Housing and Urban Vulnerability in Rapidly-Developing Cities

In recent months, pictures of millions of homes flattened and washed away by the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 26 December, 2004, have been seen on the media. Housing vulnerability is an obvious component of the disaster; the centrality of housing to the material losses suffered, the apparent ease with which so many dwellings were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, the effect on the residents of the economic and material shock of losing their homes and property. This article looks at housing and vulnerability at several levels within the context of daily life, and of mitigating the effects of disasters on housing and its occupants. It begins by setting the context of housing loss within disasters in recent times. This is followed by an examination of the benefits which housing provision can bring to the need to reduce vulnerability, through how and by whom it is constructed and the opportunities it provides for income earning