"Natural" disasters as (neo-liberal) opportunity? Discussing post-hurricane Katrina urban regeneration in New Orleans

By providing a wide literature review, post-hurricane Katrina uneven urban regeneration in New Orleans is presented here by framing it within a historical perspective in order to underline how environmental threats too often seem to be not so much “natural” but rather man-made as well as to highlight both the reasons and the ways in which, in post-disaster reconstruction, competitive growth has been valued over equity, by directly benefiting those who were already the most advantaged. The aim is to highlight how environmental disasters can be considered as socially constructed phenomena, as they cannot be seen as a single event but rather as a process made by a series of progressive steps occurring within different spheres, which do not necessarily concern the environment only.

Urban Retrofit and Resilience: The challenge of Energy Efficiency and Vulnerability

Urban retrofit is becoming increasingly established as one of the most effective solutions to contain the energy consumption of the existing building stock, to reduce vulnerability to natural and man-made risk and generally improve the quality of built space. However, the planning of retrofit interventions at urban scale should take account of the actual feasibility of measures lest they remain only on paper. This contribution supplies an overview of the many issues related to the subject of urban regeneration, proposing a procedure to identify practical interventions to minimize costs and maximize benefits, in terms of energy efficiency, an increase in resilience and improvement in the quality of the building stock. This procedure was applied to a case study of a neighborhood in the city of Naples, a high-density urban area which is particularly vulnerable to volcanic and seismic risk, and to risks due to climate change.