Building Back Better Under Siege: Housing Reconstruction and Built-Environment Improvement in Al-Qubba, Gaza City

Post-conflict reconstruction under prolonged blockade and governance fragmentation has rarely been examined empirically at the neighborhood scale. This qualitative single-case study investigates housing reconstruction in Al-Qubba, Gaza City, following the near-total destruction of the 2014 conflict. A three-dimensional analytical framework- physical quality, community agency, governance, and structural constraints is applied through the cross-cutting lens of Gaza’s blockade ecology. Data were triangulated across semi-structured interviews (n = 25), GIS spatial analysis, Space Syntax assessment (DepthmapX), and institutional document review. On physical quality, reconstruction met the minimum Build Back Better (BBB) threshold: reinforced-concrete roofing replaced pre-war structures, streets were standardized to 10 m and over 75% were paved, while 94.7% of residents expressed satisfaction; however, Space Syntax analysis revealed that Global Integration recovered only to 1.07 against a pre-war baseline of 1.28, indicating functional recovery without spatial optimisation, and public space provision was entirely unrealised. Regarding community agency, the hybrid owner-driven model produced multi-stage participation in 14/20 households (70%), substantially exceeding agency-driven equivalents, with participation depth positively associated with satisfaction through a perceived legitimacy mechanism; however, neighborhood-scale collective participation was absent. On governance, GRM material delays averaged three to six months; approximately 6/20 households (32%) were undercompensated by donor floor-area caps; and only 8/20 respondents (40%) reported concurrence between official and self-assessed damage valuations. The findings characterize Al-Qubba as demonstrating incremental resilience-building rather than transformative regeneration, and contribute four theoretical constructs: a two-tier BBB for siege contexts; blockade ecology as a BBB modifier; incremental resilience under siege; and configurational BBB assessment. As a single qualitative case study, findings are analytically transferable to comparable constrained reconstruction contexts rather than statistically generalizable.