Literature Review

To enhance our understanding of urban contingency planning, we conducted an extensive review of relevant literature which enabled us to explore strategies related to frugal and local planning.

Local Knowledge

Jason Corburn Bringing Local Knowledge into Environmental Decision Making Improving Urban Planning for Communities at Risk (2003)

Local knowledge plays a vital role in improving planning processes in various ways. Firstly, by incorporating local expertise, planning can benefit from a broader perspective and overcome the limitations of professionals’ narrow viewpoints and policies. Local epistemology, including factors like aggregation, heterogeneity, lifestyle, and tacit knowledge, brings unique insights that professionals may not have access to and corrects the biases that can arise from overlooking the particularities of local contexts.

Integrating local knowledge contributes to procedural democracy. It involves creating a hybridization of professional knowledge and the wisdom from local experiences. This collaboration allows a deeper understanding of the issues and so more relevant solutions.

Encouraging local knowledge enhances the effectiveness of planning efforts and enables more accurate analysis and problemsolving.

Lastly, incorporating local knowledge promotes distributive justice and ensures prioritizing of areas and communities that are most in need, thereby reducing risks and vulnerabilities and addressing social inequality and equity.

Local knowledge is deeply intertwined with the culture, traditions, and personal experiences of the community, when shared and accessible. It is allowing people not to repeat mistakes.

By incorporating the expertise of local individuals and communities, planning efforts become more inclusive, effective, and just, this fosters a collaborative approach and leads to more contextually appropriate and sustainable solutions.

Area-Based Solutions

David Sanderson Implementing area-based approaches (ABAs) in urban post-disaster contexts

Area-Based Approaches (ABAs) are a way to address the complexity of urban crises that traditional approaches struggle to tackle. Unlike existing approaches, ABAs have been employed by urban planners to improve disadvantaged areas in urban programs and community development projects. ABAs are geographically-focused, centering on communities within specific spatial contexts and emphasize people-centered approaches that actively engage with neighborhoods and foster positive outcomes.

These approaches require time and may conflict with the notion that humanitarian or emergency response should be rapid. Successful ABAs prioritize the pace of recovery actions, making space for meaningful local participation and ownership.

ABAs offer a promising avenue for addressing the multifaceted challenges of urban crises. By recognizing the importance of local context, engaging with communities, and advocating for equitable coverage, ABAs have the potential to enhance the effectiveness and inclusivity of urban response and recovery efforts.

Social dimension and community resilience

Angelo Jonas Imperiale and Frank Vanclay, Conceptualizing community resilience and the social dimensions of risk to overcome barriers to disaster risk reduction and sustainable development (2021)

Understanding the social dimension of risks and disasters is crucial for effective contingency planning. Disasters have significant social impacts on community well-being, health, culture, livelihoods, infrastructure, and the environment. Certain groups within communities are more vulnerable than others, and addressing these vulnerabilities is essential for reducing disaster risks. Social risks are also interconnected with vulnerabilities and contribute to increased disaster risk at the local level. To effectively address the risks, contingency planning should include social pre-conditions and their impacts on community well-being.

Conceptualizing community resilience and resilience-building fosters inclusive contingency planning because it involves learning and transformation by adapting to past events.

Community resilience refers to the local people’s actions to collectively learn and transform, enhancing community well-being and addressing perceived problems. Resilience-building requires understanding and engaging with capacities of communities. External interventions should strengthen social responsibility, the sense of community, while governance strategies should enable social learning and transformation at multiple levels of society.

It is necessary to foster a glocal (global and local) culture of resilience that empowers local communities and promotes community engagement and social learning through transparent and liable governance strategies. A comprehensive understanding of risks and impacts, promotes community resilience-building, and contributes to sustainable development. Contingency planning can empower communities, foster resilience, and reduce the negative consequences of coming disasters.