Design for Disaster Recovery - Putting People First to Reset Humanitarian Aid in the Built Environment

At a time of escalating urban disasters and sharply reduced aid budgets, humanitarian aid, long held in need of reform, has no choice but to reset.
This book argues that humanitarian aid must accomplish this reset by prioritising people's agency and localising responses. The book provides lessons learned from leading practitioners working in urban development who dissented from established top-down practices to forge better, people-centred approaches. These lessons are compared with the wicked problem of post-disaster shelter provision, reviewing good approaches that work, and some bad ones that don't. The book ends by proposing three ways for aid to let go, through supporting and trusting people to do the right thing.
The book ultimately seeks to reinforce that engaging in processes is vital for effective disaster recovery programmes. That means putting first those caught up in disaster and supporting local organisations who are best placed to provide the right support. It will be crucial reading to anyone working in humanitarian aid, especially planners, architects, engineers and community development practitioners.

List of contents

1. A Disaster Strikes Mishal. 2. Unpacking Urban Disasters. 3. Resetting Humanitarian Response. 4. Learning from Development. 5. Putting People First. 6. Sheltering After Disaster. 7. Letting Go.

About the author

David Sanderson is a trained architect and has worked for over 30 years across the World, engaging in development and disasters. After four years with a disaster management consultancy he joined the NGO CARE International UK in 1998 as head of policy, specialising in urban issues, and was subsequently regional manager for Southern and West Africa, based in Johannesburg. In 2006 David became Director of a UK centre focusing on development and emergencies. Between 2013-14 he was a full time Visiting Professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. After 18 months as a Professor in Norway he joined the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 2016 as the Inaugural Judith Neilson Chair of Architecture. David has served on the boards of CARE, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Humanitarian Innovation Fund.

Product details

• Authors: Sanderson David
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 03.03.2026
• EAN: 9781032411569
• ISBN: 978-1-032-41156-9
• No. of pages: 210
• Illustrations: schwarz-weiss Illustrationen, Zeichnungen, schwarz-weiss
• Series: Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Architecture; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); ARCHITECTURE / Landscape, ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban, City & town planning - architectural aspects, Urban & municipal planning, Civil engineering, surveying & building, Natural disasters, Human Geography, Urban communities, Development Studies, Urban and municipal planning and policy, Risk assessment, City and town planning: architectural aspects, Health & safety issues, Health and safety in the workplace, Civil engineering, surveying and building, Urban communities / city life