The Everyday and the Post-disaster Urban Systems as One Thing

Tsunamis, despite occurring with low frequency, are permanent hazards for a large number of coastal cities and their consequences are highly devastating in terms of human losses, material damages and urban structure disruptions. It is argued in this paper that the urban structure not only has to be recovered after the tsunami event, but also has to provide an important basis for the continuing activities of the city, playing a fundamental role in the resilience of the whole urban system. By adopting a spatio-configurational approach based on space syntax theories and techniques, this research focuses on the dynamics of urban structures in relation to the different scenarios that tsunami-prone cities must face. The urban resilience process in both soon-after tsunami and post-tsunami scenarios is analysed using a Chilean coastal city located in a seismically active region as case study. The resilience capacity of the city in a soon-after tsunami situation is studied focusing on the influence of the urban layout in the route-finding decision makings during the evacuation process. The analysis reveals a weak correspondence between the existing evacuation plan and natural movement patterns, affecting the process of evacuation-route identification and the capacity to rapidly react to the threat. Additionally, the urban resilience in a post-disaster scenario is analysed regarding the ability of the city to maintain the basic functions and structures in order to be able to recover from tsunami impacts. The findings reveal important disruptions in the urban system ́s spatial organisation, affecting the distribution of urban centralities and changing the operating patterns of the city after tsunami events. From this, the paper develops a comprehensive understanding of the different phases of the tsunami-prone city from a configurational approach, laying the foundations for evidence-based strategic proposals to enhance urban resilience capacity.