It’s been a while since we last posted something with substance. The Post-production phase was hectic, with the symposium, exhibition, various presentations, and off course the publication which is technically still in progress. So technically we’re still in Post-Production Phase (3) but we consider this now as the fourth phase (Phase 4: Aftermath). This means we’ll focus on significantly updating this blog with old and current data and establish this blog as a platform.

The current situation after hurricane Ida shows how important it is to try to understand these circumstances of living in disaster prone areas. We’ll hope to gather information about this which will help us in our descriptions of the case study El Salvador.

Much love to all of our friend in El Salvador!

Introduction

We are currently in the last stage of our research, specifying our objectives and trying to gather as much information as possible on site. Besides the fact that we prioritize data gathering and not (significant less) graphic production, as our blog indicates, we need more time to verify important information. We’ve been addressing in depth interviews the issues of cultural influences on spatial planning (grass-root culture) and how/if (international) aid in the form of post-disaster responses could help develop urban vitality. A lot of this information is subjective and can be verified with sources of information, so we’ve been gathering local data in the form of reports/books/investigations etc. Our goal is to keep expanding our network that could be helpful for our specific objectives and use the time and facilities in the Netherlands during the post-production phase to process them in greater detail.


Actors

The collaboration, positive or negative, between different key-actors has repetitively shown to be very influential for the ‘successes’ or ‘failures’ of responses and incentives. We organize the actors in:
- NGO > incentives on a communal level
- Habitants/people > organized communities, individualism
- National government > decentralizing > institutions for regulations
- Local government > (financial) capacity > distribution and prioritization
- Church > influence, preference/trust from civilians
- Private (stakeholders) > obtaining/developing land, small incentives
We’ve been talking to people affiliated to all actor groups but lack information about the role of church. We aim to strengthen this contact within the coming days. Besides establishing contact we came to understand that it’s important to understand how and for whom people look for/rely on leadership (grass-root culture).


Surveys/workshops

In remaining weeks we are currently setting up workshops and continuing to process and develop more surveys. With these tools we aim to document: specific information, reach out to a lot of actors/visions and cultural perspectives. For example with the surveys we’ll try to get a clear picture about the cultural perspective on leadership and about awareness among people.


Case Studies

Mejicanos is our case study which provided a lot of information for our contemporary analysis. With this we are able to understand more and more about incentives, dependence to the city center/connectivity and vulnerability. A couple of issues we want to point out at this moment are:
- social problems
- land rights (owner)
- environmental issues
- risk reduction
- politics

In the case study of Santa Tecla we investigate the ‘migration’ of people, from the emergency phase to transitional and permanent settlements. The incentives and the reasons why people choose to migrate to certain places are key. We are critical on the way opportunities for future development (especially economical and educational) are integrated in urban planning. We’ll have to investigate the vision on these topics from the planners, so we plan to have more in-depth interviews with involved Municipalities, architects and NGOs.

For the case study CHSS (Downtown: Centro Historico San Salvador) we investigate the non-psychical, with the focus on gaining cultural perspective. For example:
- Political: the process of obtaining building permissions to develop/construct.
- Economical: city/country dependence, public space occupation by vendors
- Development: area of focus and growth to suburbia

We aim to have a more detailed description and simplistic illustration soon as well as more of our documents online.

During the last two weeks most updates are post in reports (see Downloads, to the right). If you missed out on this and would like to read up on our work, please download the most recent reports. We will inform you from now on with quick posts to link you directly to the newest updates.

Due to ‘Semana Santa’ (Holy Week), inconsequential access to internet and the lack of working places during this vacation we’ve been focusing on getting the case studies of the ground. As a result of the Revision, we’ve chosen the combination of Mejicanos, Downtown AMSS and Santa Tecla. See Location presentation

For the last few days we’ve been meeting with key contacts of these locations to update and brainstorm on further development of the case studies. For every case study a short overview of objectives, actions and needs were made and are available for download here. We continue in to identify ourselves and the research in more specific detail to others in order to collaborate more efficient.

For the organization of the blog, we plan to update our findings in graphic illustrations and reports, tagged according to the case study. For a clear overview and quick navigation we advice to look for the tags: Mejicanos, Santa Tecla and Downtown AMSS, on the right.

For our research concerning Architectural Body we plan to update our photographic analysis, also tagged with Architectural Body. We continue to gather more information concerning the material flow and updates for the blog will follow soon.

We look forward to your replies and are thankful for the interests shown (mostly through mails) regarding our progress.

Urban Emergencies

The Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands is carrying out a research on post disaster urban responses. This pilot project has been initiated in order to find ways in which urban tools and understandings concerning urbanization processes and urban vitality can contribute to the ongoing development efforts regarding the reconstruction and redevelopment phase. The project has been setup with a three month on field mapping and analyses period to take place between March and May 2009, followed up by a 6-week postproduction phase culminating in a symposium and publication. A total of 18 students will work in groups of 3, in 6 different countries; El Salvador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Philippines, Ghana and Bangladesh, focusing on various aspects (e.g. material, architectural, spatial, organizational, socio-economical, cultural, etc). This is in order to gather more information about cultural influences on architecture and urbanism, especially in the natural disaster responses. For more information about Urban Emergencies and to download the Project Outline of the pilot, please visit the website at www.urbanemergencies.org.

Case study group El Salvador

Our group consists out of three members: B.B Olde Bijvank, D. Duif and W. Pocornie. We all followed the Bachelor course at the University of Delft. We are motivated to make this pilot a success, learn and exchange information with the established network and most of all contribute as much as possible to the ongoing practice of post disaster urban responses.

Contents of Project Plan

This document contains passages out of the Project Plan and is meant to introduce ourselves and to inform possible network contacts about our research. Currently we are in the field research phase, we aim to update our work and network as much as possible. We keep a blog up to date: www.elsalvador-urbanemergencies.blogspot.com

Problem field definition

In the development of the case study, a better understanding of the cultural background is needed. We use ‘The Evolutionary Map’. It consist generic data gathered about the country El Salvador. This information serves as a graphic illustration of the body of knowledge and is flexible which means that it keeps being updated when more data is gathered along the investigation.

It functions as a tool that maps facts and indicates growth, decrease and impacts in different fields of disciplines while simultaneously gives insight about the relations between these disciplines. This way we are able to investigate cultural events while looking for direct links with disasters and urban response processes.

Disciplines, conditions & starting points

In theory the Evolutionary Map could give insight on the entire urbanism context, any event in a period of time, milestones and process. We choose to start of with mapping five main disciplines which could be sub vided in more specific disciplines or areas:
- Natural disasters
- Spatial area
- Economy
- Population
- Political events

First of all the theme is natural disasters, this is our primary discipline for the Evolutionary Map; earthquakes, volcano eruptions, floods, landslides, hurricanes etc. Certain disasters are repetitive, such as floods and mudslides cause by heavy rain. The consequences of one disaster can also be the immediate cause for the next disaster. The other disciplines are spatial area, economy, population and political events. Economy shows us the (financial) development of the nation and cities. Within the population we focus on the population growth and migration. Political events such as wars, demonstrations and the ruling parties are graphically represented in time periods and milestones.

All the general and specific information we gather we will translate to spatial conditions, sub vided in these disciplines. The earthquake of 1986 and the two earthquakes of 2001 are the primary targets in the field of natural disasters, respectively for the case study in Downtown and in Santa Tecla. For the case study in Mejicanos the main focus will be on the vulnerability of the settlements and the repetitiveness of floods and mudslides during the rainy season.