Maria Kornakova

Institutional Adjustments and Strategic Planning Action: The Case of Victorian Wildfire Planning

ABSTRACT This paper provides a critical analysis of the way that practice-based strategic planning in terms of disaster risk reduction occurs, highlighting the drivers and facilitators of change. It documents these in the context of other governmental systems. Examination the changes to wildfire planning policy in Victoria, Australia, following the 2009 Bushfire Season, provides an explanation of the realpolitik of policy formation, management and change, as well as inter-governmental interactions. The findings document and discuss the conditions and reasons for strategic change occurring in the case study.

Integration and Collective Action: Studies of Urban Planning and Recovery After Disasters

Abstract This introductory chapter establishes a practical framework for urban planning and related built environment disciplines to be integrated with the wider processes of disaster recovery. One key feature of any attempt at integration is to assert that the core focus of disaster risk reduction is urban places themselves, including the processes of recovery after disasters. Urban places, the cities, towns, and settlements in which we increasingly live, are diverse and represent inputs and influences from ecological, economic, cultural, and physical systems at multiple scales. Add to this complexity the fact that urban planning itself is a diverse and ongoing activity. To further complicate matters, planning itself necessarily seeks to achieve goals that are often separate, or sometimes even contradictory, to disaster risk reduction. A central theme of the book is the acknowledgment that risk reduction requires a suite of processes and actions that draw together multiple agents and aspects of human settlements and natural systems. These challenges are particularly acute when a city, town, or region is attempting to recover after a disaster event. However, the period after a disaster often presents opportunities for improvement and change to urban places, while impacts are fresh in peoples minds and resources can be directed to risk reduction strategies. The book uses critically examined case examples to argue that urban planning is central to successful disaster risk reduction during the recovery phase.

Planning for Recovery: Ideas and Problematics

Abstract This chapter reflects critically on the theories and case studies advanced by the books contributors, in parallel with existing theory and accepted wisdom. The chapter poses a series of questions and arguments regarding the next steps that need to be taken. In doing so, it pays heed to the spatially particular economic, social, and environmental qualities of different places. Drawing together selected elements of the extensive and now rapidly expanding literature covering practical cases, examples, and theory, we start with a discussion of recovery in the context of dynamically changing settlements. We set out a number of principles for the integration of urban planning and disaster risk reduction. Furthermore, we argue that there are six key challenges for success relating to particularly problematic aspects of the recovery processes. We argue that planning has appropriate tools and means to address these, even while paradoxical challenges will continue. While not fully resolving these ongoing problems, the conclusions raise some key ideas and provide suggestions for moving forward in the recovery processes.

Urban Planning and Recovery Governance

Abstract This chapter discusses the role of urban planning and the complexity of governance settings in disaster recovery. Urban planning is understood and discussed here in terms of outcomes and processes, in parallel with disaster recovery assessments based on an index developed by United Nations Development Programme. While urban planning can be understood as a mechanism oriented towards achievement of collective outcomes, analysis of the index demonstrates that democratic participatory processes alone do not guarantee sound recovery outcomes. It is, however, argued that the involvement of various actors and stakeholders in planning processes is an important starting point to balancing of rights and responsibilities and the allocation of suitable roles and tasks in recovery and subsequent prevention. The inclusion of prevention approaches is of particular importance in disaster recovery as it can improve the tendency to use ad hoc allocation of roles and tasks by establishing long-range goals and management of processes. A discussion of the various types of urban planning reveals its means of achieving the goals of equity, efficiency, and ecologically sound outcomes across overall settlements, regions, and nations. This converges with recovery goals, to link postdisaster reconstruction with longer term risk reduction and mitigation.

From Recovery to Prevention: The Swiss Avalanche Program

Abstract This chapter discusses the role of disaster events in the development of prevention mechanisms. An argument is made that disaster recovery can be a catalyst for changes to long-term regulatory planning practices. More specifically, the Swiss case of land use planning and avalanche zoning is used to demonstrate how the disastrous events of 1951 revealed land speculations in country areas, leading to an increased appetite for change from residents and interventions from local communes. These interventions eventually led to the development of land use planning in the country in a new sense with a consideration of natural hazards. This chapter demonstrates how a disastrous event can reveal ongoing problems of various nature, in this case, being land speculation and associated planning issues. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the impacts of such a devastating disaster event can “motivate” communes and residents to seek for government interventions.

The Opportunity for Improved Regulations After the 2009 Victorian Wildfires in Australia

Abstract This chapter demonstrates changes that were brought to the regulatory planning after a disastrous bushfire event and discusses the political and technical decisions that triggered these changes. This chapter examines the events after the 2009 Victorian Bushfire season that not only claimed the lives of 173 people on a single day (February 7, 2009, or Black Saturday) but also resulted in significant changes to relevant urban planning and built environment policies and regulations. Data were collected using document and policy analyses, archival, and semistructured interviews with key professionals after the 2009 wildfires. However, the overview of planning-related policies since 1991 demonstrates gradual changes to the overall system and suggests that the 2009 season was a catalyst to facilitate “latent” change embodied in research and science. Furthermore, the changes that were implemented can be considered positive improvements, making this case also a relatively successful example of how the political processes can be used as adjustment mechanisms for planning.

The role of citizens in DRR planning exercises: when to inform or consult

Purpose The purpose of this research paper is to explore the role and effectiveness of particular participation styles that affect the effectiveness of urban planning being integrated with disaster risk reduction (DRR) practices. Design/methodology/approach This research was conducted using a heuristic approach to the examination of urban planning and DRR practices focussing particularly upon citizens’ participation in four case studies internationally: the UK floods in 2007; Hurricane Katrina in the USA in 2005; wildfires of 2009 in Victoria, Australia; and Swiss avalanche prevention and preparedness. Desktop research was conducted to analyse cases and identify key findings, confirmed and augmented by interviews with relevant specialists in each country through semi-structured interviews. Findings The research reveals some similarities across all four cases studied. It appears that urban planning and DRR approaches, particularly those with a regulatory outcome and based on highly technical tests, are common. Further, it is apparent in the cases studied that circumstances where deeper technical knowledge and/or self-interest are strong factors, that informing and sometimes consulting styles are the most appropriate. While the scope of the paper means that this principle cannot be widely applied, there is a need to investigate these issues further. Research limitations/implications The heuristic and inductive nature of this research limits the potential for in-depth analyses of the case studies, but rather provides a base for future research in this area, which currently has limited literature. Originality/value This study provides a wide base for future research and partially addresses the gap in the literature on the topic of integration of urban planning and DRR with a focus on the community involvement in it.