Reconstruction after natural disasters: the opportunities and constraints facing our cities

摘要

Each year many parts of the world are inflicted with one type of disaster or another. In the six months or so prior to the writing of this Viewpoint, media reports covered: the impact of a hurricane in Cairns, northern Queensland, Australia; three devastating earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand; and a triple disaster in Japan involving an earthquake followed by a tsunami, followed by a nuclear power plant emergency. The past few years have seen further catastrophic earthquakes that devastated the capital of Haiti (Port-au-Prince) and Kobe, Japan, as well as Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans and the southern Gulf states of the USA. The contexts of these and other major events vary widely — from the poor countries of the developing world to the world's richest countries - yet the loss of lives, infrastructure and property damage in each case has been massive.