Exploring urban resilience to disasters : the role of planning in the long-term community rebuilding of Kalamata after the 1986 earthquake

This research explores the relationship between planning, reconstruction and resilience, through the in-depth analysis of the long-term recovery of a city hit by disaster. The purpose of this research is to further understand the concept of resilience in order to operationalize it. Firstly, to contribute a new perspective to resilience research as a theoretical concept. Secondly, to contribute to the operationalization of resilience with a new assessment method. To explore this problematic this research uses as case study a medium sized city that has been hit by a disaster in the past. The city of Kalamata, Greece was hit by an earthquake in September 1986, which left it devastated. The development trajectory of the city that is in an ongoing long-term recovery phase offers an ideal opportunity to explore such characteristics.  This research examines the planning interventions and practices that have influenced the city’s resilience equilibrium levels during the pre-disaster and post-disaster periods and it focuses on the interpretation of the findings in the long-term recovery process. It questions if and how planning choices influence the recovery of the city as well as its resilience. The concentration on the long-term recovery is crucial as it reveals the success or fail of the recovery process and it comes to fill a void in literature given that studies are mostly concentrated on short-term recovery results.   Resilience is already a widely popular and at the same time extensively contested theoretical concept that has been adopted by several fields of research and used differently in most of them. Within the field of planning resilience is currently being extensively adapted and is today a much-anticipated process and outcome of planning research and practice. Long-term recovery and hazard mitigation are the least explored phases of post disaster reconstruction. Although much research is orientated towards response and reconstruction strategies, little attention is given towards the long-term recovery and the hazard mitigation phases.  The innovation of this research is that it offers a new perspective by examining how reconstruction has impacted places over the long term. How they have improved their resilience? In the aftermath of a catastrophic event, all dynamics are immediately mobilized towards immediate relief and reconstruction. These dynamics unfortunately remain motivated for only a short term after the catastrophic event. Soon life finds a new rhythm and the signs of the catastrophe are absorbed into the needs and deeds of everyday life. However, the impacts of the decisions taken shortly after the disaster are only revealed on the long term, during the long-term recovery phase. For disaster recovery to be successful, a long term resilient rebuilding vision is imperative.  Within this research, the conceptualization of resilience is both a challenge and a necessity to take a first step towards the outlining of what constitutes a long-term resilient post-disaster community rebuilding. With this long-term perspective, this research explores the contribution of planning practices towards the amelioration of the resilience equilibrium of an urban area. To analyze the relationship between planning and resilience of an urban community on the long term, a model for assessing resilience within this specific framework is created. The objective is to give an insight in the ways planning can affect resilience. In this way, the importance of hazard mitigation and adaptation in the field of planning is highlighted.

Keyphrases: resilience, vulnerability, planning, adaptation, reconstruction, long-term, disaster risk reduction, Kalamata, reconstruction, Kalamata