Disaster governance and inequality-responsive accounting: Grenfell and Grand Kartal fires in times of institutional neglect, spatial justice and the evasion of accountability

Abstract

Infrastructures are never neutral; they reflect social priorities, institutional silences, and unequal entitlements to safety. This article explores how disaster governance practices contribute to the differentiated distribution of vulnerability and the systematic neglect of marginalised lives. Through a comparative case study of the Grenfell Tower fire in the United Kingdom and the Grand Kartal Hotel fire in Turkey, we examine how institutional breakdowns interact with austerity, outsourcing and technocratic accounting regimes to both produce harm and obscure responsibility. Grounded in critical urban theory and interpretive approaches to accounting, we propose the framework of Inequality-Responsive Accounting, which conceptualises accounting as a spatial and political instrument shaped by broader power relations. The framework introduces five interrelated tools: vulnerability mapping, accountable regulation tracking, chain of responsibility audits, spatial equity budgeting and redistributive risk accounting. These tools enhance institutional responsiveness to marginalised groups and disrupt procedural routines that displace substantive accountability. Our analysis shows how accounting systems act as selective mechanisms of recognition and exclusion, influencing whose lives are safeguarded and whose are treated as expendable. By tracing the political geographies of disaster governance, the article highlights how infrastructural inequality is sustained through ostensibly routine institutional operations.