au-Prince and paralyzed the Haitian government for several months. In a matter of only five years, over 250,000 people occupied a previously empty zone. Today, Canaan lacks public infrastructure, but it is a relatively functional city. This profile reveals the gaps that exist between different perceptions of Canaan. Exposing the case of this new city sheds light on the impacts that disasters can have on urbanization dynamics. This profile invites readers to reflect on both the positive and negative impacts that the state, the aid industry, and citizens can have on peri-urban development in the Global South.

Resilient Post Disaster Recovery through Building Back Better, 2018

This book starts with the introduction of Build Back Better theory proposing a framework under which the key features of Building Back Better can be visualised, understood and practically applied. The initial chapters provide an introduction to Build Back Better and show the evolution of the concept into a Build Back Better Framework. Subsequent chapters drill down into individual features, explaining what it means to Build Back Better by providing case studies to illustrate how and when Building Back Better occurs. The book ends with a suite of sophisticated indicators for Building Back Better to be used by Governments, Non-Government Organisations and disaster stakeholders for pre-event planning and post-event recovery following disasters. Disaster Recovery and the need to Build Back Better Disaster management is commonly represented by four phases: mitigation or reduction, preparedness or readiness, response or emergency, and recovery. Governments use disaster management to pre-plan for disaster events, and plan for recovery after disaster events. Build Back Better fits within the pre-event and post-event planning for recovery. Restoration of the damaged physical, social, economic and environmental impacts of disasters is a complicated and drawn-out process. Traditionally, post-disaster reconstruction consisted of simply repairing the physical damage that has been induced by a disaster, and often focus on quick restoration of affected communities. However, authors such as Kennedy et al. (2008) and Lyons (2009) pointed out that rebuilding the built environment and infrastructure exactly as they were prior to a disaster often recreates the same vulnerabilities that existed earlier. If restored to pre-disaster standards disasteraffected communities would face the same difficulties if exposed to another disaster event in the future. Mitchell (1999), Lewis (2003) and Kijewski-Correa and Taflanidis (2012) noted that the reconstruction and recovery period following a disaster poses an opportunity to address and rectify vulnerability issues found in communities. Khasalamwa, S. (2009). Is 'build back better' a response to vulnerability? Analysis of the post-tsunami humanitarian interventions in Sri Lanka.

Journal of Urban History

Resilience has become a buzzword used to describe the capacity of cities to bounce back after disasters. It carries the hope of a robust and more sustainable future. Disasters can strike any region, but port cities face complex and particular risks due to their location at the intersection of sea and land, and their role in an international maritime system. This introduction to the special section on resilience, disaster and rebuilding in modern port cities first examines resilience as a concept and course of action in a heterogenous theory landscape. It then explores different dimensions of resilience—environmental, economic, institutional, social and spatial—and their importance in port city historiography. The articles collected in this special section explore case studies from three continents. Together, they demonstrate that there is no such thing as the resilient (port) city. But, they also show that the combination of maritime and urban interests can lead to creative planning...