Lessons learned from two villages in the tsunami most affected area of Banda Aceh city; A review of the housing reconstruction and the current state of village development

This paper discusses two approaches to post-disaster housing reconstruction in Banda Aceh, the Indonesian area that was the most affected by the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. The two villages discussed in this study are Alue Deah Tengoh and Lambung, both located in Meuraxa sub-district. The village of Alue Deah Tengoh represents the common approach to post-disaster reconstruction within in Aceh with the construction of housing carried out by several external benefactors. It is referred to as the donor driven approach. In contrast, the reconstruction of the village of Lambung was based on its community’s involvement. Contrasting these two approaches, this study analyzes time series satellite images, housing and other reconstruction archives. It also conducted site evaluation and depth interview with their leaders in order to evaluate the conditions of each village prior to tsunami as well as its current state of development. Our aim is to unravel the process of housing reconstruction in these respective locations village. Drawing from this analysis, our results evaluate these two distinct approaches to housing reconstruction in postdisaster Aceh. On the one hand, it reveals that the community- based approach adopted in Lambung enabled the successful use of land consolidation (LC) and the total makeover of village layout and housing plot arrangement. On the other hand, our study reveals that the donor approach in Alue Deah Tengoh resulted in a heterogeneous landscape with several types of houses contributing to social inequality and disparity. Moreover, the reconstruction of Alue Deah Tengoh did not include LC and kept the village old layout with its meandering narrow streets and poor accessibility. These features are bond to hinder the upgrading and maintenance of urban utility services as well as the evacuation process during future disasters. In the light of this study, we thus recommend that community driven approach should be implemented in post-disaster reconstruction programs.