International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction 51 (2020) 101786 Available online 5 August 2020 2212-4209/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Whose views matter in post-disaster recovery? A case study of “build back better” in Tacloban City after Typhoon Haiyan Yvonne Su a, * , Loïc Le D´ e b a Department of Equity Studies, York University, Canada b Emergency and Disaster Management, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Disaster Build back better Recovery Philippines Humanitarianism ABSTRACT Local people’s perceptions of recovery are commonly overlooked, even though they should be at the centre of the recovery process. This paper aims to understand the ways in which locals view recovery and, more specifcally, how the local defnitions of recovery compare with the concept of ‘building back better’ extensively used by policy makers, scholars and humanitarian agencies. The study draws on 460 questionnaire-based surveys with people affected by Typhoon Haiyan in three barangays, the smallest administrative unit in the Philippines, in Tacloban City as well as twenty key informant interviews with community leaders, and staff from non- government organizations and the government. The paper shows that a large majority of affected people see recovery has coming back to normal and only a few associate the recovery with reducing disaster risk. It further identifes a divide between outside organizations and local people on how they perceive “build back better”, where a lack of common understanding of what ‘better’ means and limited support, can lead to unsuccessful recovery. 1. Introduction Disasters affect local people in different way, causing human, social, emotional, physical, and economic disruptions. The reconstruction and recovery taking place after disasters often involve a large array of stakeholders such as international organizations, government agencies, international and local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as well as disaster-affected people. Even though local people’s perceptions of recovery should be central to their own recovery process, their views are often overlooked and top-down approaches implemented by hu- manitarian agencies generally prevail [1–3,83]. There remains a strong tendency to implement ‘supply-led’ approaches to humanitarian assis- tance where the actions and programming geared to recovery are determined by outsiders rather than being based on the needs and pri- orities on the ground as expressed by insiders [4–9]. What results is a disconnect between outsiders’ and insiders’ understanding of the hu- manitarian priorities and the recovery objectives, including the basic defnition of recovery [10]. The different defnitions of recovery by the various stakeholders often refects how they see and understand disaster, which ultimately leads to varied recovery approaches to meet very different goals [11]. Traditionally, recovery has been understood as a return to pre- disaster conditions [12,13,84] . In this view, disasters are seen as a temporary deviation from development, which emphasise the need to gear recovery actions towards returning to pre-disaster conditions as soon as possible [11]. It generally includes the reconstruction of housing and other built amenities, invigorating both people’s livelihoods and the local economy as well as ensuring that people affected recover psycho- logically [85,86]. This view is shaped by the need to quickly come back to ‘normal’. As a result, recovery efforts often focus on providing fast solutions to address the disaster impacts and re-establish a sense of normality among affected communities [14–16]. On the other hand, numerous scholars and practitioners have argued that simply returning to a previous status quo can be a problematic approach because “rapidly rebuilding houses, reconstructing infra- structure, and rehabilitating livelihoods often leads to recovering in ways that recreate or even increase existing vulnerabilities” [17]: 10). These critiques refect a view of disasters as an outcome of bad gover- nance and a symptom of mal-development [11]. The post-disaster situ- ation is thus understood as an opportunity to correct those societal ills by more equitable repartition of resources, mobilizing citizens’ participa- tion for social change and ultimately fostering Disaster Risk Reduction * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: yvonnesu@yorku.ca (Y. Su), loic.le.de@aut.ac.nz (L. Le D´ e). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ijdrr https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101786 Received 6 May 2020; Received in revised form 27 July 2020; Accepted 28 July 2020