The use of Public Open Spaces for Disaster Resilient Urban Cities

There is an increasing recognition on the use of public open space as a strategy to make cities more sustainable. Accordingly, most of contemporary urban planners, designers, and landscape architects use the public open spaces as a strategy to increase the quality of life, to improve aesthetic beauty, to improve the environmental health, economic growth, to increase the walkability, liveability and vitality of a city, which leads towards the sustainability. However, sustainable development should comprise the improvements of disaster resilience. Yet, lack of consideration has been given to use the public open spaces as a strategy for disaster resilience while accommodating the everyday use of the city. In other words, how to use the public open spaces to increase the ability of the city dwellers to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a natural hazard still remains largely uncovered. Accordingly, this desk based research study, explores and emphasises the potential uses of public open spaces for disaster resilience as an agent of recovery, to provide essential life support, as a primary place to rescue and for shelters and potential for adaptive response through the analysis of literature discussions on previous disaster events along with current disaster management strategies and practices.