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 gap between FEMA’s emergency housing operations and Lahaina’s permanent reconstruction reflects exactly this phase mismatch: agencies optimized for rapid disbursement cannot perform the decade-scale coordination that community rebuilding requires.