Does the post-disaster resilient city really exist?

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of “resilience” by disentangling the contentious interactions of various parameters that define and guide resilience trajectories, such as the physical infrastructure, socio-spatial inequalities, path dependencies, power relationships, competing discourses and human agency. This socio-political reconstruction of “resilience” is needed for two reasons: the concept of resilience becomes more responsive to the complex realities on the ground, and the discussion moves toward the promotion of more dynamic recovery governance models that can promote socially just allocated redundancy in housing actions, which could be seen as a key to incubating resilience. Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper that mobilizes theories of urban political ecology, social innovation and housing with the aim to examine the tensions between various discourses that steer housing production during post-disaster recovery processes, and put a spotlight on the heterogeneity in the transformative capacity of the various actors, institutions and visions of housing systems that preexist or emerge in the post-disaster city. This heterogeneity of actors (i.e. growth coalitions, neighborhood associations and housing cooperatives) consequently leads the discussion toward the investigation of “new” roles of the state in formulating relevant disaster governance models and housing (re)construction systems. FindingsThe initial stress produced by a natural event is often extended because of long-term unmet housing needs. The repercussion of this prolonged stress is a loss of social progress partly due to the reiterated oppression of alternative housing production propositions. In this paper, the authors conclude that an asset-based community development approach to recovery can provide an antidote to the vicious cycles of social stress by opening up diverse housing options. This means that the recovery destiny is not predetermined according to pre-set ideas but is molded by the various bottom-up dynamics that democratically sketch the final socially desirable reconstruction outcome(s). Originality/valueThe contribution of this paper is twofold. By using theoretical insights from urban political ecology, housing studies and social innovation, the paper first builds up onto the current reconstruction of the notion of disaster resilience. Second, by identifying a heterogeneity of “social resilience cells”, the paper leads the discussion toward the investigation of the “new” role of the state in formulating relevant recovery governance models. In this respect, the paper builds a narrative of social justice in terms of the redistribution of resources and the cultivation of empowerment across the various housing providers who struggle for their right to the reconstruction experiment.

Disaster Recovery Practices and Resilience Building in Greece

“…Several scholars underline the importance of solidarity mechanisms [51,52] that emerge in times of crisis, interweave in local or international networks and manage to ensure a duration in terms of knowledge transfer that, in turn, strengthens disaster memory. Paidakaki and Moulaert [53] even argue that a "resilient city cannot exist per se, but rather social resilience cells (SRC) within the city unfolding their own transformative capacities and up scaling experiences." All in all, multi-level knowledge acquired after a disaster becomes part and/or influences attitudes and local mentalities and evidently risk perception.…”

Urban Climate-Proof Finance for Disaster-Resilient Infrastructure

“…The urban resilience trajectories have multiple inter-relatedness of top-down and bottom-up parameters for societal, economic and environmental resilience, such as the physical infrastructure energy infrastructure sub-sector, socio-spatial orientation for telecom sub-sector, path dependencies for water systems and human agency for sanitation sub-sector (Paidakaki & Moulaert, 2017;Haider & Badami, 2010). The VSM adapted in this analysis of the complex realities on how top-down and bottom-up financing for the sub-sectors would promote governance, redundancy and proactive resilience (Paidakaki & Moulaert, 2017). The societal and environmental elements of disaster risk reduction aims to foster empathy, proactivity, innovativeness and cross-cultural adaptivity (Gosper & Ifenthaler, 2014;Kumar & Bhagat, 2017).…”

Disaster Resilience into Which Direction(s)? Competing Discursive and Material Practices in Post-Katrina New Orleans

“…Whose transformative ability is enhanced and whose is undermined during recovery processes? To partly answer these questions, several disaster and urban theorists have recently put emphasis on the unbalanced power relations embedded in human systems, and the possibilities of powerful stakeholders sanctioning or containing alternative opinions and actions by consolidating their own hegemonic social construction of "ideal recovery" or "resilience" (see Davoudi et al 2012;Cannon andMüller-Mahn 2010, 633 cited in Davoudi et al 2012;Kuhlicke 2013 in Paidakaki andMoulaert 2017). Yet, the potentials for alternative social groups to team up and develop influential counter-hegemonic and inclusive discursive and material practices over the long-term years of recovery are insufficiently studied.…”

“…In this paper, we use and connect the concepts of social resilience cells (SRC), institutional structures and multidirectionality of resilience trajectories to gain a deeper insight into the impact which contentious, dynamic and heterogeneous recovery and housing reconstruction processes have on the socio-spatial formulations of post-Katrina New Orleans. SRC are situated within the housing system and are defined as affordable housing providers or housing policy implementers who organize themselves discursively and actively in their aim to influence the recovery profile of a post-disaster city (Paidakaki and Moulaert 2017). Shying away from earlier ecological and socioecological understandings of resilience as a single capacity of a system to resist shock and bounce back or bounce forward in a linear, monodirectional way (Holling 1973;Vale and Campanella 2005;Cutter et al 2008; Editorial of Local Environment 2011), we reconceptualize resilience as a highly political, continuously changing, socially transformative process, with various "bounceforward" imaginations -or resilience trajectories -promoted and materialized by a heterogeneity of social groups.…”