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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reduce the gap in understanding the complexity of barriers, their modifiers and how these barriers and their modifiers result in malpractices and missed good practices in post-earthquake reconstruction contexts. This paper provides insights to the often asked question: why the lessons learnt from one earthquake event are not actually learnt and many of the mistakes around housing reconstruction are repeated? Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on the review of the literature of the top deadliest earthquakes in the developing countries and the two case studies of the 2005 Kashmir and 2015 earthquake in Pakistan. Findings Multifarious barriers, their modifiers, malpractices and missed good practices are deeply interwoven, and endemic and include weak financial standing, lack of technical know-how, vulnerable location, social and cultural preference, affordability and availability of materials, over-emphasis on technical restrictions, inefficient policies, lack of clarity in institutional roles, monitoring and training. Research limitations/implications The study is desk based. Practical implications A better understanding of barriers can help disaster-related organisations to improve the planning and implementation of post-earthquake housing reconstruction. Social implications The study contributes to the understanding concerning various social and cultural preferences that negotiate the Build Back Better (BBB) process. Originality/value The study offers a distinctive perspective synthesising the literature and the two case studies to sharpen the understanding of the complexity of barriers to BBB.

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This study investigates the concept of home versus house among people who have been forcibly evicted from their long-term homes and are living in transitional settings due to the conflict in northeastern Sri Lanka. The discourse is built on two common notions related to liminalities of internally displaced people’s (IDP’s) transitional setting: “nowhereness” and “noknowers.” The study examines the causes and consequences of IDP’s perceived “nowhereness” in an unfamiliar physical setting, which in turn makes them “noknowers” in an unsupportive social setting. Transcripts from in-depth, open-ended interviews with IDPs are interpolated and categorized to distil themes among core meanings attached to the home. Though these IDPs were originally interviewed to ascertain their sense of home in the transitional shelter, many interviewees ended up focusing on nostalgic memories of their lost homes. The transitional shelter is not a home, but rather an indefinite process of making a home from sociocultural residues.

Although Open Space Ratio is a critical control in the Development Approval process, there are no ultraviolet radiation (UVR) protection guidelines for urban parks. This study explores key strategies for shade provision in children’s play areas in urban parks, aiming to promote sun-safe play environments against alarming skin cancer trends. The literature review identified primary issues affecting UVR exposure in public venues, and the research comprises a shade audit of Beaton Park in Dalkeith. The methods involved using virtual park modeling and Shadow Analysis simulations to generate the daily average number of hours in shade for each month. Our recommendations based on this analysis are (a) a minimum canopy cover representing 50% of the entire ground cover; (b) a minimum diameter for a shade (umbrella) of about 2.5 times the diameter of the table; and (c) an ideal umbrella height of 90 cm from the table surface. This research proposes a potential nexus between landscape design and a UVR protection framework for child-friendly Sun-safe Zones (SsZ).