Shifting ground: A counterfactual analysis of recovery in earthquake-affected regions

Abstract Disasters disrupt socio-economic systems unevenly, and their spatial impacts are often derived from pre-existing territorial vulnerabilities. Given this evidence, this paper investigates the spatial dimensions of post-disaster recovery by analysing the housing market in the aftermath of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. We adopted a two-stage methodology that combines the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) and Diff-in-Diff (DiD) to evaluate recovery trajectories across six spatial categories, underlining spatial heterogeneity in recovery dynamics. The results reveal significant variation in the recovery patterns, with independent municipalities performing better than urban hamlets. This study underscores the importance of fine-grained spatial analysis for post-disaster policy design. These findings have significant implications for resilience planning and the development of targeted recovery strategies.