Katrina at 20 – Two Planning Domains

Katrina at 20: In the context of urban climate risks, it is important to acknowledge that urban planning and emergency management planning and preparedness are two different planning domains. The related institutions are more often than not staffed by professionals from completely different academic backgrounds. The first relates to everyday planning in cities with the aim of achieving sustainability and resilience, against the background of uneven development and differential access to resources that cities offer. The second encompasses planning for urban disaster recovery and reconstruction in order to facilitate rebuilding efforts after a storm, a flood, an earthquake or another kind of natural hazard caused destruction of the built fabric. One of the lessons learned in the second case is that a return to "normal" or a condition that (presumably) existed prior to the impact of disaster is inadequate to make cities and their citizens resilient against future disasters. The Stafford Act in the US, the framework in place when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, originally mandated a return to normal (if federal or state funding were required for this purpose). The Sendai Framework in particular calls for "building back better" as guiding paradigm of disaster recovery – to improve the conditions before disaster in the rebuilding efforts after disaster in order to reduce the risk of future disasters, which disproportionately affect vulnerable citizens. The chapter shown here discusses how planning in New Orleans was necessitated to adapt to the circumstances after Katrina in order to facilitate individual homeowner recovery – and which obstacles challenged the process. "Adaptive Strategies of Urban Disaster Recovery Planning" was published in Cities At Risk, edited by Pierre Fillion, Gary Sands, and Mark Skidmore.