Space and place after natural disasters and forced displacement - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 220

sites with hostile topography may result in exceedingly high densities on
small amounts of flat land, causing a variety of difficulties, such as a lack of
privacy, stress-inducing conditions and insufficient land around the dwellings
for informal and public activities, all of which are factors which diminish the
sense of space and the otherwise positive associations with home.
Figure 11.8, in the Ampara district of Sri Lanka, illustrates some of the
consequences of poor site selection given the shortage of land for relocation
of those displaced by the tsunami. These pressures led to the construction
of multi-storeyed apartment buildings. Despite proximity to the place of
origin of the displaced people, the design imposes a completely new lifestyle
to which the residents find it difficult to adjust. The outcomes are the reduc-
tion of individual space (the flats are relatively small - 45 to 55 m 2 ); limited
provision of individual plots of land and thus limited scope for adaptation
and small-scale income-generating activities, except for those living on the
ground floor; limited open space; high proximity to other families and thus
lack of privacy; and poor maintenance of narrow common service areas. In
Kalmunai Muslim and Tamil divisions, land shortage also led to construction
of multi-storeyed apartment buildings as illustrated in Figure 11.9, constitut-
ing a completely new housing form for people who are still struggling to
adjust to a new way of life after the disaster; only those located on the ground
floor have the opportunity for informal adaptation to this new situation.
In the majority of cases in Sri Lanka, on resettlement sites where land
availability was not an issue, the housing typologies were culturally appropri-
ate and provide, as Figure 11.10 illustrates, sufficient space for livelihoods,
small gardening and space adaptations such as the opening of small business
activities.
Finally, settlement location can have significant impacts on how the
sense of place is created and thus on the levels of satisfaction that displaced
people feel. Figures 11.11 and 11.12 exemplify how the selection of sites
for relocation of post-tsunami settlements in Sri Lanka was often made
without feasibility studies or social and environmental impact assessments.
The key criterion was the availability of government-owned land so as to
avoid lengthy land-acquisition processes. Although neglected in the case of
Sri Lanka, once land is identified, it is crucial to take into account issues such
as distance from people's sources of livelihood, markets and services, as well
as the quality of soil and availability of water. If these factors are neglected,
the resettlement sites may be perceived by their inhabitants to be remote,
either because they are a significant distance from the original homes and
jobs (up to 15 km in the case of Sri Lanka) or because they are poorly served
by roads, public transport and water infrastructure. These outcomes must
be avoided in order to promote the sense of community attachment to new
settlements and in order not to undermine the creation of place in the terms
conceptualised earlier.