Toward Sustainable Disaster Recovery by Seeing It as “More Than a Roof Overhead”

This chapter compares two recent housing reconstruction case studies to illustrate how addressing the intersection of the sources of vulnerability and the impacts of a disaster can frame the processes of long-term recovery. The case study communities, a village in Sri Lanka and a city in the United States, were both severely impacted by a (un)natural disaster after long periods of poverty and neglect. The case studies have been selected to demonstrate the complexity of housing reconstruction and the importance of approaching reconstruction challenges through the lenses of “more than a roof overhead.”