Urban management and resilience in post-conflict settings through housing interventions in post-war Iraq

This research paper presents partial findings of a doctoral research into approaching urban resilience in post-conflict settings using Iraq as a case study. The literature in this area points out that understanding regulatory frameworks of urban management is important for approaching resilience through sector-specific reconstruction in post-conflict cities, and as a framework within which the enablement of citizens that are building homes within a post-conflict setting can be examined and assessed. Approaching resilience in post-conflict settings in this way, in the case of Iraq in the period after the 2003 war, provides an insight into resilience processes. Fieldwork has revealed that house-owners are using their own adaptive capacity in housing supply to maintain survival and urban growth within urban neighborhoods, in spite of experiencing chronic stresses and acute shocks as a result of the ongoing transition from conflict to peace. Initial data analysis has shown that a reformation of urban management structures in post-conflict Iraq could enable and support alternative key actors in the private and public and the voluntary sectors as partners in urban development. Here, citizens' enablement in a bottom-up approach to reconstruction can offer a back-up capacity in acute times to sustain cities' functioning and competitiveness in urban development and long term resilience.