Urban vulnerability: between risk reduction and social emancipation. Examples from Venezuela

Abstract

Vulnerability stems from a late 1960s critical academic background. As a progressive risk analysis concept, it consists in embodying triggering factors of risk situations in social organization and social relations. It promotes the analysis of risk construction through root social and political causes, instead of focusing on hazard. In highly discriminating and historically unequal urban contexts, such a viewpoint aims to achieving poor and marginalized people emancipation on the basis of both material and immaterial levers. By dealing with social construction of risk, vulnerability addresses the material and speculative socio-spatial basis of unfair urban settlements. The main issue is not to elude hazard impacts. Rather, the point consists in reducing vulnerability in a sustainable and shared way by transforming the socio-spatial conditions that frame the construction of risks.