The engagement of the Social-Cultural Capital in the development of Sustainable Urban Structure under Risk Conditions.

Abstract

The importance of the human capital in the sustainable development of the urban network has relieved the cultural and social development as fundamental features of local Community. Empirical studies have demonstrated that the social capital, under risk conditions, evolves toward new form of organization to face the emergency. In addition, cultural capital is understood as the local community knowledge to bouncing back crisis. This suggests that social-cultural capital developed during post-disaster reconstruction, should be reinforced in order to generate a sustainable urban development along the time.

The work proposes an empirical approach of the problem, identifying social-cultural indicators. Interviews and surveys have been carried out to the relevant local stakeholders during the emergency and reconstruction phases. The evolutionary resilience from Walker and Salt (2006) has been defined as conceptual framework. They propose that, as result of a destructive event, the urban structure can change into adaptive cycle related to the spatial conditions and temporal interactions. The model has been applied to the case study of Dichato, a coast Chilean locality prone to tsunami and earthquake.

As a conclusion, this work presents a discussion about the necessity to improve and strength local social-cultural capital to achieve the sustainable urban development.