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Rethinking Community Resilience: The Politics of Disaster Recovery in New Orleans

Online ISBN:
9781479804955
Print ISBN:
9781479804894
Publisher:
NYU Press
Book

Rethinking Community Resilience: The Politics of Disaster Recovery in New Orleans

Min Hee Go
Min Hee Go
Ewha Womans University
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Published online:
20 January 2022
Published in print:
3 August 2021
Online ISBN:
9781479804955
Print ISBN:
9781479804894
Publisher:
NYU Press

Abstract

In this book, I argue that successful community-based civic activities after a catastrophic event may generate vulnerable resilience, a state in which active neighborhood recovery efforts escalate the city’s susceptibility to future risks. I contend that while local communities exert a considerable influence on post-disaster recovery, they do so in a more complicated way than what previous research has hitherto suggested. Instead of casting uniformly positive effects, I argue, civic capacity presents both opportunities and challenges with regard to overcoming crises and building resilience in a city. On the one hand, the civic capacity of communities can help people concentrate resources on restoring damages and facilitate reconstruction immediately after disaster. In this sense, strong civic capacity is closely associated with community resilience. On the other hand, the same capacity and sense of belonging and empowerment may also reinforce challenges that can ultimately undermine the city’s resilience. While the civic capacity of communities may facilitate revitalization in a smaller spatial scale of neighborhoods, the collective pursuit of recovery and rebuilding tends to generate conflicts at the city level. As civic actors continue to request protection and pursue development in the city’s unsafe areas, as was the case in New Orleans, certain sections of the city may generate greater vulnerabilities than before, distancing themselves from the communities that have led sustainable, resilient redevelopment during the same period. This haphazard spatial recovery compromises the city’s ability to mitigate future disasters and reduce urban inequality.

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