Community resilience, governance, and [in]justice in the context of informal housing after an F3 tornado

ABSTRACT

Communities around the world are experiencing significant challenges created by climate change. A large body of resilience literature has examined how communities respond to natural disasters created by this phenomenon. However, resilience studies often fail to acknowledge anthropogenic factors that create and reproduce local vulnerabilities and injustices. Drawing on community resilience and socio-spatial and disaster justice work, this case-study examines whether post-disaster responses contemplated existing injustices and the local views necessary to address housing problems after an F3 tornado in a Southwestern Uruguayan community. Field work was conducted in 2018. Methods included spatial mapping analysis, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, participant observations, and analysis of secondary data. Findings reveal how post-disaster decisions omitted existing injustices materialized by precarious and informal housing conditions, ignoring the views of community residents who responded by claiming “the right to the community.”

KEYWORDS:

• Community resilience
• informal housing
• disaster justice
• spatial justice

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the individuals who voluntarily participated in this study and provided valuable information.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in this study involving human participants were approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Mississippi State University.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants of the study.

Notes

1. The categorizations of neighborhoods by socio-economic status are based on data obtained from interviews and authors’ visits to the community and observations on the field due to the lack of demographic data publicly available about these neighborhoods.

2. Some images and information used for this article were shared at the 2019 Architectural Research Centers Consortium (ARCC) annual conference. See conference proceedings: Lopez Barrera, S., & Thompson, D. (2019). The right to the city in informal settlements: two case studies of post-disaster adaptation in Latin America. ARCC Conference Repository, 1(1). Retrieved from https://www.arcc-repository.org/index.php/repository/article/view/647

3. Agency of Social Development stands for Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (MIDES).

4. Agency of Housing, Planning, and Environment stands for Ministerio de Vivienda Ordenamiento Territorial and Medioambiente (MVOTMA).

5. Uruguayan Association of Social Workers stands for Asociacion Uruguaya de Asistentes Sociales (ADASU).

6. Uruguayan Association of Architects stands for Sociedad Uruguaya de Arquitectos (SAU).

7. MEVIR (Movimiento para la Erradicación de la Vivienda Rural Insalubre) is a governmental commission for the eradication of the unhealthy rural housing.