Speaker
Description
Keywords : Disaster recovery planning, urban planning, planning tools, flexibility, adaptability
Planning for disaster recovery in urban contexts means navigating multiple uncertainties inherent both to the disaster recovery process and the planning designed for. Anticipating decision-making frameworks appears to be one way of thinking through planning territories in relation to disaster risks, and considering these uncertainties in disaster recovery planning (DRP)’s design in urban areas. The topic is therefore submitted for track 1 “Risks and adaptations: planning scenarios”.
Disaster recovery remains a multidimensional challenge due to numerous uncertainties related to the hazard’s characteristics and its impact on the affected territory (Smith et Wenger, 2006; Hamideh, 2015). The occurrence of a disaster may impact a variety of urban features, both physical (buildings, infrastructure, networks…) and non-physical (social organization, economy, political management, environmental features, societal characteristics…). Questions arise about disaster recovery’s temporality and duration, but also the management and resources needed to recover and get back to normal functioning (decision-making tools, funding, stakeholders…). Characterized by the “time compression paradox” (Olshansky et al., 2012), disaster recovery aims at going back to an “ordinary” running of the impacted territory while considering ambitions of vulnerability reduction and adaptation to future disaster risks (Quarantelli, 1999; Blaikie et al., 2003; March et al., 2017). For Moatty et al. (2017), DRP’s duration is strongly linked to the anticipation strategies advanced by political and institutional organizations. Consequently, disaster recovery represents a time of managing changes and evolution patterns in a territory (Smith, 2014). To consider them, both anticipatory and post-disaster actions are needed.
While not being the unique solution, DRP appears as a possibility to consider the uncertainties linked to disaster recovery (Haas and al., 1977; Olshansky and al., 2012). Planning is considered as “the making of an orderly sequence of action that will lead to the achievement of a stated goal or goals” (Hall, 1992). Therefore, it appears to be a possible tool to deal with disaster recovery time challenges. DRP may be envisioned as a solution for managing, organizing, and implementing the disaster recovery process. In urban contexts, urban planning plays a role in prospecting a territorial vision and collective action, while allowing consideration of various temporal evolutions of a given territory, including long-term ambitions (Desjardins, 2020). One way to think through urban planning is defining it as “a special case of general planning, which does include the plan-making, or representational, component” (Hall, 1992). Urban planning is translated into a variety of strategic or regulatory tools, which cover different scales and sectors in urban contexts (energy, transportation, housing, waste management, risk management…). Therefore, combining DRP and urban planning while focusing particularly on their tools appears to be a significant opportunity to deal with uncertainty.
Focusing on the tools of urban planning related to DRP may introduce the opportunity to organize urban development and envision urban transformation in relation to disasters. The challenge that arises is how to anticipate and manage uncertainty in designing a disaster recovery planning tool for urban contexts. This leads to thinking through new ways of planning, as Wasley (2014) underlines: “disaster management planning needs to be flexible” (Wasley, 2014, p. 107). Consequently, flexibility and adaptability of planning may be considered an assumption or a form of evidence which shapes planning priorities and choices. However, elaborating tools that consider these characteristics remain a challenge and call for a changing paradigm of planning.
Our main research question arises as follows: How can disaster recovery planning in urban contexts mainstream flexibility and adaptability to serve as a tool to anticipate uncertainties of disaster recovery in urban contexts?
Through our research, we aim to explore the flexibility and adaptability of disaster recovery planning tools in urban contexts in relation to uncertainty. First, we plan to explore the components of DRP in urban contexts to understand where uncertainties are located and identify the relation to urban planning. Then, our objective is to consider a typology of interactions between DRP and urban planning tools to question the flexibility of these links. Finally, considering uncertainties, we plan to examine the flexibility and adaptability of DRP in urban contexts as a tool for decision-making, by considering an action framework of DRP in relation to urban planning.
The theoretical framework arises from multidisciplinary perspectives, mostly in urban planning and geography, with interest in political science, management science, architecture, and sociology. It aims to contextualize the uncertainty of DRP within urban contexts.
Disaster risk is a result of localized human/nature interactions in a territory (Reghezza-Zitt, 2015). Thus, the relationship between planning and disaster recovery is crystallized through the Human-Nature relationship and the anthropocentric approach of planning. It introduces the debate of planning adaptivity in the face of change. In fact, environmental planning studies have already introduced the concepts of flexibility or adaptability of planning, particularly in the context of climate change. Planning suggests initially an act of ‘control’ or ‘programming’ of the urban space following functionalist traditions of urban planning (Fusco, 2022). The modernist vision framed by the Athens Charter argues that planning is a way to control or even ignore uncertainty (Christensen, 1985). Uncertainties related to the modification and evolution of the environment confront this traditional conception of planning and highlight a changing paradigm (Fusco, 2022). This is particularly illustrated through adaptive planning, which redefines the relation to complexity and uncertainty: “Adaptive planning is not about predicting and controlling these relational complexities or eradicating uncertainty. It is about working with them, adjusting along the way, and identifying transformative opportunities that may arise from them” (Davoudi, 2021). When applied to disaster recovery, “post-disaster transformative adaptation requires a coordinated and proactive approach” (Davidson et al., 2025, p. 3). In fact, adaptive planning introduces the notion of dynamics and transformative adaptation by considering “cities to be in a constant process of becoming” (Davoudi, 2021). One question that raises concerns is: how to manage this dynamic process?
On another level, examining more closely the relationship between disaster risk and territories helps characterize the current disaster risk management within urban contexts. “Disaster risk is born from the territory” (Reghezza-Zitt, 2015). However, territories may, at the same time, be considered as a social construction or space which designs geographical delimitations serving the management of disaster risks. According to Reghezza-Zitt (2015) : “the territory allows particularly to give disaster risks a social, spatial and temporal content”. In the light of DRP in urban areas, uncertainties are particularly illustrated through spatial and temporal limits, according to November (2013): “disaster risks subvert the spatio-temporal limits”. At the same time, planning has generally been considered as a tool for planning the future in a given space. Consequently, these uncertainties question the tools that frame disaster risk management, while the tensions between the time and space of a disaster and those of planning are confronting.
Focusing on public action tools may appear as a solution to consider these dynamics, not only related to urban transformation but also to the transformation of managing means and the governance it relates to. As Lascoumes et Simard, 2011 put it in evidence following Hall, 1993’s reflection, “observing tools allow to study the process of specific changing and learning of a public policy” (Lascoumes et Simard, 2011). The tool of DRP in urban contexts represents an entry point to the thinking of planning disaster recovery temporality, governance, and territories in the face of uncertainty.
To explore this flexibility, we looked through a comparative approach to disaster recovery planning inspired by Sykes et al., 2023’s international planning theories. By considering different disaster recovery planning experiences in Italy (L’Aquila earthquake in 2009), Spain (floods in Valencia in October 2024) and Belgium (floods in Wallonia in July 2021), the first objective is to understand disaster recovery planning components in urban areas, distinguishing common and variable features. One warning is that, given the variety of planning systems considered, the contextual particularities will be a point of interest. We plan to compare empirical material by building a comparative framework and analyzing DRP documents and related urban planning tools. Additionally, to complete the analysis of interactions between DRP and urban planning, interviews will be conducted with local stakeholders (public stakeholders, planners, locality representatives, experts in disaster recovery and reconstruction, …). The aim is to identify a typology of linkages between DRP and urban planning tools, and question the flexibility of those interactions while distinguishing the contextual particularities. To complete a comparative approach and reflect on a decision-making tool which may help collective action on disaster recovery planning in urban areas, we envision a systemic reading of DRP in a city in France. By identifying the existing sub-systems within the given context, we aim to think through the parameters that may show flexibility and adaptability according to future disasters.
Several results are expected from this research. Firstly, we expect to identify the features of DRP related to urban planning. The result will be a list of components that may be categorized into “static” components, which show non-variable features in the comparative framework, and “dynamic” components, which will be identified as being particular to the context of application. After obtaining this list of components, we intend to deepen our understanding of disaster recovery planning and urban planning’s linkages. A typology of linkages previously conducted through literature identified four types: siloed, sectorial, crossed, and comprehensive [Article under revision]. The goal is to confront this typology with the typology built on field studies. By considering the typology, we expect to identify the flexibility parameters that explain the variation of linkages between disaster recovery planning and urban planning tools. Finally, after identifying systemic representations of DRP sub-systems in relation to urban planning in the chosen French case study, we plan to help formulate an action framework that may be useful for future planning practitioners and help reflect on the implementation of DRP in urban contexts as a tool that is flexible and adaptive in the face of uncertainties.
Exploring disaster recovery planning in urban contexts remains an important challenge for researchers and practitioners. Uncertainty is inherent to the disaster recovery process and to planning in general. Organizing the disaster recovery process before a disaster happens may help reduce the recovery time and connect the necessary resources before the event. At the same time, the numerous uncertainties of disaster recovery planning in urban contexts force consideration of a decision-making framework that allows adaptation following the continued dynamic changes of urban areas in relation to disaster risks. Consequently, flexibility appears to be one parameter to characterize DRP in urban contexts. Moreover, given the variety of planning systems and cultural particularities in the way of managing territories, the framework to consider when designing and implementing DRP in urban contexts has to be based on the existing tools of urban planning and adapt to the possible bifurcations linked to the uncertainty of a disaster and its consequences (Finucane et al., 2020; Alexander, 2004; Berke et al., 2014). Determining which parameters may evolve and which ones may be anticipated and stabilized before planning may help design planning practice of urban areas in relation to disaster risks and allow researchers and practitioners to improve the disaster risk management of urban areas.
Therefore, anticipating DRP in urban areas means planning scenarios that intend to envision and accelerate the time of disaster recovery by preparing the involved territory before the event, while keeping in mind the need to adjust and adapt to parameters for which anticipation is uncertain. Planning has a role to play in disaster risk reduction to help conceptualize transformation patterns of urban space, but also in the ways of managing it. Examining the articulation between urban planning and disaster recovery planning seems to envision balancing between the uncertainty of disaster and the anticipatory character of planning at different temporalities, exploring more deeply the connections and interdependencies between the “known” and the “unknown” of planning for disaster recovery.
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