Cities, Disasters and Livelihoods

Abstract

Recent natural disasters show that it is almost always the poorest who are worst affected. The rapidly urbanizing cities of Asia, Africa and Latin America present unprecedented concentrations of poverty, and in so doing mark new levels of vulnerability.

Increasing urbanization brings new challenges to reducing the threat of disaster. Yet disasters are often ignored until they strike, when the damage has been done and relief is the only response. The situation is compounded by the separation of urban programming from disaster management. In a future context of increased urban growth, however, marked by an inevitable increase in urban disasters, new approaches that ‘mainstream’ disaster mitigation into urban development interventions at all levels are needed.

Livelihood methodologies being practised by an increasing number of developmental organizations take account of the threat of disaster as intrinsic to developmental strategies. Livelihoods offer one approach that unifies understandings of both disaster management with development planning. Such an approach has major policy implications for decision makers aiming to make cities truly sustainable.