Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Meaning of Place Recovery on the Mississippi Coast

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This doctoral dissertation research project investigates long-term recovery following a catastrophic disaster and how such recovery is represented through personal accounts and quantitative indicators. Recovery, especially in the long-term, is the least understood phase in the disaster cycle. Current research often equates recovery with the rebuilding of infrastructure, the repopulation of affected areas, or the return of regional economic activity. Assessment techniques that rely solely on aggregate metrics, while valid, could potentially mask small-scale differences in the recovery experiences and outcomes of local neighborhoods and social groups. Place plays a substantial role in mediating the recovery process for disaster survivors. It serves as a governing entity that establishes recovery guidelines, but also provides a social community and a symbolic landscape containing individual and group histories. This study uses the Mississippi Coast as a site for exploring the long-term recovery process over an eight-year period since Hurricane Katrina. The study first examines what recovery means to local residents, and whether or not differences exist on the basis of social position and geographic background. Second, the study explores whether there are differences between these experiential perspectives on recovery and empirically-based assessments. Semi-structured interviews, photo elicitation, and a participatory mapping exercise will document perceptions of residents about the spatial, functional, and symbolic recovery of their community. Thematic comparisons of these qualitative data and spatial comparisons of participant maps performed in a geographic information system (GIS) isolate differences in perspectives of residents. Quantitative indicators based on long-term population, economic, and housing reconstruction data are then constructed. A spatial clustering algorithm is used to compare the timing, degree, and spatial extent of recovery described by the indicators with perspectives of residents gleaned through qualitative methods. The aim of this research is to develop a theoretical model of place recovery and a methodology for integrating multiple types of place-based knowledge.The results of this study will enhance recovery research, planning, and policy in a variety of ways. The generation of a nuanced, place-based recovery model sensitive to a diversity of recovery experiences will advance interdisciplinary instruction and research on this phase of the disaster cycle. The inclusion of local recovery knowledge as part of a larger-scale benchmarking procedure will assist state and local recovery leaders in more efficiently targeting the unmet needs of traditionally underrepresented groups, in particular, women, the elderly, and people of color, who are targeted in this study. The development of such a participatory methodology in which residents define and assess local recovery is widely applicable to other disaster-impacted locations. Engaging residents in action research also has the potential to empower participants and enhance community resilience by bolstering efficacy in the recovery process. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.