Planning for Exclusion: The Politics of Urban Disaster Governance

Ricardo Fuentealba,Joyeeta Gupta,Hebe Verrest

doi:10.17645/pag.v8i4.3085

Abstract

Many disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives, including land use planning, tend to ignore existing long-term inequalities in urban space. Furthermore, scholars working on urban disaster governance do not adequately consider how day-to-day DRR governing practices can (re)produce these. Hence, following a recent interest in the political dimensions of disaster governance, this article explores under what conditions the implementation of DRR land uses (re)produce spatial injustice on the ground. We develop a theoretical framework combining politics, disaster risk, and space, and apply it to a case study in Santiago, Chile. There, after a landslide disaster in the city’s foothills in 1993, a multi-level planning arrangement implemented a buffer zone along the bank of a ravine to protect this area from future disasters. This buffer zone, however, transformed a long-term established neighbourhood, splitting it into a formal and an informal area remaining to this day. Using qualitative data and spatial analysis, we describe the emergence, practices, and effects of this land use. While this spatial intervention has proactively protected the area, it has produced further urban exclusion and spatial deterioration, and reproduced disaster risks for the informal households within the buffer zone. We explain this as resulting from a governance arrangement that emerged from a depoliticised environment, enforcing rules unevenly, and lacking capacities and unclear responsibilities, all of which could render DRR initiatives to be both spatially unjust and ineffective. We conclude that sustainable and inclusive cities require paying more attention to the implementation practices of DRR initiatives and their relation to long-term inequities.

Highlights

Cities are important sites for realising climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR)
Given the lack of PRC in the foothills of La Florida, the PRMS mandated that these norms were applied to this new urban space without discussion in the aftermath of the 1993 disaster, first on a temporary basis and formalised in 2001 with a new PRC
To assess the implementation of this post-disaster land use, we focus on three key governance practices explaining the current state of the buffer zone: voluntary relocation; arbitrary enforcement; and the management of acquired land

Summary

Introduction

Cities are important sites for realising climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR). This requires urban governance to move away from statecentric, top-down approaches towards more horizontal and coordinated work with communities and relevant actors. While urban disaster governance can promote sustainable and resilient development, achieving such goals in practice is complex. Normative and technocratic approaches do not adequately address the political dimensions of city governance (Swyngedouw, 2005; Tierney, 2012). Academic research increasingly focuses on decentralisation and scale

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