Design for Disaster Recovery: Putting People First to Reset Humanitarian Aid in the Built Environment [Hardcover]

1. A Disaster Strikes Mishal.? 2. Unpacking Urban Disasters.??3. Resetting Humanitarian Response.? 4. Learning from Development.? 5. Putting People First.? 6. Sheltering After Disaster.? 7.? Letting Go.

At a time of escalating urban disasters and sharply reduced aid budgets, humanitarian aid, long held in need of reform, has no choice but to reset.?This book will be crucial reading to anyone working in humanitarian aid, especially planners, architects, engineers and community development practitioners.

At a time of escalating urban disasters and sharply reduced aid budgets, humanitarian aid, long held in need of reform, has no choice but to reset.

This book argues that humanitarian aid must accomplish this reset by prioritising peoples agency and localising responses. This book provides lessons learned from leading practitioners working in urban development who dissented from established top-down practices to forge better, people-centred approaches. These lessons are compared with the wicked problem of post-disaster shelter provision, reviewing good approaches that work, and some bad ones that dont. This book ends by proposing three ways for aid to let go, through supporting and trusting people to do the right thing.

This book ultimately seeks to reinforce that engaging in processes is vital for effective disaster recovery programmes. That means putting first those caught up in disaster and supporting local organisations who are best placed to provide the right support. It will be crucial reading for anyone working in humanitarian aid, especially planners, architects, engineers and community development practitioners.

David Sanderson trained as an architect and has worked for over 30 years across the World, engaging in development and disasters. After four years with a disaster management consultancylã2