The Impact of Earthquakes on Survivors’ Perceptual and Cognitive alterations in Residential Environment; Case Study: Bam Earthquake, 2003

The sudden occurrence of an earthquake exposes the survivors with some inconsistencies in the post-disaster world, hence severely undermining the perceptual-cognitive structures and the assessment of the desired living environment. As such, the current study has sought to evaluate the views and attitudes of the earthquake-affected communities of Bam and Fahraj regarding the significance of different dimensions of housing and the reconstructed environment and compare them with control group, with similar social, cultural, economic, and environmental features. The authors employed a mixed method approach, and data were collected through interviews, ethnography, survey through questionnaires and hand sketches. The research participants were from Bam and Fahraj, while the Bazaar neighborhood of Kerman as the control group. Simple random sampling was used for the control group, while purposive sampling was used for target group. Based on the findings, the individual-interpersonal dimensions of housing and the reconstructed environment were deemed more important than the collective function of these units from the perspective of earthquake-affected communities. Furthermore, risk perception increased the importance of home safety and strength, while experiences of homelessness, living in emergency and temporary shelters, and reconstruction programs and policies lead people to cognitions in response to self-confident, self-concept protection, improving others perception of self (i.e., social dignity), and expression the distinction between self and others (i.e., personalization). Parameters such as taste-based housing design, privacy and territoriality, meanings, desired housing facade, and gratefulness towards housing have gained further significance. In contrast, in the perception of the surrounded world and the collective functioning of the residential environment, cognitive schemas were exposed to contradictions, leading to an imbalance between cognition of pre-earthquake and post-earthquake schemas, pointing to parameters such as neighborhood units, semi-public residential areas, landscapes, and maintenance were deemed less significant compared with the control group. In conclusion, in addition to the recovery of the individual-interpersonal scale, the improvement of the worldview is also of utmost importance in the housing and living environment reconstruction with the aim of collective recovery.