Co-production after an urban forest fire: post-disaster reconstruction of an informal settlement in Chile

Abstract

Disasters are not just the result of extreme natural events but are also affected by complex governance scenarios, social vulnerability, existing infrastructure, and housing reconstruction policies. This paper is an examination of a social housing construction process following destruction by an urban forest fire in an informal settlement in Valparaíso, Chile in 2017. The paper compares this process, in all its complexity, to that following another very destructive fire three years earlier in the same area. Rather than taking the standard hierarchical model of social housing reconstruction that often follows a disaster, this more recent process in Valparaíso, in response to a new 2016 national policy, attempted to make use of co-production, most notably through a collaborative design workshop. This paper examines the entire social housing reconstruction process, focusing in particular detail on this design workshop, and it assesses the degree to which co-production has been successfully introduced into this process.