Johnson, Cassidy; (2006) Strategic planning for temporary housing: 1999 earthquakes in Turkey. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), Université de Montréal.

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Abstract

Temporary housing after disasters is the outcome of a complex process that merits attention in its own right; it is distinct from, yet interrelated with, the process of reconstruction. Some forms of temporary housing projects have been instigated after most major disasters in the past 40 years, but many projects have experienced similar problems, such as high cost, lack of cultural suitability, unsatisfactory locations and permanence, all of which translate into their being a burden on the communities they were intended to help recover. Many of these problems can be attributed to a lack of planning, especially at the strategic level, before the disaster occurs. This research explores how temporary housing projects are defined, how they are organized and managed, and what their later impacts are on urban development. These factors are used as a basis for defining issues to be addressed in strategic planning. The research is comprised of four articles, which have been published in scholarly journals and also includes sections on previous research and on methodology, and provides a synthesis of the overall findings. The overarching methodology used is that of the qualitative case study, coupled to the systems approach. The logical framework is used to define the project processes and to evaluate the project impacts. The temporary housing programme after the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey is the main case study, in which the government and NGOs built almost 42,000 temporary housing units to house the affected families from two major earthquakes which affected the industrial region to the east of Istanbul. In order to develop a comparative framework, this research also draws on other case histories of recent temporary housing programmes, such as those in Mexico, Italy, Colombia, Japan, Greece and the United States. The research brings to light new ideas: 1) temporary housing projects are strongly influenced by the organizational and building culture of the countries in which they are implemented; 2) timely and well-organized procurement is a key step, in which finding satisfactory sites for temporary housing remains one of the largest problems; 3) after temporary housing has served its initial purpose, it does not need to become a burden but can instead be a valuable resource of low-cost housing in a place where housing is in short supply. Overall this research proposes a strategic planning framework and offers guidance about organizational design, technical design and project processes that need to be incorporated into the strategic planning for temporary housing projects.

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