Rethinking "Build Back Better" in housing reconstruction: A proposal for "People Centered Housing Recovery"

Since 2004, when "Build Back Better" (BBB) was used to call for post-tsunami recovery in Aceh that reduces risk and improves people's lives, BBB has become widely-used in disaster risk reduction and recovery, and has been featured in post-disaster recovery plans of several countries and the 2015 Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. Improving on pre-disaster conditions is a shared goal for recovery, but in relation to housing reconstruction the term BBB has become both too broad to offer meaningful direction. It is also used to narrowly describe safer construction without holistic consideration of what is "better" for people's lives. This paper argues that "People Centered Housing Recovery" (PCHR) could provide a more meaningful and comprehensive set of principles to guide post-disaster housing reconstruction: housing design and form that meet people's needs; genuine participation of empowered residents in decision making and construction; and related policies that are accountable to all residents. This paper applies the framework of PCHR to three cases of post-disaster housing recovery--Mt. Merapi in Indonesia, Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, and the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in Japan.