Urbanising disaster governance The politics of risks in the foothills of Santiago

Disasters and their underlying risks are critical social and spatial issues in our current urban condition. Predominant paradigms for understanding and acting upon disaster risks have long-established their profound social character, putting forth disaster risk reduction (DRR) and governance as central tenets. While this approach has proven to be effective in some cases, social development continues to reproduce and even produce new disaster risks in cities worldwide. This thesis engages with some overlooked political questions in the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies, particularly in relation to the role of urban processes in the root causation of disasters and the (re)creation of disaster risks.
Based on mixed methods and developing a spatial political economic perspective that recentres power, space and justice as analytical tools, this doctoral thesis analyses urban disaster governance in a marginal area of Santiago, Chile. The area is located in the south-east of Santiago, along the foothills of the Andes, and thus susceptible to landslide and flood hazards. The thesis focuses on the experiences of long-standing communities with a debris flow that occurred on 3 May 1993 and the post-disaster urban development process. As such, from exclusionary outcomes of recovery and spatial planning, to contentious post-disaster memory and risk management initiatives, the research shows a critical tension between disaster risk and urbanisation processes. Far from politically-neutral and spatially-blind approaches to manage risks, this thesis points to the need to urbanise disaster governance, grounding critical practices not only towards DRR but also to resist the (re)creation of risks.