Disaster reconstruction and business geography following the 2007 Greensburg, Kansas Tornado

In May 2007, a tornado (classified as EF-5 on the Enhanced Fujita scale) touched down in the small Midwestern town of Greensburg, Kansas. Eleven people lost their lives, 95 per cent of the urbanized landscape was destroyed and hundreds of residents were left temporarily homeless. The town's decision to rebuild as a green city, and the many implications of that approach, has been well documented in the popular media. However, geographic change, derivative of the overall reconstruction process, has not received the same attention in ether popular or scholarly literature. Previous research on disaster reconstruction in developed cities indicates two tendencies: an areal expansion of urbanized landscapes related to structural rebuilding and an acceleration of pre-disaster development patterns, particularly within the urbanized area. Previous research has also focused on recovery among businesses in disaster reconstruction scenarios as a surrogate measure of a community's overall return to pre-disaster conditions. Following on this line of inquiry, the purpose of this research is to analyse changes occurring in urban morphology, business locations and business types within Greensburg, KS during the first three years of reconstruction. Analysis of satellite imagery illuminates the changes in the urban morphology of the town. Analysis of economic data, captured the day of the tornado event and three years after the tornado event, illustrate the operational and locational resiliency of Greensburg businesses. Overall, there has been an expansion of Greenburg's urban footprint, a high percentage of resilient businesses choosing new locations, a slight reduction in the number of businesses overall, and changes in the type of businesses during this period of reconstruction.