All rights reservedBortolotto, Giulia2024-03-122024-03-122015978-80-01-05782-7https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/1419Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Definite Space – Fuzzy Responsibility, Prague, 13-16th July, 2015This paper would like to investigate the response strategies to a disaster from two different cities. In this context, the disaster looks like as an opportunity for the city to be able to decide the direction for their reconstruction. The reflections relate the strategies undertaken by two cities: New Orleans and Beirut hit by a disaster, respectively by Hurricane Katrina and a civil-war. As the disasters give rise to complex situations (new socio-spatial configurations, conflicts, inequalities) and have greater effect on the most vulnerable populations, it is believed that the issues related to justice in post-disaster may be interesting topics of discussion. For this purpose, firstly, the paper would like to promote reflections on the concept of disaster. Generally, disasters are classified according to their root cause. This paper would like to draw on definitions of disaster from the social sciences in order to develop reflections with reference to the disaster impact (effects) rather than the phenomenology (causes) . After that, an exploration of the direct and indirect effects of disasters will drive the reading of the case studies. In the end, the analysis of the response strategies of the two cities will investigate the effects previously identified whether or not they were considered and the implications it had on the city.EnglishopenAccessdisasterreconstructionjusticeconferenceObject2462-2469