Beyond Semantics and the Immediate Postdisaster Period: Community Quality of Life as an Overarching Theme for Sustaining Collective Action

Abstract

The concept of “quality of life” has broad appeal to a variety of professions and disciplines, with increasing centrality to local sustainability. This paper highlights the negative impacts of disasters on quality of life in communities, which are defined as encompassing small neighborhoods to regions. This paper also describes a set of indicators that can be used to assess changes in community quality of life. A matrix of opportunities for enhancing quality of life and promoting tenets of sustainability during the postdisaster recovery period is presented as well as examples of success in communities throughout the United States. The paper concludes that quality of life can serve as the guiding principle for sustainable redevelopment, given its centrality to other ongoing community planning and development initiatives and goals.