Bonding Between Urban Fabric and Capacity of Collective Resilience: The Case of Talca Historic Centre, Chile

This chapter addresses the relationship between community’s ability to develop mechanisms for collective responses to a catastrophe and the pre-existing settlement model, using as a reference the case study of the historic centre of Talca, destroyed by the earthquake that hit south-central Chile in 2010. Before the earthquake, the historic centre of Talca was the core of the city and was characterised by a certain heterogeneity of artefacts, inhabitants and activities. All around the centre, a series of satellite neighbourhoods began to appear from the 1980s, mainly erected by private enterprise without a clear public design, characterised by strong mono-functionality, clear distinctions by income levels, large commercial buildings and large road infrastructures. Reconstruction after the earthquake has encouraged the development of these new districts, while the centre is being rebuilt in an uneven way, partly to replace destroyed areas and partly by densification interventions. Although the historical nucleus is no longer clearly recognisable today, the liveliness of the centre’s public life has succeeded in resisting, for a while, through the mobilisation of the inhabitants in defence of some symbolic buildings. Of particular interest is the process of citizen mobilisation around the value of a state and comprehensive schools (Escuelas Concentradas) that led the school buildings to keep the same function and form it had before the earthquake. The results of the study highlight the connection between the settlement pattern and the inherent relationship among the inhabitants towards it; how a process of collective awareness post-catastrophe is closely linked to the pre-disaster scenario, as amply emphasised in the literature; and how the complexity of daily practices and relationships that develop in the historic city are, at the same time, a tool of mitigating social risk.