Know your neighbours

Disaster Resilience and the Normative Practices of Neighbouring in an Urban Context

Bibliographic Data

ID4141344
AuthorsLynda Cheshire (0000-0002-0914-0005, The University of Queensland, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume47
Issue5
Pages1081-1099
Publication date2015-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308518x15592310
OpenAlexW2095671200
LanguageEN
Citations received22
References cited33

As part of community resilience policy, urban dwellers are advised to get to 'know their neighbours' so that they are more likely to turn to them in an emergency. But the idea that neighbours might function as resources for disaster preparedness fails to take account of the fact that neighbour relations are highly diverse and occasionally problematic. Drawing on residents' experiences of the 2011 floods in south-east Queensland, Australia, this paper examines how neighbouring practices and relationships prior to a disaster influence the nature and extent of support from neighbours when disaster strikes. It shows that emergency assistance can map onto existing neighbour relations, such that closer neighbour relations foster frequent and more reliable forms of help. However, the seriousness of the disaster event may be such that residents are aware of their responsibilities to one another as neighbours even if relations are relatively poor or absent. The paper yields important insights for disaster policy and practice in suggesting that community resilience should be embedded within local social practices such as neighbouring, but that neighbouring itself cannot be engineered into existence

Community resilience · Emergency management · Geography · Normative · Political science · Preparedness · Psychological resilience · Public relations · Seriousness · Sociology · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Computer Science · Disaster Management and Resilience · Disaster Response and Management · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology