ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 is the central chapter on urban community resilience in practice. It features six case studies showing how relationships between the built environment and/or social infrastructure, and existing or lacking social organisational strategies grounded in pro-community behaviours and psychological responses either hindered or prompted community resilience during and after natural disasters and adverse environmental events. The cases are: informal settlement dwellers and long-established city residents reacting to flooding, Surat (India), and informal settlement residents, Jakarta (Indonesia); the effects of gendered behavioural norms on low-income women and men in various city spaces, who are subjected to intense heat, rain and flooding events, cyclones and storm surges, Khulna (Bangladesh); the experiences of city residents rehomed in several forms of transitional housing following Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, Louisiana (USA); and the diverse experiences of four communities, including networks of Māori people, managing after the devastating earthquakes of 2010 and 2011, Christchurch (New Zealand). Each case is analysed with the authors’ framework on resilient pro-community behaviours and psychological responses in order to understand which are essential for resilience, and any additional ones are revealed. Ideas for strengthening resilience through urban form and public participation in urban development that emerged from the cases are also discussed.
