Integrating Soft Infrastructure in Design to Build Community Resilience in Puerto Rico

Access to social capital, community competence, information and communication, and economic development are among the indicators that define a community’s resilience in response to disasters. In Puerto Rico, this access is threatened by corrupt political and economic practices. In addition, risk governance deficits are common with top-down recovery projects that followed the devastation of the island by Hurricane Maria in 2017. My field work, in parallel with collaborative case-study research, examines alternative models for disaster design response. These include small-scale, participatory projects that focus on building community resilience with improved access to soft infrastructures. My team piloted Storm Station in 2020, a modular micro-infrastructure project that expands scope to include medical aid, training, job creation, and communications. Enabling such resources in a way that is intrinsically tied to architectural design has promises but also challenges. Local partners must maintain capacity for continued funding, maintenance, and programming. When replicated, Storm Station aims to connect modules across municipalities as a decentralized, disaster-monitoring, and data-communications network that amplifies local impact and social capital. The hindrances to replication and mass implementation that we face provide insights into the limitations of such recovery action and push us to consider how to overcome them.