Reconstruction and Recovery in Urban Contexts

7th International i-Rec Conference and Student Competition

Disasters and crises are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity in urban areas. Crises occurring in the urban context pose particular challenges for recovery and reconstruction, due in part to intense social inequalities, complex infrastructure and governance systems, competing agendas for access to land, density of the built environment and the numbers of people affected. Cities can be seen as both part of the cause that create the crisis, and also part of the solution. Urban crises can be brought on by inter-related factors, such as chronic vulnerability conditions that lead to small-scale disasters, by natural hazards and conflict occurring in densely populated areas that lead to large scale disasters, when internally displaced people and refugees seek refuge in urban areas, and by the impacts from climate change.

This conference seeks to understand how urban contexts shape disaster recovery and to look at how reconstruction and recovery activities can enhance the functioning of cities. The conference seeks to push the boundaries of knowledge on reconstruction and develop new areas of inquiry that help to solve the complex problems faced in urban areas. The conference is expressly designed to bring researchers and practitioners together to collaborate together in moving this critical issue forwards, and in bringing it to the attention of decision makers faced with the realities of post-disaster organization and action.

Offering a platform to grapple with such realities, the conference proposes a number of keynote presentations and thematic round table sessions (following the individual paper presentations grouped by theme) to question and reshape research and practice agendas for the identification of innovative approaches to reconstruction and recovery.