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Abstract

The field of post-disaster recovery has undergone major epistemological shifts in the past century, with disasters being redefined beyond natural phenomena to expose vulnerabilities within institutional and social systems. Despite planning being recognized as essential for building back better, this ideal remains constrained by incoherent and maladaptive post-disaster spatial intervention. Insufficient theoretical and instrumental grounding for recovery planning is a major problem. The idea of urban morphogenesis describes and prescribes adaptive and fundamental urban changes. Recognizing disaster as a morphogenetic agent of change forms the basis for morpho-resilience—a tactical and place-based planning framework for more coherent post-disaster recovery.

Keywords

Post-disaster recovery planning urban morphogenesis disaster vulnerability disaster resilience morphogenetic agents of change disaster paradigms disaster risk reduction

Introduction

Over the past century, the discourse around disasters has evolved and shifted, first from fatalism to the hazard paradigm, which frames disasters as natural phenomena to be addressed by physical sciences, and then further to the vulnerability paradigm, which denaturalizes disasters by recognizing them as outcomes of both the material existence of hazards and failures in institutional and social systems that give rise to vulnerabilities (Dodds 2015; Gaillard 2021). Global researchers, particularly over the past five decades, have become increasingly concerned with disasters and their catastrophic effects on the urban built environment, because of the rising numbers of casualties and economic losses linked to such events, and the associated increasing need for recovery (Yi and Yang 2014; Zhai, Li and Chen 2015).

Traditionally considered one of four phases alongside mitigation (or prevention), preparedness and response, recovery is currently viewed as a dynamic process interwoven with the other phases (Drabek 1986; March, Kornakova and Leon 2017, 2–3; National Governor's Association 1979). While there are alternative phase categorizations and further subdivisions of recovery (Ali and Mannakkara 2024; Carr 1932; Haas, Kates and Bowden 1977; Mileti, Drabek and Haas 1975; United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015), this paper focuses on planning for recovery, characterized as a continuous, long-term process beginning immediately after a disaster and extending over a decade, depending on the context (see, for example, Kates and Pijawka 1977; Mohammadi et al. 2024; Neal 1997; Olshansky 2009). It clarifies challenges facing the most fundamental role of planning—plan making for the spatial organization of human settlements and management of change (Huxley and Inch 2020; March, Kornakova and Handmer 2017; Tustian 2001).

In connection with disasters associated with environmental hazards, this paper critically reviews the literature on post-disaster recovery from the early twentieth century to 2025. While the inclusion of more than 130 publications in this review does not represent all existing knowledge, assessment of this relatively comprehensive body of work is expected to not only specify problems in current post-disaster planning but also suggest theoretical and practical responses.

Shifting disaster paradigms have shaped the development of recovery planning strategies (Blaikie et al. 1994). Since the emergence of the vulnerability paradigm in the 1970s, disasters have been framed as opportunities for betterment or as agents of positive urban change (Christoplos 2006; Olshansky 2009; Olshansky, Hopkins and Johnson 2012). As “a highly effective spatially realized knowledge and decision base for ongoing improvement and decision making” (March, Kornakova and Handmer 2017, 14), planning has been recognized as essential to enacting post-disaster urban betterment (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2020). However, this ideal remains aspirational rather than operational, constrained by traditional land use planning and inadequate responses to the deep-seated structural conditions of vulnerability manifested in the urban landscape (Matthewman and Lambert 2024; Del Pinto 2021). For instance, in Ishinomaki City and Rikuzen-Takata City following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, recovery planning led to maladaptation and socio-spatial fragmentation (Kondo and Lizarralde 2021, 9–12). In Valparaíso, Chile, pre-2014 wildfire settlement vulnerability was recreated when nongovernmental organizations rapidly reconstructed houses on existing sites (March, Kornakova and Handmer 2017, 13–14).

Like planning in many other settings, a great deal of recovery planning centers around the spatial impact of recovery plans and the spatial co-ordination of the various functions and activities in the physical environment (Hodge 2003). Both anticipated spatial impacts and outcomes are realized though recovery plans. These may include a comprehensive land use plan, or a small area recovery plan, each aimed at distinct audiences and agendas (Meyer et al. 2024, 240; Olshansky and Chang 2009). However, the lack of a sound basis for plan-making has resulted in the discrepancy between the recovery planning process and outcome. In the context of the competing demands and time pressures following a disaster (Olshansky, Hopkins and Johnson 2012), how can coherent and place-based plans be put in place to manage post-disaster urban landscape changes more effectively? This research seeks to answer this question by tapping into the idea of urban morphogenesis.

Urban morphogenesis, with origins in geographical landscape research, means the continuous creation and adaptation of form through growth and change, with each stage of development building directly upon the previous state (Alexander 2004; Sauer 1925). Morphogenetic agents, including both human actors and nonhuman entities, influence the physical form and structure of the urban landscape over time (Larkham and Conzen 2014; Whitehand 1988). Rather than dissecting recovery planning into disparate components—socioeconomic, political, environmental, and cultural, by understanding disaster as a morphogenetic agent, these components can be viewed as influencing each other and co-evolving dynamically. This conceptualization treats disaster as a diachronic phenomenon articulated through the socio-spatial evolution of urban landscapes. Concerned with both the process and outcome, urban morphogenesis can promote resilience as both a result to achieve and a means for realizing desired results in recovery planning.

Based on the recognition of disaster as a morphogenetic agent of change, this paper foregrounds morpho-resilience as a tactical tool for recovery plan-making. Morpho-resilience seeks to understand risks, including reading the urban landscape as a record of how past decisions accumulate into current risk profiles; delineating landscape management zones—areas of consistent form, community lived experience, and vulnerability patterns for place-specific recovery strategies; and embedding form–function–community relationships into recovery plans. The inherent strength of morpho-resilience for managing change offers a promising framework to address the planning problems identified in this review (Gu 2010; Gu et al. 2021). By providing coherent planning support across social, spatial, and temporal dimensions, morpho-resilience can be applied to realize effective disaster risk reduction and promote resilient, sustainable post-disaster urban (re)development.

Post-Disaster Recovery and Its Evolving Paradigms

The literature on post-disaster recovery has been among the fastest-growing fields of scholarly inquiry since the 1970s, but nevertheless remains somewhat scattered (Hoffman 2020, 3). Reflecting its varied disciplinary origins, recovery has variously been described as an issue of governance (March, Kornakova and Handmer 2017), economics (Chang and Rose 2012), civil engineering (Hage et al. 2023), emergency management (Alexander 2015), and planning (Olshansky and Chang 2009). Some of the most fruitful recovery research has been achieved from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and geography, which have shaped major shifts in recovery thinking (Gaillard 2021). These shifts, and the practices they inform, reflect an evolving understanding of disaster. Table 1 outlines this progression. While it primarily reflects Western discourses and is by no means complete, Table 1 offers a summary of key developments in the field. In particular, the discussion on the vulnerability paradigm reveals the theoretical and practical limitations of current post-disaster recovery planning.

Table 1.

Evolving Understanding of Disaster and Associated Concepts, Foundations, and Recovery Approaches.

	Fatalism	Hazard Paradigm	Vulnerability Paradigm
Timeline	Before the twentieth century	Since the early twentieth century	Since the 1970s
Origins in broader academic traditions		Behavioral geography movement	Political ecology tradition of geography
Identified root causes	External forces (e.g., natural forces, divine will)	External natural forces exceed human coping capacities owing to insufficient risk perception	Structural and systemic development failures
Key emphases	Disasters are unavoidable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable	Prioritizes hazard characteristics (magnitude, frequency) and physical adjustments, assuming wealth and technological advancement increase resilience	Disasters result from the exposure of underlying vulnerabilities within socioeconomic, cultural, political, and ecological systems triggered by the material existence of hazards
Conceptual framing of disasters	Divine retribution or fate	Disruptions to normalcy	Opportunities to build back better
Foundational works		Prince (1920), Carr (1932), White (1945)	O’Keefe et al. (1976), Hewitt (1983), Blaikie et al. (1994), Wisner et al. (2004), Perry and Quarantelli (2005), Wisner et al. (2012)
Key frameworks		Choice tree	Yokohama strategy 1994; Hyogo framework for action 2005; Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction 2015
Guiding recovery concepts	Prayer, rituals	Speedy return to normalcy with some adjustments to hazards through land-use changes, loss reduction, and passive acceptance of risk	Resilience, sustainable development, risk reduction, build back better, and community-based

Following the tradition of political ecology in geography, the vulnerability paradigm emerged as researchers began to confront the assumption that disasters are natural, redirecting their focus toward the social dimensions of disasters, where their inevitability and unpreventable nature are challenged (Gaillard and Mercer 2013; Hewitt 1983; O’Keefe, Westgate and Wisner 1976). Blaikie et al.'s book At Risk (1994) and their Pressure and Release Model consolidated this view with the argument that hazards disproportionately affect populations not merely owing to external forces but also to socioeconomic, political, and environmental systems (Gaillard 2021). This perspective led to the disaster risk equation, which has become a foundational concept in disaster studies: Disaster Risk = Hazard × Vulnerability.

Vulnerability is defined as conditions shaped by “physical, social, economic, and environmental factors or processes” which heighten the susceptibility of people, communities, or assets to hazards (United Nations General Assembly 2016). This vulnerability is dynamic, evolving with changes in both social systems and the environment. Disasters should thus be understood as processual outcomes rooted in flawed development norms, as demonstrated in the Pressure and Release model, in which incremental institutional and planning failures over time accumulate vulnerabilities that are exposed by hazards (see Blaikie et al. 1994, 23; Del Pinto 2021, 17). Disasters, therefore, are not the cause of disruptions to the norm but a result of the pre-disaster status quo (Lizarralde 2021, 38).

The vulnerability paradigm resulted in the development of disaster risk reduction, the policy objective of disaster risk management, which seeks to prevent new risks, mitigate existing ones, and manage residual risks to enhance resilience and contribute to sustainable development (United Nations General Assembly 2016). Here, resilience is defined as the capacity of complex urban systems to not only adapt to, but also transform in response to external stresses (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2020). These concepts have been consolidated through the subsequent development of global and local policy documents and frameworks, with the most recent being the Sendai Framework (Gaillard 2021; United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015, 2019).

The emergence of the vulnerability paradigm marked the beginning of a considerable shift in disaster recovery research from short-term, hazard-based relief efforts toward a developmental focus on the flawed social, political, economic, cultural, and physical systems that produce vulnerability (Cuny 1983; Davis 1978; Maskrey 1989; Oliver-Smith 1991). Rather than viewing disasters as interruptions, the developmental approach views them as opportunities or catalysts for transformation to reimagine cities and implement risk reduction, which are otherwise resisted because of tradition, economic priorities, or cultural inertia (Christoplos 2006; Davis and Alexander 2015; Lewis 1980). The early emphasis on rapidly restoring pre-disaster conditions has gradually given way to the notion of “build back better,” a term first coined by the World Bank (2005) after the Indian Ocean Tsunami (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015). Build back better is defined as a holistic post-disaster recovery approach that integrates disaster risk reduction measures to enhance the physical, psychological, social, and economic conditions of communities, with the aim of improving overall resilience (Mannakkara, Wilkinson and Potangaroa 2018; United Nations General Assembly 2016).

Synthesizing from the planning-related literature, built forms, from buildings and districts to entire cities, often transform as a direct response to the structural, functional, or social failures exposed by a disaster. Innovations such as building height restrictions, new materials, structural designs, and zoning regulations emerge in response to what has failed (Cuny 1983; Davis 1983). Considerable attention is devoted to the restoration of specific physical infrastructure and shelter (Chester et al. 2021). As the most urgent and visible post-disaster need, shelter has been conceptualized as user-build housing (Turner 1976), a process rather than a product (Davis 1978), and a context-specific, locally adapted solution (Cuny 1977, 1983). The governance role of planning in recovery has also been extensively explored (March, Kornakova and Handmer 2017). Researchers have noted that technocratic, command-and-control recovery is being challenged by community-based recovery that prioritizes local empowerment and bottom-up strategies (Lewis 1987; Maskrey 1989; Turner 1976).

It is noteworthy that vulnerability is being increasingly criticized for “its tendency to oversimplify, disempower, and stigmatize communities” (Matthewman and Lambert 2024, 145). Almost by definition, resilience serves as the antonym of vulnerability (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2020). It has therefore attracted similar, if not more intense criticism. One of the most central critiques of resilience is that it depoliticizes risk, shifting attention away from the structural causes of vulnerability (e.g., inequity) toward individual or community capacities (Lizarralde 2021). As a result, responsibility often moves from decision-makers to individuals (Horn 2021). It is also evident that the emerging new paradigms do not fully replace older ones. Disasters are still framed as “acts of God” in some so-called underdeveloped regions (Gaillard and Texier 2010), with the hazard paradigm remaining prevalent and, in fact, prominent in much of the world (De et al. 2023; Jackson, McNamara and Witt 2017; Karácsonyi and Taylor 2021). The coexistence of competing paradigms and contested interpretations of recovery concepts are complicating the global shift toward build back better, where decades of advancements in disaster risk reduction have yet to resolve persistent challenges, particularly in post-disaster recovery planning.

Challenges Facing Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery

With a focus on post-disaster spatial (re)configuration, problems in recovery planning are frequently related to the constraints of traditional land use planning and inadequate responses to the underlying structural causes of vulnerability. The mainstream recovery literature and the build back better framework suggest that post-disaster spatial intervention remains land-use based, with continuing emphasis on damage, hazard, and vulnerability assessments to identify where and how reconstruction should occur (Hopkins et al. 2011; Hewitt, Potangaroa and Wilkinson 2009; Mannakkara, Wilkinson and Potangaroa 2018). These assessments have informed land-use strategies in recovery plan-making, including risk-based zoning and subdivision regulations that aim to reduce exposure, guide rebuilding efforts, and adapt to changing hazard patterns (Asian Development Bank 2016; Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre 2015).

A national survey of 940 planning professionals from the American Planning Association has confirmed that the most valued and widely used planning tools in recovery are land use zoning ordinances and building code amendments (Meyer et al. 2024, 247). This view is echoed globally (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 2020), and examples include Christchurch's red-zone approach after the 2011 earthquake (Saunders and Becker 2015), hazard-based zoning designations in Ofunato City after the 2011 earthquake (Ubaura 2018), the coastal buffer zone in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami, and the wildfire management overlay map in Victoria after the 2008 wildfire (Mannakkara and Wilkinson 2013).

These revisions of pre-disaster zoning primarily based on physical risk mapping as well as engineering evaluations with a recently emerging descriptive emphasis that lacks actionable strategies for quantifying and mapping out social vulnerability, often meet community resistance, as observed in post-tsunami Aceh after 2004 (Ballard, McDonnell and Calandra 2020; Nazaruddin 2025; Park and Xu 2020; Saunders, Beban and Kilvington 2013). Such revisions offer little remedy to deeper structural failures (Gaillard 2021). It fails to consider the temporal and social processes embedded in space that shape urban (re)development and (de)construct risk. Such zoning is thus reactive and ineffective in guiding positive post-disaster urban change, often leading to socio-spatial fragmentation and placelessness (March and Kornakova 2017, 232; Gu 2019; Kondo and Lizarralde 2021; Zetter and Boano 2009).

The dominance of land use planning in recovery practice mirrors and amplifies the same issue afflicting planning in general. Urban space is portrayed as a “jigsaw” of contiguous land use parcels, connected by infrastructure networks and enclosed within a bounded, Euclidean grid, which is assumed to form a unified, objective spatial frame (Graham and Healey 1999, 626). This mode of spatial depiction remains the foundation for plan-making practice globally and continues to reduce realties to geometries and “suppress difference and establish a homogeneity of representation” (Harvey 1996, 284). Lefebvre (1991, 89–90) believes that this approach “falls into the trap of treating space as space in itself” and fails to uncover the relational space, that is, the “production of space in the social relationship inherent to it.” The disconnect between how planners govern the urban landscape through land use zoning and how the urban landscape actually works is exacerbated in the aftermath of a disaster.

Del Pinto (2021, 18) drew attention to the inadequate interpretation of spatial vulnerability, and consequently, to inadequate responses to its structural causes. As often interpreted in the literature, “spatial vulnerability” merely means the geographic distribution of at-risk populations, determined through regional-scale mapping of social indicators (Cutter and Finch 2008; Duan et al. 2024; Ramli et al. 2023). Rather than engaging with the vulnerability of space itself, it is thus treated as a static container, defined by buildings or land uses (Graham and Healey 1999). In fact, each configuration of buildings, plots, and streets reflects the cumulative imprint of social structures, economic conditions, and cultural norms over time (Kropf 1996). To neglect the spatial process of vulnerability is to misunderstand its very form in the urban context and to reproduce the structural failures embedded in traditional zoning.

In essence, traditional zoning, which is a rather normative and standardized approach, still rests on the avoidance of hazards through land-use changes, loss reduction, and passive acceptance of risk (Nazaruddin 2025). It remains influenced by the hazard paradigm, despite the challenges to this approach and efforts to move on dating from more than half a century ago (Gaillard 2021). As Alexander (2019) argued, one of the central critiques of the hazard paradigm is its marginalization of the socio-cultural dimensions of disaster risk. Since the emergence of the vulnerability paradigm in the 1970s, spatial intervention has increasingly been associated with the social dimension of disaster, especially in maintaining genius loci to balance change and continuity (Davis and Alexander 2015). However, the rather descriptive and subjective nature of these discussions in both the planning and recovery literature has not generated a coherent and operational framework. Preserving genius loci is often relegated to siloed interventions in building design, street patterns, or symbolic restoration (e.g., monuments) (Alexander 2004; Zetter and Boano 2009), which frequently produce unsatisfactory results. This is evident in post-2008 earthquake recovery in Dujiangyan, China. Despite plans and policies advocating the preservation of cultural heritage and recovery with continuity (Kou 2019; Kou, Chalana and Zhou 2020), the redevelopment outcomes have been characterized as “senseless homogenization” and “socio-spatial fragmentation” (Guo and Wang 2014; Zhang and Zhou 2016).

The socio-temporal dynamics of spatial vulnerability and resilience remain under-researched and underutilized. While land-use-based spatial practices can mitigate certain risks, they offer only a shallow response to entrenched vulnerabilities. Social and economic inequities, community marginalization, and political inertia are often assigned to separate policy domains, implicitly suggesting that spatial intervention, especially landscape forms, cannot address these issues. Without acknowledging that spatial interventions must also engage with structural causes of vulnerability, the focus on land use adjustment becomes a proxy for genuine positive urban change.

Urban Morphogenesis and Disaster as a Morphogenetic Agent of Change

Urban morphogenesis, also known as geographical urban morphology, studies the structure of the urban landscape as a cumulative outcome of complex natural and socio-cultural processes (Larkham and Jones 1991; Whitehand 1981, 1). Work by Schlüter (1899a, b), who proposed the morphology of cultural landscapes in human geography, represents some of the earliest thoughts on interpreting forms through human intervention together with their origins and evolution on a temporal scale (Larkham and Conzen 2014). Fritz (1894), Keyser (1958), and Kretzschmar (1908) studied urban form in terms of spatial patterns and their historical development, treating towns as physical embodiments of historical processes (Gauthiez 2004).

Influenced by the morphogenetic tradition, MRG Conzen further developed the idea of morphological regions—referred to as landscape-type areas in this paper. His study of the morphological transformations of Alnwick in England provided a systematic framework for operationalizing urban morphology to understand the morphogenesis of urban landscape through historical documentation, large-scale ground plans, and field surveys (Conzen 1960; Whitehand 1987). Urban landscape should primarily be analyzed through the site, ground plans, building forms, and land use (Whitehand 1987). Therefore, an urban area can be divided into landscape-type areas defined by one or multiple morphological elements, each distinct from its neighboring areas. Identifying and characterizing these divisions on the basis of their historico-geographical evolution aid in understanding urban spatial structures and informs urban landscape creation and management (Gu 2010, 2014). In this way, future modifications to the urban landscape will be integrated cohesively into the existing landscape to sustain historical and socio-cultural continuity (Whitehand 2009).

Morphogenesis is particularly concerned with the agents involved in urban development and transformation. Morphogenetic agents influence the physical form and structure of urban environments over time, shaping everything from alterations to the individual building façades to overall townscape configurations (Larkham and Conzen 2014). These agents have traditionally been associated with human actors, with various categorizations proposed. Whitehand (1988) classified agents as direct (e.g., architects) and indirect (e.g., local authorities, the public), while Kropf (2014, 320) identified motive, generative, regulatory, resistive, and sensory agents. Larkham and Conzen (2014) observed a shift toward acknowledging nonhuman entities, such as architectural forms, cultural values, and global economic forces, as active participants in shaping the urban landscape. Morphogenesis has been extensively developed in the context of urban conservation (Larkham and Jones 1991). Its scope later expanded to include urban design and planning and, more recently, to improving traditional zoning practices, managing redevelopment, and promoting social justice in planning (Gu 2014, 2019). This paper is novel in seeking to explore the untapped potential of morphogenesis in disaster risk reduction by reconceptualizing disaster as a morphogenetic agent of change, to support the post-disaster spatial (re)organization of cities and continuous adaptation to urban landscapes.

Widely recognized as the first emergence of the social dimension of disasters in the literature, Prince's book Catastrophe and Social Change (1920, 16) identified catastrophes as “a precipitating agent in social change” capable of driving social and institutional transformation that might otherwise take much longer to occur under normal conditions. Prince contended that disasters disrupt the status quo, which allows for critical reflection on societal structures that may either accelerate pre-existing trends or stimulate reforms.

Leighly's (1928) pioneering study, The Towns of Mälardalen in Sweden: A Study in Urban Morphology, identified fire as an active agent of change in shaping Mälardalen's townscapes (Larkham 2015). Reliance on wooden construction and the unadapted adoption of Mediterranean high-density layouts had fostered what he termed an “unstable equilibrium” in fire vulnerability (Leighly 1928, 45). Consequently, fire repeatedly reshaped these “plastic” towns. Destructive events in Enköping (1799), Strängnäs (1871), and Köping (1889) prompted thorough replanning, with wider, more regulated streets often following rectangular grids. In Köping, for example, the areas rebuilt after the fire contrasted sharply with those that escaped damage. From the seventeenth century onwards, state authorities had pushed for the introduction of more fire-resistant urban plans inspired by Mediterranean models, albeit with local resistance persisting where property rights and new layouts clashed. Fireproof building practices slowly emerged as the state continued its efforts, but replanning without the destruction caused by fire, as attempted in Uppsala, often retained much of the irregularity of earlier medieval patterns.

Although Leighly treated fire alone as a disaster “agent” rather than considering both the hazard and underlying vulnerabilities, his analysis was perhaps the first to link disaster events to landscape form change. It remains highly instructive for contemporary post-disaster analysis, looking at pre-disaster urban form and structure, disaster-induced adaptations, and the rationales behind these responses, which can in turn inform assessments of their long-term effectiveness.

Davis (1983) introduced “form follows failure,” which describes how new built forms, often more disaster-resistant, emerge after disasters expose structural failures. These pioneering studies, without exception, take a retrospective view and recognize disasters as agents of urban change, but their analyses remain descriptive rather than prescriptive. The identified issues and challenges suggest that a more precise and operational conceptualization of disaster is required in recovery planning to exploit the untapped potential of more effective spatial intervention. The development of a coherent foundation for recovery plans, which are frequently formulated under competing demands and time pressures, is particularly imperative (Olshansky, Hopkins and Johnson 2012).

Based on the processual nature of disasters, recovery planning should look beyond the immediate destruction to the ontogenesis of disaster. Socio-cultural processes shape built environments and (de)construct vulnerabilities over time. Urban morphogenesis offers a promising framework to analyze existing urban structures and processes and guide their adaptation to new conditions while shaping coherent and resilient urban landscapes (Gu 2019, 2020). Its focus on spatial, social, and temporal dynamics is conducive to informing post-disaster recovery strategies that balance preservation, adaptation, and innovation. It is thus particularly relevant to post-disaster urban landscape management, where the challenge of balancing post-disaster change and continuity is prominent (Davis and Alexander 2015; Lizarralde 2021, 59).

Morpho-Resilience: A More Coherent Recovery Framework

The study of urban morphogenesis strives to disclose the “genesis” or “engendering process” of urban forms (Kropf and Malfroy 2013). Future landscapes are generated by morphogenetic processes, in which landscape elements act on each other to adapt cooperatively as a system evolves, thus encompassing the key technical, cultural, and social attributes of sustainability (Alexander 2004). Morphogenesis is therefore not just a process of creation but the very source of sustenance itself, integrating form, function, and the community's lived experience. Despite various debates, there is consensus that a resilient city preserves its essential functions during and after a disaster, while constraining those elements that weaken it (Davis and Alexander 2015, 253). The morphogenetic process of sustaining the urban landscape seeks to heal, repair, and uncover the inherent vitality and wholeness within (Alexander 2004). It thus offers a generative basis for redefining and operationalizing resilience.

The conceptualization of disaster as a morphogenetic agent of change forms the basis for “morpho-resilience” (Figure 1). It seeks to address resilience from social, temporal, and spatial dimensions and establishes a sound base for recovery plan-making that is place-based, community-focused, and risk-informed.

Figure 1.

Morpho-resilience framework for recovery planning.

A key aspect of morpho-resilience is to delineate landscape management zones—areas of consistent form, community lived experience, and vulnerability patterns for targeted recovery strategies. Morpho-resilience uses urban morphogenesis as a form-based inquiry into post-disaster urban landscapes, serving as a foundation for recovery planning. While traditional post-disaster zoning segregates land uses, landscape management zones define areas by forms and processes (Gu 2014, 2019). It differs from existing form-based and smart codes in that they incorporate the temporal dimension of the urban landscape, which the latter largely neglect (Scheer 2008). Following the tradition of geographical urban morphology, one or more form complexes, that is, the site, ground plan, building fabric, and land- and building-utilization plans (where relevant and available), can help identify the morphological characteristics of disaster-affected areas. This identification is based on systematic surveys, including field observations and cartographic analyses, as well as examining the processes that engender such patterns. Numerous publications have demonstrated the process of urban landscape regionalization (Whitehand 2009). In much of the world, even where modern surveying or detailed historical maps are absent, morphological studies can still proceed by drawing on multiple complementary sources. Gu and Zhang (2014) have argued that despite the lack of accurate cartographic records, various historical materials, such as poems, paintings, photographs, and travelogues, can indicate how urban forms have evolved. In parallel with existing, albeit limited maps, these descriptive sources show changes to buildings, streets, and distinctive local features. Communications with local residents further supplement official documentation.

Morpho-resilience recognizes that successful recovery requires community involvement and local knowledge (Forino 2024; Maskrey 1989). It therefore extends traditional urban landscape regionalization by integrating participatory mapping, while acknowledging that “community” can be an idealized and ambiguous term—“more a concept than a fact” (Hoffman 2020, 16)—and that mapping itself may serve as a tool of power and control (Gaillard 2025). As a result, the participatory mapping invoked does not remain a mere formality but rather strives to bridge the gap between “insiders” (e.g., local communities and governments) and “outsiders” (e.g., scientists, national governments and international organizations) through mapping approaches that are intelligible to all stakeholders (Gaillard, Hore and Cadag 2015).

As noted, for participatory mapping to be truly effective, the participatory process itself matters. While these mapping tools can help surface local capacities and foster dialogue across unequal power relations, participation must ensure downward accountability and deliberately facilitate the inclusion of marginalized groups to avoid tokenism and mere consultation (see Gaillard et al. 2013, for example). Drawing on Birkhamshaw and Whitehand's (2012) work, the process begins by sharing the base map in formats that match local resources and residents’ familiarity—ranging from low-tech ground sketches to advanced GPS, scaled two-dimensional, or participatory three-dimensional mapping of streets, plots, and building forms (see Gaillard, Hore and Cadag 2015 for more details). Local residents then identify “character areas,” key local resources, hazard-prone areas, and culturally significant features that may not be obvious from a purely physical analysis. By overlaying these locally derived boundaries on previously identified morphological maps, planners can compare how closely people's daily experiences and local knowledge align with (or differ from) objective, historically grounded features. Through dialogue and iterative adjustments, the basic layer of landscape-type areas can be delimited, reflecting not only the urban environment's physical structure and historical evolution but also the community's lived experiences and shared identity.

As the overarching goal of this regionalization is to serve as a basis for post-disaster urban landscape management, damage and hazard assessments need to be incorporated to more precisely articulate the corresponding landscape management zones. Specifically, physical damage assessments, multi-hazard assessments, and other locally available vulnerability data (each typically classified by severity or intensity) are overlaid on the previously identified landscape-type areas. This overlay can reveal how the city's inherited urban form, shaped by various morphogenetic processes, may have contributed to disaster risk based on the spatial layout and historical evolution of streets, plots, and building types. Because forms embody and express social and cultural meanings, urban landscapes mirror and sustain social divisions and inequalities (Lilley 2009). Together with other available sources such as document archives, field surveys, socioeconomic data, and interviews with disaster-affected communities, planners and researchers can expose the underlying vulnerabilities expressed in urban forms, thereby demonstrating how political, economic, and cultural forces have shaped both the resilience of the built environment and its vulnerability to disaster.

The composite maps and analyses provide the basis for categorizing landscape management zones by integrating pre-disaster morphological character, disaster-induced morphological changes, and the underlying socio-cultural processes. Depending on data availability, these zones operate across multiple scales, from citywide to site-specific. Areas grouped within the same management zone share a cohesive morphological identity and risk profile. Where inconsistencies arise among the various data layers, more fine-grained subzones can be delineated to capture localized differences without undermining overall coherence.

Framing the geographic morphological approach in this manner helps address two major quandaries in post-disaster recovery: the tension between speed and deliberation (Olshansky 2009; Olshansky, Hopkins and Johnson 2012), and the issue of whether reconstruction efforts adopt a transformational or replacement perspective (Alexander 2004). Overlaying landscape-type areas with damage and hazard assessments supports the delineation of priority intervention (immediate) sub-zones, long-term (strategic) sub-zones, and zones for preservation, adaptation, or relocation. This method ensures greater consistency and accountability when delimiting management boundaries than conventional land-use zoning. It extends beyond functional and hazard-focused considerations by incorporating the broader spatial-temporal dynamics of each locality, thus preserving and reshaping post-disaster urban landscapes in ways that remain faithful to their morphogenetic evolution (Gu 2014, 2019).

The landscape management zones serve as the basis for post-disaster landscape management policies. Drawing on Gu's (2014) work, the morphogenetic interpretation of these zones is translated into prescriptive codes that uphold each unit's defining qualities. In the post-disaster context, these codes extend beyond preserving a zone's character to include adaptation and transformation that is based on an understanding of urban history and culture. This works to sustain the city's genius loci while addressing structural and nonstructural failures exposed by the disaster. The codes are organized into allowable types at different scales to accommodate the variety of physical and social conditions within each zone. Despite their grounding in form-based principles, these codes are not restricted to aesthetic concerns, but rather incorporate broader risk reduction, socio-cultural continuity, and functional requirements to guide a cohesive and context-sensitive strategy. Policies will be tailored to the particular conditions of each zone, from the city scale to site-specific levels.

Morpho-resilience embeds form-function-community relationships into recovery plan-making. It rejects the hazard paradigm's view of disasters as aberrant events that lead to marginally improved pre-disaster norms. Nor does it seek to impose top-down, large-scale, and context-ignorant interventions often resisted by communities. Instead, it challenges the underlying vulnerabilities manifested in the urban landscape. Sitko and Almukhtar (2017) argue that “without morphology, resilience does not have a memory of what it is bouncing ‘back’ to or ‘forward’ from.” The retrospective evaluation and forward-looking strategies that it can provide will better assist planners and disaster management professionals in post-disaster recovery, especially regarding how future urban landscapes should be managed to effectively mitigate disaster risks and foster adaptive resilience.

Conclusion

All too often, build back better remains more of a vision than a reality (Matthewman and Lambert 2024). The success stories of translating build back better into practice are rare. As Fernandez and Ahmed (2019, 3) observed, “the promise to not re-create or exacerbate pre-disaster vulnerabilities has generally been unfulfilled.” The secondary effects (Kondo and Lizarralde 2021), which are defined as unintended consequences not caused by the disaster itself but by the way authorities responded, exemplify what Hoffman (2020) has called “disaster upon disaster.” The gap between knowledge, policy, and outcomes clearly persists (Hoffman 2020, 1–2; Wisner and Alcántara-Ayala 2023).

This paper has addressed enduring problems in post-disaster recovery by examining the evolution of disaster paradigms and the persistent deficiencies within current recovery planning. Plan-making to manage change and continuity is most challenging post-disaster, as it is impeded by the influence of land use planning and inadequate interpretation of the spatial dimension of vulnerability. The hazard-centric paradigm persists in post-disaster spatial interventions, which are often criticized as fragmented, hazard-focused, and disjointed from historical, social, and cultural contexts (Gaillard 2021). The lack of theoretical and instrumental bases has constrained effective recovery interventions. This paper has attempted to create a more coherent planning framework in connection with urban morphogenesis.

Morphogenesis-based analysis helps planners and researchers read the city's vulnerability as a living narrative embedded in its physical form from a multi-scalar view. Instead of narrowly identifying risk zones, they can understand why these areas became vulnerable, how vulnerabilities have intensified or shifted, and which spatial patterns perpetuate risk. Morphogenesis counters modernist, homogenized approaches to the built environment. As a perspective, it aligns with disaster scholars who have rejected context-blind, technocratic, top-down methods, and instead have advocated local identity, cultural continuity, and community inclusion in recovery efforts (e.g., Alexander 1989; Davis 1978; Forino 2024; Maskrey 1989; Gaillard 2021, 9).

The paper foregrounds disaster as a morphogenetic agent of change and proposes morpho-resilience—a new framework that incorporates social, spatial, and temporal dimensions, emphasizing community involvement, dynamic adaptation, and continuity. Building on traditional morphological regionalization, a central methodological innovation is the identification of landscape management zones, providing a new multi-scalar approach to describing and prescribing urban landscape changes in a post-disaster setting. The proposed framework lays the groundwork for a tactical planning tool to support adaptive recovery strategies and foster stronger dialogue with area-specific contexts and established regulatory frameworks.

Morpho-resilience offers a deeper spatial orientation, thereby making theories proposed by disaster scholars tangible, especially for holistic and community-based approaches. It effectively bridges local and scientific knowledge, as well as top-down and bottom-up approaches through a context-specific, locally adapted framework (Gaillard and Mercer 2013). Indeed, understanding an urban landscape's morphogenetic character and generative processes fosters more informed decision-making while providing a strong basis for dialogue with communities and other stakeholders (Gu et al. 2021). Davis and Alexander (2015, 254) argued that the scale problem is a central difficulty in defining a community. Lacking a fixed or natural geographic or social boundary, communities may range from a few neighbors on individual plots, to groups at the street or block scale. The multi-scale landscape management zones, extending down to the plot level, make visible the various human agents who have shaped and inhabit these areas, from those producing the landscape to those residing in and using the area (Hewitt, Potangaroa and Wilkinson 2009). In this way, “communities” will no longer be partial, short-lived, and defined by external agendas but become self-defined collectives embedded in everyday spatial practice (Hoffman 2020). This morphological articulation clarifies whom to consult, whose perspectives to incorporate into recovery interventions, and how best to coordinate efforts. As a result, morpho-resilience supports a more coherent, targeted and collaborative intervention process, ultimately leading to a recovery outcome aligned with the aspirations of disaster-affected populations.

The work presented in this paper represents a step forward from traditional morphological regionalization by demonstrating how urban morphogenesis can guide planning across varied contexts through purpose-driven delimitation. It extends the classic triad of form complexes by integrating additional criteria, such as vulnerability analysis, hazard mapping, and participatory inputs, into post-disaster recovery. In so doing, it exemplifies the capacity of urban morphogenesis to address place-based planning in both recovery and broader spatial governance. The successful application of this framework will offer strong empirical grounding for morphogenesis, not only as a basis for community-centered planning but also as a strategic instrument for adaptive and place-based policymaking. By seeking more informed and resilient recovery strategies for better risk reduction, the paper simultaneously advances the science of post-disaster recovery and the field of urban morphology.

Recovery is a highly complex process and not solely a planning issue. Despite the proposed framework providing a valuable and coherent planning tool, it cannot on its own resolve broader challenges, such as political constraints or resource imbalances (Fraile-Garrido and Martín-Robles 2024). It is a truism that theory alone accomplishes little without decisions, resources, and coordinated actions (Wisner and Alcántara-Ayala 2023). The morphogenetic approach must therefore be situated within these wider efforts, with all actors working together to deliver more adaptive, equitable, and enduring recovery outcomes.

Future research concerning detailed single-case and comparative empirical analyses is expected to test and refine the proposed morpho-resilience framework. While the primary focus here is on post-disaster recovery planning, it is acknowledged that recovery planning includes both pre-event and post-event dimensions (Smith and Wenger 2007). There is thus ample potential for adapting and utilizing the framework in pre-disaster planning and long-term monitoring and evaluation, with much yet to be explored in the field of urban morphogenesis and post-disaster recovery.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Professor JC Gaillard, Professor Jason F. Kovacs, and Professor Steve Matthewman for their detailed comments on earlier drafts of this article.

ORCID iDs

Yanchen Wu

Kai Gu

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biograpies

Yanchen Wu is a PhD candidate in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland. Her research interests include disaster studies, disaster risk reduction in planning, and urban morphology.

Kai Gu is a Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of Auckland. His research interests include urban morphology, urban design, and urban landscape management.

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Disaster as a Morphogenetic Agent of Change: Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Post-Disaster Recovery and Its Evolving Paradigms

Challenges Facing Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery

Urban Morphogenesis and Disaster as a Morphogenetic Agent of Change

Morpho-Resilience: A More Coherent Recovery Framework

Conclusion

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

ORCID iDs

Funding

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Author Biograpies

References