The making of cities after disasters: Strategic planning and the Central Italy temporary housing process

• Published in: Cities 2022-12, Vol.131, p.104053, Article 104053
• Main Authors: Pezzica, Camilla, Cutini, Valerio, Bleil de Souza, Clarice, Aloini, Davide
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Business process modelling; Emergency management; Post-disaster recovery; Strategic planning; Temporary housing; Urban planning
• ISSN: 0264-2751; 1873-6084
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2022.104053

The interest of scholars in the temporal dimension of post-disaster housing has grown in the past decade, but the analytic focus has primarily been around the design and delivery of more sustainable Temporary Housing solutions. However, addressing temporality and promoting Building Back Better in disaster recovery and reconstruction also requires a better understanding of the regulatory and organisational process which produces the post-disaster transitional city. Since strategic planning grows in popularity as a Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) paradigm, an analysis of its application and outcomes helps capture lessons to inform future housing assistance practices. To this end, the paper reconstructs and analyses the Central Italy temporary housing supply and delivery process. It combines a meta-analysis of published documents and business process modelling to uncover links between policy, society, and space. The results suggest that gaps in strategic planning (related to multi-level governance, process and resource management) are significant explanatory factors for the technical and social clashes highlighted by the analysis. It is emphasised the importance to produce well-informed strategic plans to achieve DRR goals and the potential benefit of adopting the proposed approach to this end, leveraging its capacity to model and simulate the temporary housing supply and delivery process. •Strategic planning by itself does not ensure the success of temporary housing plans.•Technical and social clashes are linked to multi-level gaps in strategic planning.•Process modelling can support a better urban emergency management and governance.•Intermediate mitigation strategies can enhance the resilience of strategic plans.•Strategic planning ought to consider local factors and community needs and roles.