(Image by Stephanie van Rappard)
_possible scenarios leading to vacant housing: There are three main themes that can be distinguished when talking with the locals and reading the many reports on the recovery process:
- housing of poor quality (structurally, appearance, size, uncompleted construction, functionality, not suiting the needs of the targeted users, …)
- housing produced in vain (multiple NGO’s attempting to do the same job, no actual existing inhabitants, miscalculation or misinformation, …)
- dysfunctional urban structures (lack of livelihood, lack of facilities like schools and healthcare and shops, lack of utilities like water and electricity, poor infrastructure, poor spatial layout, …)
_quotes from ‘the acehnese gampong – three years on’, a report by acarp: This very useful report from December 2007, written by Bryan Rochelle and Craig Thorburn, in a collaboration of the Australian Government, BRR, UNDP, Oxfam, Muslim Aid, CRS, World Bank and Syiah Kuala University, called ACARP (Aceh Community Assistance Research Project) gives a clear image of the mechanisms within the tsunami recovery of Aceh, and also points towards possible reasons for unutilized reconstruction real estate.
page 161
“To reiterate the most significant findings relating to social capital identified in the survey villages, frequent and regular village meetings help build trust in the community, and engender increased trust of local government leaders as well. The availability of conductive facilities for community meetings and deliberation is an important early priority for communities recovering from disaster. Other venues for gathering and association, including markets, sporting fields, mosques, musholla and meunasah, are also vital to communities’ successful recovery.”
“Village communities that were able to reunite physically and spatially during the early phases of the recovery have tended to recover more quickly than those whose members were dispersed among several emergency settlements. Those that were able to return to barracks or temporary housing in their own villages, or in the case of relocation villages, move quickly to their new location, have recovered more rapidly than those that could not, both in terms of physical progress and the re-establishment of social structures and networks.”
page 165
“A fundamental flaw characterizing much livelihood aid in Aceh has been lack of imagination – exemplified by the preponderance of sewing, baking and embroidery programs for women, and by donors’ infatuation with micro-credit and revolving fund programs. This sort of supply-side economic development programming is largely taking place without any analysis of markets or of new economic opportunities that are being created by changes taking place in the region. Acehnese villagers have demonstrated considerable savvy in identifying and exploiting opportunities created by recovery aid and its multipliers – demonstrated by their rational choice to maximize household incomes through construction and contracting work, rather than return to agriculture. Donor-supported livelihood programs could benefit from a similarly adept reading of Aceh’s changing economic landscape.”
page 166
“Housing provision has proven to be the most problematic facet of the entire tsunami recovery effort in Aceh. In the ACARP survey villages, the most common complaint has been over delays in construction, followed by issues of quality and design, often exacerbated by poor communication between the housing recipients. (…) Other problems that presented in the survey were a small number of cases of individuals receiving more than one house…”
page 167
“There are a number of important findings that fall more within the scope of this research project. The first of these is that early provision of temporary housing at village sites provided an important impetus to the recovery of those communities. Not all communities have shown a preference for leaving the convenience and amenities of the barracks to return to their village – particularly if the village still lacks electricity and/or clean water – but those that have, are moving ahead into recovery more rapidly than the communities with large numbers of people still living in barracks. A second finding is that (temporary or permanent) housing construction programs that engaged local community members in planning and construction proceeded more quickly and experienced fewer complications than projects taking a ‘turn-key’ approach.”
“Many of the survey villages were provided Village Spatial Plans. This is an extremely laborious and expensive process, but one that has proven to be extremely useful in the villages where these plans have been followed. After the effort invested, and the level of community involvement in producing these plans, it seems counterintuitive (and counterproductive) that these important planning documents have subsequently been disregarded in the majority of survey villages. This includes cases where BRR has elected not to build according to Village Spatial Plans that it commissioned and paid for.”
page 168
“Also, small scale infrastructure projects that support resumption of productive and commercial activities – access roads connecting communities to fields and groves, fish landing and boat maintenance and production facilities, market places – show much greater cost effectiveness than many other forms of livelihood and economic development support.”
_follow-up: Now we are able to understand the processes giving shape to the tsunami recovery period a lot better, we are ready to connect those insights to the spatial dimension. The next thing on our agenda is going into the field, mapping the actual vacant houses, and along with that talk with the local people, trying to sharpen the hypotheses on possible scenarios leading to housing vacancies coming from the text above. More results coming soon.
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