Beauty in the Built Environment: Enhancing Community Resilience in the Context of Climate Migration

Dr. Devora Neumark and Stephanie Acker

American Society of Adaptation Professionals

March 27, 2024

Flooding in Sindh Province. Residents carry belongings across their flooded neighbourhoods, Sindh Province, Pakistan.

Photo: Fareed Khan/Associated Press, 2022

Summary

Beauty in the built environment and everyday acts of home beautification play a critical role in strengthening individual and community resilience in contexts of climate displacement. Dr. Neumark’s initial interview with Denise Thornton in 2014 and the subsequent conversation in July 2023, which included Denise Thornton, Dr. Neumark, and Stephanie Acker, highlighted how an early focus on beautification efforts through “simple acts” of landscaping the front yard, planting the same flowers as were there prior to the hurricane, restoring shutters, and applying new paint on the exterior of the house “set an example for the entire community and was instrumental in attracting people back to the neighbourhood.” Collaborative research with Nizar ALayasa in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank has shown how residents have planted gardens that provide relief from the impacts of global warming. Interviews with residents highlighted how acts of beautification including planting gardens helped support several processes necessary for healing: 1) personal agency to cope with a lack of control, 2) the use of the physical to express complexity, and 3) remembering and honouring one’s past home and creating home anew. Drawing on these case studies, this lecture emphasised the importance of aesthetics in building community resilience, promoting recovery, cultural continuity, and human dignity in the face of loss, while highlighting the need to address power and privilege to ensure aesthetic equity in displacement and recovery contexts.

Key Takeaways

Increasing cases of extreme weather events and other climate change not only destroy physical infrastructures but also disrupt social, cultural, and political landscapes, exacerbating pre-existing problems and deepening existing inequities.

Analysis of research on refugee homemaking provides evidence from around the world of refugees modifying their surroundings to create beauty even in temporary conditions. This research illustrates how deliberate attempts to make something beautiful, what art philosopher Arthur Danto termed “Third Realm Beauty”, can play a vital role in displacement and recovery processes, with the potential to contribute to broader objectives of sustainable recovery, individual and community empowerment, and the protection of human rights amidst the challenges of climate-induced displacement.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Dr. Neumark’s interviews with Beacon of Hope founder Denise Thornton in 2014 and in July 2023, the latter of which also included Stephanie Acker, showed how including home beautification early on in relief initiatives through “simple acts” such as landscaping the front yard, planting the same flowers as were there prior to the hurricane, restoring shutters, and applying new paint on the exterior of the house helped signal that “there is hope here. We can rebuild.” Focusing on aesthetics not only inspired hope and decisions to return to the neighbourhood but also came with mental health benefits, where physical acts of home beautification helped ease the disorientation caused by the loss of home.

Collaborative research with Nizar ALayasa in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank demonstrates how gardens function as sites of climate adaptation, cultural memory, and psychosocial refuge despite overcrowding and water scarcity. Acts of beautification are a way to exercise personal agency in a context of limited control over everyday life and serve as a physical outlet to express complex emotions. Caring for gardens also allowed participants to connect with memories of their occupied villages, providing them with a means to honour the loss of their homes while creating home anew.

Implications for Practitioners

Beauty in early response initiatives: Humanitarian response actors should integrate aesthetics early on in recovery processes and support low-cost, community-led beautification initiatives, such as gardens, public gathering spaces, and home personalisation, as part of psychosocial programming.
Prioritise aesthetics as integral to recovery and climate resilience: Architects and designers should integrate aesthetics, greenery, colour, and opportunities for personalisation into emergency housing, transitional shelters, and permanent reconstruction, recognising beauty as a fundamental human need rather than a luxury.
Integrate beauty into cross-sectoral resilience frameworks: Policy makers should embed aesthetics and community participation into climate adaptation and refugee policy frameworks, recognising that aesthetics contribute not only to emotional wellbeing but also to social capital, family stability, improved governance, and even economic recovery.
Design for agency and participation: Climate disaster response and refugee support organizations should centre community voices, supporting local decision-making and governance through community-based processes that promote local ownership and agency. Power and privilege need to be addressed in resilience planning to ensure beautification and recovery efforts are aesthetically equitable and inclusive.
Enabling conditions: Urban planners and local governments should create enabling conditions (micro-grants, access to materials, water access for gardens) that allow residents to actively shape and beautify their environments, recognising that access to beauty is a fundamental human need and a matter of aesthetic equity.