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188Natural and human-made disastersUrban land-useplanning has notsucceeded inseparating peoplefrom sources ofpotential humanmadeor naturalhazardArguably, the most important reason for unsafeconstruction is the failure to implement and enforce buildingcodes. Failure to enforce regulation was the principalcause of high losses among poor and middle-class householdsin the 1999 Marmara earthquake in Turkey, 85 and in thecollapse of multi-storey buildings in Spitak in the Armenianearthquake in 1988. 86 Even among public buildings and criticalinfrastructure such as schools, unsafe constructioncontinues in the face of building codes. The 2005 Pakistanearthquake destroyed 4844 educational buildings, 18,000children were killed by the collapse of school buildings and300,000 children were still unable to attend school sixmonths after the event. 87 The collapse of schools waspresumed to have resulted from poor-quality constructionand construction materials, a lack of monitoring in the buildingprocesses, and a general lack of awareness of seismic riskand appropriate standards. 88Municipal authorities are normally charged withoverseeing construction standards, but are prevented fromfulfilling their duty for several reasons. Lack of resources andhuman skills are perhaps greatest for smaller cities, whereland-use or development planning departments may beabsent, and responsibilities for overseeing constructionstandards become added to those of the city engineer orBox 7.11 Poverty and flooding in Mumbai, IndiaThe 2005 monsoon brought disastrous flooding to Mumbai (India). Those worst affected werethe most vulnerable – slum dwellers living in flood-prone locations and with little capacity toavoid or cope with flood impacts. Over half of Mumbai’s 12 million people live in slums. 89Because the majority of these slums are located on hill slopes, low-lying areas, coastal locationsand pavements along water mains and open drainage systems, they are the most prone toflooding during times of heavy rainfall and high tides.Typically, slum dwellers occupy land that is close to the streets or main transportationhubs, such as railways. These communities are constantly in danger from passing trains and aredenied formalized access to water, sanitation and electricity because they build on land ownedby the Indian Railways and other public or private companies. 90 Beyond this, encroachmentonto this land is in conflict with the need to maintain transport and drainage networks. Thesurvival strategies of Mumbai’s poorest populations directly affect the city’s ability to maintaindisaster management infrastructure. By not addressing chronic housing and infrastructureproblems, the entire city is exposed to flood hazard.A risk analysis was undertaken as part of Mumbai’s Disaster Management Plan (DMP)prior to the July 2005 floods. Subsequently, a mitigation strategy that focuses on public informationsystems, infrastructure and sanitation improvements, as well as land-use policies andplanning, was developed. The strategy also includes a plan for coordination between publicservice providers, emergency personnel and disaster aid non-governmental organizations(NGOs). 91 Despite the DMP, the severity of the 2005 floods indicated just how much risk hadaccumulated over time in the city, built into the geography of its land use, the inadequacy ofdrainage, rapid urban expansion and tensions within the urban and state-level administrations,including competing interests of senior politicians who are also real estate developers andowners of commercial land. 92 The neglect of outdated zoning regulations and inflated landmarkets, in particular, contributed to the overall vulnerability of Mumbai and its inhabitants toflood risk.The experience of the slum dwellers of Mumbai and their vulnerability to flooding isrooted in the larger socio-economic processes of the city (and beyond); but failure to addressthis vulnerability threatens the sustainability of the city as a whole – as well as the poormajority.Source: Stecko and Barber, 2007surveyor. In many cities, even these professionals may beabsent and construction regulation is, in effect, nonexistent.Resource scarcity can be compounded byinstitutional cultures that allow corruption to distort regulationand enforcement.While lack of enforcement fails those who can affordto build safely, poverty and exclusion from the formalhousing sector consign many, often the majority of urbanresidents, to living in unsafe dwellings. Unsafe building inslums is compounded by the burden of natural and humanmadehazards found in these communities. The result is adeadly cocktail of human vulnerability, unsafe dwellings andhigh hazard. It is not surprising, then, that the poor,especially those living in slums, bear the brunt of naturaldisaster losses.■ Land-use planningUrban land-use planning has not succeeded in separatingpeople from sources of potential human-made or naturalhazard. In the UK, around 15 per cent of urban land,containing 1.85 million homes and 185,000 commercialproperties, is built on land known to be at risk from flooding.Much of this land has been developed since the 1947 Townand Country Planning Act, which gave local authoritiespower to prevent floodplain development. 93 In this case, asin many others, pressure for local economic developmenthas been given priority over flood risk management, withincreasingly disastrous consequences demonstrated bywidespread flooding in 1998 and 2000.In middle- and low-income countries experiencingrapid urbanization, the capacity of town planning departmentsto measure, let alone manage, the expansion of urbanland use is seriously inhibited. This is a major cause for theaccumulation of disaster risk in human settlements. Thespread of informal and slum settlements has already beenidentified as an acute concern. These settlements, at best,are only weakly influenced by land-use planning policy, sothat internal structure as well as adjoining land uses andcharacteristics combine to produce disaster risk. Not onlyare slum settlements located in risky places, but high densityalso limits access for emergency vehicles and can in itself bea cause of hazard – for example, in spreading house fires.Even in cities responsive to formal planning control,inappropriate policy can lead to increased risk. In manycities, widespread concretization and the infilling of naturaldrainage has increased flood hazard. In Bangkok, the conversionof drainage canals into streets now results in regularflooding. 94 In Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, uncontrolledexpansion of the built environment, infilling ofdrainage canals and concretization has similarly increasedthe speed of runoff and reduced the water storage capacityand speed of natural drainage in the city, contributing to anincrease in flooding. 95Box 7.11 takes up this theme with regard to Mumbaiand looks in some detail at the ways in which poverty hascome together with poor planning decisions and hazardmanagement to generate flood risk.Urban land-use planning is too often left outside ofreconstruction planning. When reconstruction is undertaken