book

After Great Disasters: An In-Depth Analysis of How Six Communities Managed Recovery

Johnson, Laurie A. & Olshansky, Robert B.

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2017

recovery policy precedent
Post-disaster urban planning; governance; building back better framework

Laurie Johnson and Robert Olshansky’s After Great Disasters extended the foundational analysis of post-disaster reconstruction through case studies of recovery management in six countries, with particular attention to Japan after the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Their framework distinguishes emergency response from short-term reconstruction from long-term redevelopment — phases that require different institutional arrangements, funding mechanisms, and community engagement. The thesis identifies the gap between FEMA’s emergency housing operations and Lahaina’s permanent reconstruction as reflecting exactly this phase mismatch: agencies optimized for rapid disbursement cannot perform the decade-scale coordination that community rebuilding requires.