Shelters of Sustainability: Reconfiguring Post-tsunami Recovery via Self-labor Practices

2019

jps

Non-smokers’ spatial transactions with smokers in semi-outdoor areas with restorative qualities have been investigated. In the process, the impact of smoking in break spaces on non-smokers’ behavior in negotiating mutual spatial boundaries was studied. The areas with restorative qualities were defined as places where regular visitors spend their break time to relieve work-related stress or seek temporary relaxation. Regularly used as break areas, three covered-overhead walkways located in different building precincts in the same academic setting were sampled in order to elicit narratives relating to perceived environmental deprivation among regular visitors. In-depth, semi-structured interviews had the aim of eliciting and unfolding these narratives where they emerged as a result of different modes of environmental deprivation. Discourse analysis of the transcribed interviews led to a systematic distillation of five themes associated with the presence of smokers in the studied restorative settings. The study revealed that participating non-smokers had devised both control and coping mechanisms to deal with the smokers’ behaviors, such as sending subtle non-verbal cues and repositioning their gaze. Moderated by furniture and landscape configuration, spaciousness, and visual and physical distance, smokers and non-smokers passively negotiated these spatial transactions in each of the respective walkways.

Section: Subjects and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Subjects and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Not in my face please. Stress caused by the presence of smokers in places with restorative qualities

2019

jps

“…In this vein, the home consumed its creator’s energy and effort, and in return, it offers “employment” or “a road” to establish milestones of one’s life. Self-labor is the very energy of acquisition of a home (Subasinghe, 2012). Survival would be impossible for a being that had no home (Dal Co, 1990).…”

Section: B Lifelong Making Of Materials Successmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…No layout design or master plan was made or executed for such settlements (Subasinghe, 1999). In comparison to the shelter and land that the IDPs enjoyed in their native homes, transitional settings were inferior substitutes in regards to the spatial, functional, and emotional qualities to the places they had previously identified as “home” (Subasinghe, 2012). The IDP-transitional setting can be described as “moderately permanent basic shelter[s] with open access resources, in a fairly small, barren, left over piece of land, which often [are] socially as well as physically abandoned nook[s] of an existing village” (Benedikt & Hartmut, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is My House My Home? An Analysis of “Nowhereness” Among “Noknowers” in Transitional Settings

2018

Space and Culture

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.

“…The local knowledge passed down from generations must be valued and leveraged during the housing reconstruction as no state can have a full range of knowledge to support effective recovery (Guarnacci, 2012). Abandoning a community's self-labour and homebased livelihood opportunities in the planning and constructing shelters has many negative social repercussions and a barrier to BBB (Subasinghe, 2012). It leads to many social tensions like jealousy and a decline in the community's trust in institutions (Wiek et al, 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why lessons learnt are lost

Haris

Cheema

2019

DPM

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.