ABSTRACT
Trying to identify the conditions that need to be considered for economic recovery, wellbeing and long-term development in a regular low-cost housing project is a major challenge, and without any doubt it is even more difficult in the disruption of a post-disaster situation. Governmental and non-governmental organizations alike often tackle this complexity by attempting to plan, design and manage post-disaster housing through a process that brings a considerable number of responsibilities into the hands of one entity (and few people) that collects and uses the available information. In this chapter I refer to this attempt as ‘a concentrated decision-making process’ to remind readers that decisions made under this approach are made upon the information collected by one or a few organizations (in contrast to a decentralized individually driven approach, which I describe later in this chapter). The natural response is, most often, designing a unique housing model that responds as well as it is reasonably possible to the problems that have been identified, considering the limited information that is available.
