By Design: The Disaster Resistant and Quality-of-Life Community

We require no less than a whole new way of thinking about how we design and build our communities in natural hazard areas—seismic, coastal, and watersheds—if we are to ensure our societies' safety, health, and overall quality of life. Our present approach is inadequate and is inflicting great and growing harm—physically, environmentally, socially, economically, and emotionally—that we can no longer tolerate. The disaster resistant community (DRC) concept, the first and foremost step toward creating quality-of-life communities, was created specifically to provide this new way of thinking. While a great deal has been heard about this term and its accompanying concept, it is, for the most part, not being used effectively. A number of basic questions need to be addressed: What are DRCs? Why are they important? What are the benefits? What is the origin and history of the concept? What is the relationship between a DRC and a sustainable quality-of-life community? And, most importantly, how do we go about creating them? The purpose of this article is to provide the answers to these questions so that the concept can be better understood and used to its fullest potential.