- Adaptive strategies of urban disaster recovery planning   290 kb by    Kammerbauer, Mark | info@transarchitecture.org    Short Outline Contradictions between recovery planning and urban master planning emerged in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Citywide Recovery Plan had to support rebuilding, while the 2030 Masterplan advocated growth and improvement. What role do existing conditions and the scale of disaster play for this process? Abstract This contribution deals with contradictions between recovery planning and urban master planning in the case of the mega-disaster in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While recovery planning is intended to enable a 'return to normal', urban master land use planning is aimed at an alteration or transformation of a given situation. In New Orleans the Citywide Recovery Plan had to adapt to the aftermath of disaster and support rebuilding the city, while the 2030 Masterplan advocated growth and improvement. Which contradictions emerge, and what role do existing conditions as well as the scale of disaster play for this process? Here, particular spatial, institutional, and social aspects of urban disaster seem critical. Literature on the city and disaster form separate discourses, yet both bodies of knowledge include theories on social disparities, i.e. stratification and vulnerabilities. A correlation of these concepts in the case of an urban disaster enables a critical view of policy frameworks and goals of US emergency management, e.g. the Stafford Act's 'return to normal' paradigm. To study these interrelated aspects, an integrated research perspective is proposed that deals with the rebuilding of cities after natural disaster in regard to existing social disparities and institutional recovery plans and programs. The basis of this theoretical integration are socio-spatial perspectives, according to which the built environment and the societies and communities that inhabit it exist in a permanent state of interaction (cf. Gottdiener M., Hutchison R.: The New Urban Sociology. Boulder: Westview, 2006; Hofman S., Oliver-Smith A.: Catastrophe & culture: the anthropology of disaster. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 2002 eds). In this case, planning for urban disaster recovery is identified as normative instrument of rebuilding and distinct object of inquiry (cf. Fainstein S., Campbel S.: Readings in Planning Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003 eds; Rodriguez H., Quarantelli E., Dynes R.: Handbook of Disaster Research. New York: Springer Science + Business Media, 2006 eds). The contribution features data from the author's empirical long-term case study based on mixed-method quantitative and qualitative research. A quantitative questionnaire survey conducted in 2007 with an impacted population in a particularly hard-hit area of the city, the Lower Ninth Ward, serves to indicate vulnerabilities related to societal and spatial aspects and the capacity to recover and rebuild. Qualitative interviews were conducted in 2009 with key individuals in federal, state, and local institutions and planning authorities involved in the recovery process. Their integrated observation permits identifying weak links between spatial, social, and institutional aspects. In relation to existing conditions as well as the scale of disaster, recovery planning is required to adapt and transcend the 'return to normal' paradigm and propose improvements that may contradict objectives of urban master planning and vice versa.Questions of density of impacted neighborhoods emerge against the background of existing urban shrinkage processes. These are indicated bythe case study area's massive population loss and low rebuilding rates, related to vulnerabilities, stratification, and lacking capacity to rebuild. Recovery planning in New Orleans adapted to these circumstances while the 2030 Masterplan permitted potentially unsustainable development in low-density neighborhoods. Related to ongoing risk, this contribution intends to discussknowledge- based planning recommendations that enable a balance between existing conditions and necessary adaptation and improvement to support quick, yet also sustainable and resilient recovery in the case of urban mega- disasters. Its approach is applicable to cases of urban disaster in the USA and adaptable to other (global) cases of coastal and peri-coastal metropolises subject to (hydro-meteorological) risk by taking the particular spatial, institutional, social context into account. Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper