buildforth

Building Forth Together: Refocusing Building Back Better on Social Justice

Prof. Dr. Eray Çayli, MIN Faculty, Institute of Geography (UHH)

Dr. Ethemcan Turhan, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, Dept of Spatial Planning and Environment (UG)

Building back better has figured prominently in resilience and post-disaster recovery debates over the past decade. Meanwhile, it has also been increasingly criticized for obscuring longstanding vulnerabilities by idealizing erstwhile status quos being built back. We contribute to these criticisms by centring a question they have yet to fully address: How do vulnerable communities/regions themselves understand and practice the task of rebuilding vis-à-vis disasters? We explore this question through two workshops in Groningen and Hamburg in 2024, focusing especially on urban environments and the social, political, and economic relations at work in them. Our aim is to reorientate discourses and practices of resilience towards situated struggles for justice that operate against the grain of historical injustices—struggles that build forth together rather than building back better.