Build Back Better: How planners can support Jamaica’s recovery

Based in Lincoln and an active RTPI member, Steve Kemp has been working regularly on plan-making and place-making projects in the Caribbean for over 20 years. With his OpenPlan colleagues and associates, he has focused particularly on helping island governments and communities to plan for greater resilience and sustainability. Steve was immediately moved to act when he learned of the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa and approached UNDP to propose a volunteer support programme, now being worked up with the Jamaican Government and other partners. 

How planners can support Jamaica’s recovery and shape a global model for resilient response

When Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica, just three months ago, the immediate impacts were visible and devastating: damage to homes and infrastructure, disruption to livelihoods, and the sudden unravelling of hard-won development gains in already vulnerable communities. Less visible, but equally profound, were the planning challenges that followed - how to support urgent recovery while ensuring that rebuilding does not simply perpetuate yesterday’s vulnerabilities.

I am currently working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Jamaica on an initiative to support Jamaica’s Build Back Better recovery effort. A central part of this work is the development of a mechanism through which planners - in the UK, across the Caribbean, and internationally - can provide practical, structured support to Jamaican colleagues as they navigate this complex moment. This is not about parachuting in external “solutions”. It is about solidarity, professional exchange, and strengthening local capacity at a time when planning systems are under exceptional pressure.

Images courtesy of @raskitchentv

The challenge: recovery and resilience at the same time

Post-disaster contexts expose a fundamental tension familiar to many planners: the need to act quickly versus the need to act wisely. In Jamaica, planners are dealing simultaneously with:

• urgent decisions on rebuilding housing, infrastructure and community facilities;
• pressures to relax standards to enable rapid recovery;
• heightened exposure to future climate-related hazards; and
• limited institutional capacity stretched further by emergency conditions.

In such contexts, planning becomes both more difficult and more important. Choices made in the weeks and months after a disaster can lock in patterns of risk — or open pathways to safer, more resilient futures.

A collaborative support mechanism

Working with UNDP and Jamaican partners, we are helping to establish a planner-to-planner support mechanism that enables targeted, time-limited, and well-coordinated professional input from outside Jamaica, aligned with locally identified needs.

The initiative is being developed with the active support of the Jamaica Institute of Planners, the Caribbean Planners Association, the Commonwealth Association of Planners, as well as the Royal Town Planning Institute. This collective backing is crucial: it ensures professional legitimacy, ethical oversight, and strong links between local and international planning communities. The mechanism is designed to allow planners to contribute in ways that are realistic alongside existing professional commitments - from short advisory inputs and peer review, to mentoring, knowledge sharing, and thematic support in areas such as:

• risk-sensitive land-use planning;
• informal settlement upgrading;
• climate-resilient infrastructure planning;
• community-led recovery and engagement;
• development management in emergency conditions; and
• long-term spatial strategies that embed adaptation and resilience.

Core principles: Build Back Better in practice

At the heart of this initiative are a small number of guiding principles that may be useful well beyond Jamaica:

1. Local leadership, external support -
Jamaican planners remain in the lead. External professionals act as supporters, sounding boards, and technical allies - not decision-makers.
2. Mutual learning -
This is not a one-way transfer of expertise. Jamaican planners have deep experience of hazard-prone contexts from which planners elsewhere have much to learn.
3. Recovery and resilience are inseparable -
Immediate rebuilding must be informed by longer-term risk reduction, climate adaptation, and social resilience, even when speed is essential.
4. Practical help over abstract advice -
The focus is on applied planning tasks: frameworks, tools, precedents, and peer input that can be used immediately in live decision-making.
5. Ethical and professional integrity -
All contributions operate within clear professional standards, cultural awareness, and accountability to local institutions.

Why this matters beyond Jamaica

While this initiative responds to a specific event, it is also intended as a prototype. Climate-related disasters are increasing in frequency and severity, and many planning systems - particularly in small island states and lower-income countries - will face similar pressures. If successful, this model could be adapted to provide rapid, professional planning support in future emergencies elsewhere, drawing on global networks while remaining grounded in local contexts. In time, it could become part of the profession’s collective response capability - a way of mobilising and pooling planning expertise when and where it is most needed.

An invitation to fellow planners

This work will only succeed if it is underpinned by the generosity, professionalism, and curiosity of planners willing to contribute their skills. Whether you are a development management officer, a strategic planner, an academic, a consultant, or an early-career practitioner, there may be a role for you.

Volunteering does not require heroic commitments - just a willingness to share experience, listen carefully, and support colleagues facing extraordinary challenges.

For planners who believe in the social purpose of the profession, this is an opportunity to put our values into practice: to support recovery, reduce future risk, and help communities rebuild not just what was lost, but something stronger and safer in its place.

If planning is about shaping better futures, then Build Back Better is not an abstract slogan - it is a responsibility we increasingly share.

How to get involved

Planners interested in supporting Jamaica’s Build Back Better recovery will be invited to register their interest in the emerging planner-to-planner support initiative.

To express interest or find out more, planners should look out for updates and the forthcoming calls for volunteers through RTPI channels and other professional networks.

Small inputs can make a big difference — and shared learning will flow both ways.