Household recovery and housing reconstruction after the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran

Post-disaster housing reconstruction is a complex process that plays a crucial role in promoting affected households’ recovery. In the last few decades, researchers have examined housing recovery programs (through resilience, vulnerability, and sustainable development lenses), and made considerable endeavours to determine the variables behind their success or failure. However, several knowledge gaps about, for instance, unequal level of recovery among differently affected household categories, compromises on recovery objectives, and insufficient collaboration between stakeholders in housing reconstruction programs, still exist. This dissertation aims at explaining why and how housing reconstruction projects typically fail to fulfill recovery objectives. It seeks to reveal the main challenges in initiatives aimed at helping affected households to recover sustainably.  This study is based on a detailed, longitudinal, qualitative case study of the housing reconstruction program conducted after the earthquake that struck the city of Bam, Iran, in 2003. It specifically examines Bam’s experience from four perspectives: recovery objectives, policy, strategy, and implementation. The study adopts a deductive reasoning strategy, in which detailed literature reviews led to the formulation of theoretical propositions based on the resilience and the vulnerability theories and additional concepts borrowed from the housing, urban planning, and project management fields. These theoretical propositions were later empirically tested to explore whether the expected patterns actually occurred. Findings from the case of Bam were thus matched with predicted patterns, allowing us to validate (but also to nuance) the theoretical propositions.  Results highlight four main challenges typically faced in housing reconstruction programs. First, housing reconstruction policies often overlook the diversity of affected households, notably with regard to their pre-disaster status and post-disaster situation. As a consequence, the common one-policy-for-all approach cannot adequately lead to the recovery of affected families. The recovery of different household types requires the coexistence of a multiplicity of measures and programs to allow them to choose the solution that best fits their needs, conditions, and expectations. Second, the integration of general housing policy and specific reconstruction policies is necessary to both address vulnerabilities and ensure long-term recovery. Third, challenges in involving the diversity of stakeholders in participatory decision-making often threaten the fulfillment of recovery objectives. Finally (and as a consequence of the latter), housing reconstruction programs need to address stakeholder conflicts and institutional fragmentation through appropriate governance structures and mechanisms. These results remind us that housing reconstruction programs are complex, dynamic processes where affected households’ recovery depends on several variables such as their pre- and post-disaster conditions, recovery policy’s sensitivity to families’ varied needs and desires, households’ active participation in decision-making, and successful collaboration between stakeholders. Indeed, further research is still required to explore the cause and effect relationships between variables in this complex process.

Keyphrases: Disasters, Housing Reconstruction, Housing Reconstruction Policies, Recovery Objectives, Vulnerability, Resilience, Public Participation, Institutional Fragmentation, Bam, Iran