Identifying Opportunities to Build Resilience in Urban Disaster Recovery

Abstract

This chapter observes that in urban disaster recovery operations, the concept of resilience is mostly situated in pre-disaster mitigation and preparedness policies and actions. There are, however, opportunities to identify and highlight approaches in post-disaster relief and recovery that also build resilience. This chapter discusses three such opportunities. The first is adopting approaches such as area-based approaches (ABAs) that promote a people-centred approach in recovery, in particular using, supporting and strengthening people’s and communities’ assets/capital, in particular social capital. The second is to recognise the complexity and inter-related nature of towns and cities, for which adopting a systems-based approach is helpful. The third is to improve efforts at greater collaboration between the wide range of governmental and non-governmental agencies and organisations involved in disaster recovery, for which again ABAs can be of help.