ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that post-disaster humanitarian action in towns and cities will be more effective when it makes people and place central to its activities. It describes two approaches that actively put people at the center of recovery actions, and do so by prioritizing place. The first is the resilience approach, which underscores that all relief and recovery actions begin with the people themselves and in their context. The second is the area-based approach (ABA), which has gained considerable traction among aid agencies. Humanitarian aid’s fundamental architecture is illustrated by the ‘cluster system,’ established in 2005 as part of the Humanitarian Reform Agenda. ABAs to urban post-disaster recovery are approaches that have emerged from practice. Action planning has its roots in urban planning and was developed primarily to allow people who were traditionally excluded from planning processes to have a say in decisions that affect them.
