Bomba planning and the pursuit of a just recovery

Abstract

In the face of disasters, disadvantaged populations often rely on the recovery opportunities and pathways provided by grassroots movements. These pathways are built through informal planning practices and meanings that are often illegible for planning scholars and practitioners, and thus rarely reach disaster scholarship in ways that stimulate theory building. This article uses insurgent planning as a lens to examine grassroots movements and their efforts to advance alternative pathways for recovery in contexts where formal disaster planning is more likely to displace and dispossess than to enhance the livelihoods of the poorest and most marginalized. The article is based on an exploratory case study research in Puerto Rico after the 2017 Hurricane María and introduces the notion of ‘ bomba planning’ as an analytic device to capture the distinctive features and dominant modes of engagement of grassroots movements in Puerto Rico in their pursuit of a more just and humane recovery.