Victims of Resilience

[David Casagrande]

You may be interested in our latest publication: Victims of resilience: An evaluation of social vulnerability’s applicability to disaster justice. 

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-dynamics/articles/10.3389/fhumd.2025.1615833/full

John Roper, took the lead role on an idea that’s bothered me for a decade. A mayor once bragged to me about making his town more resilient by using FEMA buyouts to get rid of poor people. Higher-income residents are more resilient to disasters. We use data from the effects of Hurricane Katrina to argue that a place appears more resilient after a disaster when vulnerable people don’t come back and are replaced by higher income residents. The original vulnerable people probably end up being vulnerable somewhere else. “Resilience” can sometimes be used as a concept to justify planned gentrification, as was the case with New York City’s Build it Back program after Superstorm Sandy. All of this will get even more problematic as anthropogenic climate change runs amuck.