Abstract/Summary

Understanding the influence of places of worship in managing disasters is an important discourse in urban environment research. With the considerable presence of informal settlements in cities, this study analyses the resilience and social capacities of vulnerable communities in the informal built environment. This study aids academicians, professional practitioners, and government officials in determining the significance of places of worship in enhancing their contribution to social resilience. The focus of the study is situated in the informal settlements at Barangay San Andres in Cainta, Rizal, Philippines: a community along the riverbank of the Manggahan floodway that is prone to extreme weather events and disaster risks. This study examines how places of worship are used as a social infrastructure through the social resilience framework. Through a sequential exploratory research design, the qualitative data from 16 key informant interviews highlighted six (6) emerging themes of social resilience. A survey from 409 respondents revealed the significance and positive effects of resilience in most social dimensions except for social equity. Moreover, the structural equation modelling equation has determined that the relationships between the dimensions of social resilience to be non-linear. The framework also found social capital to have the highest influence or impact on the other components among all the social resilience dimensions. The study thus presented a unique integrated social resilience framework as a method of assessing places of worship through a social resilience context. The study also provided additional insights to three religious/spiritual aspects of places of worship, namely (1) the spiritual space, (2) the spiritual capital, and (3) the spiritual beliefs. Hence, this study has introduced an integrated and transdisciplinary analysis across the social infrastructure, the social resilience, and the religious dimensions of places of worship.