Cascades of Catastrophe

Abstract

In the face of increasing uncertainties and heightened frequency and intensity of natural disasters, questions arise on how societies can enhance their ability to adapt and transform both behaviourally and structurally to increase disaster resilience. Current risk management approaches fail to address the evolving nature of risk and tend to overlook how processes of urbanisation and landscape transformation actively contribute to its accumulation.

The rapid urbanisation patterns in the Mediterranean coastal zones and the dispersed territories with conflicting land-uses that they formed are examples of how mismanagement of land alter environmental conditions and structure peri-urban systems that contribute to the evolution of risk. Their organisation predominantly through conflicting land-uses poses a challenge on convergence of actors and taking transformative actions that could reorganise territories to align better with natural processes and mitigate disaster risk.

This research aims to introduce process-based risk in spatial planning and design and to investigate how they can influence local practices and acts of care in peri-urban coastal Mediterranean zones to build transformative capacity, promote convergence and reorganise territories for disaster-resilient futures. It proposes a framework to develop new values in local decision-making and governance recommendations to enable local communities to become the agents of change by fostering attentive land management and coordinating across catchments.

The thesis conducts a literature review, defining the role of evolutionary resilience in the process of risk mitigation, and a history informed analysis in the case study of Marathon to identify how risk evolves in the territory. A reinterpretation of the territory through risk-based values is suggested and provides strategic directions for employing attentive land management and design principles. Through projective design explorations the thesis reimagines actor interrelations in peri-urban territories to establish alignment between natural and societal systems and sets conditions for the region to address in its development strategies in order to build transformative capacity and mitigate risk.

The thesis provides an alternative narrative in the role of local communities and the support provided by the region in risk mitigation strategies. Focusing on land management and actor interrelations, while adopting a long-term perspective, it raises questions on how multi-level governance and interdisciplinary planning, research and design can contribute to shaping disaster-resilience.