jailcd2024046: People-Centered Disaster Recovery: A Comparison of Long-Term Outcomes of Housing Reconstruction in Sichuan, Qinghai, and Yunnan Provinces, China

Abstract

The significance of long-term outcomes in post-disaster housing reconstruction for disaster risk reduction has been acknowledged by scholars. However, there is a scarcity of cross-regional and time-specific comparisons among multiple reconstruction projects in the existing long-term studies on housing reconstruction.This paper adopts case study method to investigate six post-disaster recovery housing reconstruction projects in three regions of China - Sichuan, Qinghai, and Yunnan provinces. The analysis of reconstruction policies, projects and governance systems has yielded several key conclusions that the housing reconstruction process has brought long-term positive effect on social, economic, technological and environmental aspects in these areas. Benefiting from the overall planning of the Chinese government, post-disaster housing reconstruction projects have successfully integrated independent participation from families, social assistance programs, civil organizations operating under market mechanisms with official governmental support to mutually reinforce one another. Local governments have collaborated with various stakeholders to successfully implement effective post disaster recovery policies and adopted a people-oriented approach to meet the constantly changing needs of residents, which has played an important role in promoting the flexibility of disaster recovery projects, accomplishing housing reconstruction plans, and bolstering the self-development capacity of disaster areas.