Book Review
Designing to heal: Planning and urban design response to
disaster and conflict
Jenny Donovan
Csiro publishing, Australia, 2013, 312pp., $99.95, ISBN: 978-0643106468 (paperback)
URBAN DESIGN International (2015) 20, 88–89. doi:10.1057/udi.2013.41
Designing for recovering after disaster is a great
concern today, both in academia and in urban
design and planning practice. As the author notes
in the introduction supporting her argument in
different sources, population growth and climate
change are making the world more vulnerable to
disasters and this has been appreciated in the
growth of natural catastrophes in the last decade.
This has resulted in a growing concern that has
been noted in urban studies literature, where the
field of ‘urban resilience’ is emerging as a cross-
disciplinary interest that attracts the attention of
geographers, planners, urban designers and many
other urban disciplines. What this book offers to
this debate is a deep insight into how urban design
can contribute to recovery through practice. The
book manages to take this debate to the ground
and to expose how certain design processes can
help individuals and groups to overcome the
difficulties of the catastrophes.
Three parts can be differentiated in the book:
first, the three initial chapters present the chal-
lenges that are facing urban design in these com-
plex situations. It is quite useful for practitioners
since it defines certain concepts and explains
the casuistry of problems that professionals may
face when approaching the affected sites and the
people that live there. These definitions make the
reader aware of the complexity of the problems
from many different perspectives. It is also quite
revealing how the author illustrates the different
stages of the process of recovery, which makes it
easier to understand the case studies. The second
part of the book uses six case studies – one chapter
per case – to explain different responses to disaster
and conflict, concentrating on the outcome that
designing the physical environment has had on
people affected by the problem. The case studies
present a wide variety of situations that go beyond
the pre-conceived idea of what the readers may
think is a ‘disaster’ or a ‘conflict’ when they start
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1357-5317 URBAN DESIGN International
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reading the book. Finally, the last two chapters
work as the conclusion of the book by explaining
very clearly the process and different stages of
designing to heal and also the ideal characteristics
that the schemes should have. Because of its
clarity, this last part is especially useful for practi-
tioners that are not so familiar with the jargon of
academic papers.
The most remarkable contribution of the book
is the in-depth analysis of a wide variety of case
studies from different parts of the world and from
totally divergent contexts. This diversity of cases
gives the reader a comprehensive idea of the
different challenges that urban designers can face
when approaching these problematic places. The
situations analysed not only cover major natural
disasters such as the volcanic catastrophe of Mon-
serrat, the Tsunami in Sri Lanka or the Victorian
bushfires in Australia, but they also cover other
issues such as the conflicts and divided commu-
nities in Northern Ireland, the reconstruction after
a major terrorist attack such as 9/11 and other
situations that did not originate in a major disaster,
but that were an everyday tragedy such as poverty
and AIDS in Ethiopia. The author has done an
impressive analysis of all the cases by visiting
the sites, through interviews and conversations
with key persons, designers and authorities and
through explaining her own experience in her
professional practice. Each case study is analysed
in an independent chapter introducing the site by a
contextualization of the problem. Then, it analyses
the effect of the disaster from many different
perspectives. Finally, each chapter describes the
design process in response to the problem, des-
cribing how the locals were engaged in this pro-
cess. Most of the cases exposed are still in the
process of recovery. In the cases where the design
project has been implemented, the book talks
about the outcomes and extracts lessons that can
be learnt.
Vol. 20, 1, 88–89

The findings and the lessons to be learnt are
exposed in each case study and in the two final
chapters. One of the ideas that is present through-
out the book is that of ‘build back better’, which
means not only repairing and seeking to reach the
situation before the disaster, but taking the disrup-
tion originated by the disaster as an opportunity to
build more resilient cities and to solve some of the
problems of the past. Through this idea, the author
talks about the challenge of finding the balance
between rapid responses that aim to repair – that
are always necessary both for addressing immedi-
ate needs and for nourishing people’s hope – and
careful planning, which may take longer, but that
is totally necessary for thinking about how to
make cities more resilient and for tackling the pre-
existing problems.
Another aspect in which the author insists
through the entire book is the focus on the outcome
rather than in the output. This means that the analy-
sis concentrates on the effect of the design on people
rather than on the design itself. In some cases, this
also makes the reader feel that it is missing a critical
view of the architectural design of the proposals.
However, it is totally understandable that the book
does not concentrate too much on that, since it is the
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1357-5317
Book Review
outcome of the urban design proposals that really
matter in such difficult situations.
Overall, the book is highly recommended for
urban design and planning practitioners. The les-
sons learnt from the case studies are not only useful
to those professionals that face design after disaster
and conflict, but also to urban design practice in
general. The problems that the book presents are
issues that non-after-disaster urban design can also
face: cultural differences, financial limitations,
managing how to engage the community in the
process and improving people’s lives through
designing places that enable different kind of possi-
bilities and opportunities. These typical problems of
urban design are expanded and become extreme
when a catastrophe takes place. These disadvan-
taged situations make even more evident the impor-
tance of material objects, the physical environment
and social relationships in people’s life. The interac-
tion between these material and social aspects is
what an urban designer should address.
Pablo Sendra
Department of Architectural Projects,
University of Seville, Seville, Spain.
E-mail: psendra@us.es
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