Disaster-driven displacement now reshapes life for tens of millions of people each
year, yet relief systems still treat displacement as an exception. This paper argues that
mainstream disaster relief is maladaptive: its neutral-seeming distribution logics reproduce the
social inequalities it claims to address. Drawing on transition design, speculative design, and a
research-through-design reading of humanitarian practice, the paper proposes
vulnerability-centred slack ecologies. Slack here means designed surplus capacity in time,
resources, relationships, and information, built around the people most likely to be overlooked.
The proposal has three parts: preemptive vulnerability cartography, relational resource flows
through community accompaniment nodes, and adaptive learning architectures that integrate
indigenous early-warning knowledge. The paper sets out an implementation pathway and
examines tensions around data, power, and consent. The contribution is a posture shift, from
response to disaster toward response to systemic vulnerability, aligned with the conference
themes of regenerative futures and mindsets for transition.