Buildings should not collapse spontaneously! On April 24th 2013, the eight-story Rana Plaza garment factory collapsed within the Greater Dhaka Area in Bangladesh, killing over…
By James Kennedy One of the major features of almost all disasters occurring in urban areas, is the large amount of rubble created, and the…
Crowdsourcing donations via text became standard after the 2010 Haitian earthquake, an attempt to gather coveted resources: undesignated funding. Not only are these some…
When we use the word ‘critical’ in engineering we usually mean thresholds not theories. Neat boundaries rather than full-on discourse analysis. And I, for one,…
With differing mandates, varying entry points of intervention, and a multiplicity of timescales and intended programme outcomes, how can we try to visualise how different…
I have been working as part of a team (with Anna among others), on an assessment of Haiti’s housing recovery and reconstruction process. Specifically I…
In my masters dissertation I investigated the relationship between the shelter assistance provided after disasters and the recovery of affected communities. While my research identified…
Earlier on this year, in the first class of a module I took on urban housing, land and property rights we were each asked what…
The ravines are perhaps the most public of spaces in Port au Prince: they serve as natural infrastructure, yet also stitch communities together and host…