Community resilience, governance, and [in]justice in the context of informal housing after an F3 tornado

ABSTRACT Communities around the world are experiencing significant challenges created by climate change. A large body of resilience literature has examined how communities respond to natural disasters created by this phenomenon. However, resilience studies often fail to acknowledge anthropogenic factors that create and reproduce local vulnerabilities and injustices. Drawing on community resilience and socio-spatial and disaster justice work, this case-study examines whether post-disaster responses contemplated existing injustices and the local views necessary to address housing problems after an F3 tornado in a Southwestern Uruguayan community. Field work was conducted in 2018. Methods included spatial mapping analysis, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, participant observations, and analysis of secondary data. Findings reveal how post-disaster decisions omitted existing injustices materialized by precarious and informal housing conditions, ignoring the views of community residents who responded by claiming “the right to the community.”