build back better

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom and policy slogan urging that recovery from a crisis — natural disaster, conflict, economic collapse, or pandemic — be used as an opportunity not merely to restore pre-crisis conditions but to address underlying vulnerabilities and structural weaknesses so that the rebuilt society, infrastructure, and economy is more resilient and inclusive than what existed before; the phrase was prominent in international humanitarian and disaster risk reduction discourse from the early 2000s and entered mainstream global policy vocabulary following the Covid-19 pandemic, when governments including the Biden administration adopted it as a label for large-scale infrastructure investment programmes; build back better captures the idea that crises, while devastating, can create political and practical openings for transformative change that would be impossible to achieve incrementally in normal times; it implicitly critiques the tendency in recovery efforts to simply reconstruct what was destroyed rather than seizing the opportunity for deeper reform