Community Participation in Post-Disaster Shelter Programs: Examining the Evolution of Participation in Planning, Design, and Construction

Participation in post-disaster shelter reconstruction is recognized as an important factor for supporting the sustainability and resiliency of the built environment. Engaging communities in the reconstruction process can help build community capacity and lead to sustained success of recovery projects. However, existing practice often assumes that differing forms of participation are independent of one another, neglecting to understand the influence that early participation may have on participation in later stages of the project. Past literature identified how communities participated in the planning, design, and construction phases in 19 different shelter projects following Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. For this research, we used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze how participation in earlier phases of planning and design affected participation in the construction phase. Results show that early participation, particularly in the decisions of the planning phase, are critical in shaping later participation. Findings also reveal that participation is a process linked across multiple project phases and should not be viewed as a set of independent tasks. These results inform disaster recovery practice by encouraging project strategies that incorporate community participation from the beginning through the end of a project’s lifecycle.