Recurrent risk and the disaster loop: A forensic approach to urban flooding

Abstract

Floods are among the most widespread and recurrent disasters worldwide, with particularly severe impacts in rapidly urbanising regions of developing countries such as Mexico, where inequality, governance constraints, and unplanned land-use change intensify exposure and vulnerability. Flood risk in Guadalajara, Mexico, stems from long-standing socio-spatial, institutional, and historical processes rather than isolated hydrometeorological events. Drawing on a forensic, retrospective longitudinal approach, this study reconstructs the causal pathways through which exposure and vulnerability have been generated, consolidated, and reproduced over time. The findings show how successive phases of urbanisation on unsuitable land, socio-spatial segregation, and uneven infrastructure provision have produced a recurrent pattern of flooding across the municipality. Institutional responses—centred predominantly on reactive, engineering-based measures—have mitigated immediate impacts while reinforcing the structural conditions that sustain risk. To interpret these cyclical dynamics, the study introduces the disaster loop. This conceptual model captures the self-reinforcing mechanisms through which governance practices, development trajectories, and territorial transformations continually regenerate risk conditions over time. By revealing the historical and systemic origins of Guadalajara's recurrent flooding, the analysis underscores the need for integrated, corrective, and prospective territorial planning capable of interrupting the feedback processes that normalise disaster risk and, instead, strengthening capacities to reduce it. The insights generated are relevant to rapidly urbanising contexts where inequality and governance fragmentation converge to reproduce extensive, chronic disaster patterns.