Urban resilience

Cities are key for sustainability and the radical systemic changes required to enable equitable human development within planetary boundaries. Their particular role in this regard has become the subject of an emerging and highly interdisciplinary scientific debate. Drawing on a qualitative literature review, this paper identifies and scrutinizes the principal fields involved, asking for their respective normative orientation, interdisciplinary constitution, theories and methods used, and empirical basis to provide orientations for future research. It recognizes four salient research epistemologies, each focusing on a distinct combination of drivers of change:
(A) transforming urban metabolisms and political ecologies; (B) configuring urban innovation systems for green economies; (C) building adaptive urban communities and ecosystems; and (D) empowering urban grassroots niches and social innovation. The findings suggest that future research directed at cities and systemic change towards sustainability should (1) explore interrelations between the above epistemologies, using relational geography and governance theory as boundary areas; (2) conceive of cities as places shaped by and shaping interactions between multiple socio-technical and social-ecological systems; (3) focus on agency across systems and drivers of change, and develop corresponding approaches for intervention and experimentation; and (4) rebalance the empirical basis and methods employed, strengthening transdisciplinarity in particular.

Resilience challenges for cities require bridging the gap between theorized concepts, such as resilience attributes, and its application to urban planning. Resilience attributes have been used by international policy initiatives to guide urban resilience without paying attention to how these attributes are represented in public policies. We present an analytical approach to examine the application of resilience attributes in resilience public policy. We apply our approach to evaluate the design of the Resilience Strategy developed for Mexico City under the 100 Resilient Cities Program. We find that creating tangible, meaningful action in government for urban resilience is hampered by concepts that cannot easily be translated into urban planning. Our analytical approach allows a practical and systematic assessment of the representation of resilience attributes, offering an opportunity to adjust and reframe the design of resilience policies balancing scientific knowledge with what is meaningful for decision-makers.

This paper explores project frameworks and design methods in order to reveal innovative ways and processes for creating more resilient cities and regions. Considering major environmental, economic and social challenges and extracting key quality elements from pioneer development schemes, the aim is to identify methods and policies that have a significant impact on the transformation, landscape quality and sustainability of places at city and regional scale. Starting with the model of design quality in project delivery, and looking at a transformation model, the paper discusses best practices for the development of concept and implementation before it considers the model of pan-European collaboration. An investigation of climate adaptation issues through the 'Room for the River', a national programme in the Netherlands, demonstrates the significance of landscape design, low carbon and spatial quality as vital aspects of the built environment. The West Midlands National Park (WMNP UK), a major infrastructure proposal, demonstrates how a broader vision can help drive environmental, social and economic transformation in a region, whilst SATURN, an EIT Climate-KIC project, reveals the first stages of a pan-European city collaboration with the aim of reintegrating the natural assets within the climate change impact strategies of the participating cities, and exchanging knowledge between European regions. This paper suggests that landscape design and the built environment are important drivers towards a successful low carbon transition, and they can simultaneously enhance social and landscape identity and boost the economy of a region.

L’Aquila, a city of about 70,000 inhabitants located in central Italy, was hit by a devastating earthquake on April 6th, 2009. The disaster killed 309 people, left 50,000 homeless and shut down entire areas of its sprawling urban system.

The public debate and policy interventions that followed the disaster raised the question of what kind of city should be rebuilt. Which new visions for the city could be put forward?

Envisaging L’Aquila brings together the results of a large and articulated research project carried out at the Gran Sasso Science Institute to document the reconstruction process.

The book provides a broad overview of the emerging visions and spatial strategies unfolding at the local level, documenting the everyday life public spaces, civil society movements, and the relaunch of the knowledge economy in the local territorial system

Within rapidly urbanising South Africa, „resilience‟ risks turning into another development trend‟ and losing credibility. Its application and usefulness could be misunderstood and it
stands at an equal risk of manipulation as sustainability has been. Narrow resilience definitions that are limited to bounce back responses frequently substitute the full and rich scope of resilience theory, resulting in doubtful suggestions that resilience is a life strategy for poverty alleviation in communities or in the reconfiguration of government investment in the spatial economy. Well-established resilience theory and the inherent potential that lies in
its holistic translation into complex city systems, appears to be undervalued.

This paper builds awareness of the developmental potential that resilience thinking can unlock within the built environment; a means of proactively studying urban areas to engage policy and intervene in its design to foster conditions for life to thrive. Here, resilience indicates the strength of a system and is an emergent property thereof, not a normative principle. If used as a normative principle, then negative conditions like poverty (which can be highly resilient), are strengthened rather than collapsed, in other words, „resilience as the goal‟ could perpetuate poverty. Once the drivers of resilience in a focal area are recognised then engaging with design, implementation and management becomes enriched. This paper further argues that an urban resilience perspective provides an integrative and contextual approach for enhancing the positive properties of different city systems to build their overall general resilience; a framework to develop capacity for general resilience in the city is explored through narrative examples. Potentially, resilience could inform the process to create sustainable human(e) settlements, if founded on a holistic understanding of its theory
as applied to processes in the city system.

Purpose – This study aims to investigate the impact of Hurricane Sandy from the perspective of interdependence among different sectors of critical infrastructure in New York City and to assess the interconnected nature of risks posed by such a hurricane.

Design/methodology/approach – This study uses indirect damages of each sector to estimate the degree of functional interdependence among the sectors. The study examines the impact of the hurricane on different critical infrastructures by combining hazard maps of actual inundation areas with maps of critical infrastructure. The direct damages of each sector are calculated from the inundation areas in the flood map. The indirect damages are estimated by considering the areas that were not inundated but affected by Sandy through the interconnected infrastructure.

Findings – The electricity sector was the key sector to propagate risks to other sectors. The examination of new initiatives to increase the resilience of critical infrastructures in New York City after Sandy reveals that these initiatives focus primarily on building hard infrastructures to decrease direct damages. They understate the importance of interdependent risk across sectors. Future disaster risk reduction strategies must address interdependent infrastructures to reduce indirect damages.

Originality/value – This paper focuses on estimating the direct and indirect damages caused by Hurricane Sandy in each critical infrastructure sector, using GIS mapping techniques. It also introduces a Bayesian network as a tool to analyze critical infrastructure interdependence.

Since 1990s, many building sustainability assessment tools were developed and implemented in different parts of the world. Encouraged by the considerable success of these tools in promoting sustainability principles and practices, a movement to upscale building-centered assessment methods by focusing on the neighborhood scale was born in the subsequent decade. This movement has evolved considerably over the past two decades, and there are now many tools for neighborhood sustainability assessment. Also, during this period a large body of literature on neighborhood sustainability assessment tools has been published. In this study we seek to identify and categorize successes regarding the development and implementation of these tools through a systematic review of the literature. Based on evidence reported on 40 tools from different parts of the world, we identified two major success categories, namely, structural, and procedural. Tool improvement over time, provision of measurable indicators for assessment, and recognition of context-specific issues through developing some local tools are major structural successes. Also, major successes related to procedures are the promotion of sustainable design, improvements in environmental performance (e.g., reduced travel demand and sprawl control), and usefulness for identifying priority development locations. One major issue is that reported evidence is mainly related to some prominent tools, namely Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND), Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method for Communities (BREEAM Communities), Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency for Urban Development (CASBEE-UD), and Green Star Communities. Further research on other existing tools is needed to gain a better understanding of the successes. Overall, this study demonstrates that neighborhood sustainability assessment tools have great potential in contributing to the transition towards sustainable urban development.

This working paper is the result of a project that examines the impact of COVID-19 on women and girls in urban poor communities in Metro Manila. We focus on resilience, rights, and equity to ascertain the broader structural and cultural challenges and constraints that determine how COVID-19 has affected women and girls and their families in urban poor communities. We also briefly explore some of the solutions that women, community-workers, faith-based organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and public servants have devised in the face of these challenges.

Executive Summary
Global urbanisation is increasing dramatically and most of the world’s population now lives in cities. The environmental impact of cities has received much attention in the global debate, making urban sustainability a top priority – for local and national governments, and for the people who live, work and recreate in urban areas.
Sustainability is about putting in place solutions that will yield a positive legacy. Resilience is about putting in place solutions that are resistant to future uncertainties. Large investments are being made today to make our cities more sustainable; the success of these investments depends on their resilience and how the future develops. However, predicting the future is complex – perhaps the only certainties are that there will be change, and that we must learn to live within the resource limitations of our planet. Those involved in urban development and regeneration will influence the resilience and sustainability of our cities through their responses to influencing factors such as climate change, population growth, the global economy, and planning regulation. The Urban Futures Method aims to broaden the way we think about the form, function, and context of urban development and regeneration by focussing on the likely long-term performance of today’s urban design solutions, and their associated vulnerabilities.
In this Guide, we present the Urban Futures Method to test the likely future performance of actions taken today in the name of sustainability, in a series of possible future scenarios in the year 2050. Examples of such solutions might be installing a green wall or designing for mixed use. If the proposed solutions work across a range of alternative futures, the investment is likely to prove robust; where there are very different outcomes depending on the future, the solution can either be adapted to create a more resilient outcome (ie it will continue to function in the face of change should the future turn out to be very different) regardless of the future, or implemented with some insight into its potential vulnerabilities.
Incorporating a scenarios analysis based upon four distinct and plausible futures, the Urban Futures Method guides the user through the complexities of thinking about the impacts of future changes in key drivers. Scenario analysis cannot predict the changes, but can help decision-makers to plan for resilience and adaptation as a key part of project management, for both current activities and future strategies. People are able to think more broadly about the future and about the sustainability of today’s actions by considering ‘what-if’ questions for changes in society, technology, economy, environment and policy (STEEP). While the Urban Futures Method is independent of the chosen future scenarios, the method is illustrated using four scenarios specific to the UK urban context for the year 2050.
It is important to note that the Urban Futures Method focuses on process – broadening the scoping of future risk. The usefulness of the result depends on asking the right questions. The methodology helps to raise questions that would not normally be asked, and provides a structure for exploring them with a view to enhancing the solution that is put into place. The Urban Futures Method is designed to assist in making strategic or detail-level decisions about investing in plans or projects related to urban development and regeneration. The results can be useful to a wide variety of
public- and private- sector decision-makers, including community stakeholders, urban designers, planners, developers, architects, and engineers. It is applicable to sustainability solutions at all scales: from the planting of an individual street tree, to building systems such as appliances or water systems, to a mixed use policy implemented at a regional or national scale.
How can we make robust decisions to achieve the lofty goals of sustainability and resilience when we truly do not know what the future will bring? The process of assessing the performance of a sustainability solution in a variety of futures aids practitioners in identifying those conditions necessary for its success and in assessing the likelihood that those conditions will be met in the future. By assessing the necessary conditions in various scenarios, the Urban Futures Method helps identify the causes and effects of a solution’s resilience in a methodical way such that risks are evident and the options for adapting the solution are made clearer. Note that it does not assess the current viability of the solution to deliver sustainability benefits today, as its performance is strongly context dependent. Nor does it define the local sustainability priorities, which form part of the local context.

After more than a century of heroic urban visions, city dwellers today live in suburban subdivisions, gated communities, edge cities, apartment towers, and slums. The contemporary cities we know are more often the embodiment of unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences rather than visionary planning.

As an alternative approach for rethinking and remaking today’s cities and regions, this book explores the intersections of critical inquiry and immediate, substantive actions. The contributions inside recognize the rich complexities of the present city not as barriers or obstacles but as grounds for uncovering opportunity and unleashing potential. Now Urbanism asserts that the future city is already here. It views city making as grounded in the imperfect, messy, yet rich reality of the existing city and the everyday purposeful agency of its dwellers.

Through a framework of situating, grounding, performing, distributing, instigating, and enduring, these contributions written by a multidisciplinary group of practitioners and scholars illustrate specificity, context, agency, and networks of actors and actions in the re-making of the contemporary city.

The concept of a ‘smart city’ is usually associated with the use of information and communications technology to improve governance – including planning functions – and the quality of life for citizens. Other definitions include human capital, people who are able to develop or exploit technology, to the benefit of the urban economy. However, cutting edge or ‘high-tech’ technology is generally regarded as pivotal to a smart city. Cities in developed countries often have the resources to invest in technology and people, thus moving towards greater ‘smartness’. In Africa, only the most developed parts of the largest cities can dream of being smart, while most towns lack the financial and technological capacity, and their residents the access to the internet to invest in smart systems. Yet, as this paper argues, there are opportunities for smaller cities and towns to use technology in planning processes and in this way, earn the epithet of ‘smart planning’ cities and towns.

La résilience désigne aussi bien le pouvoir d’absorber et de digérer les coups du sort que celui de se relever encore et toujours. Elle promet le dépassement des dommages et de la catastrophe en permettant de retrouver une situation « normale », voire dans certains cas, « meilleure ». Lorsque les leçons d’un désastre ont été tirées, la résilience se présente comme une opportunité pour reconstruire quelque chose de plus sûr.
Ce concept soulève pourtant de nombreuses questions sur son efficacité théorique et son opérationnalité, ce qui rend nécessaire une approche critique des implications sociales, spatiales, pratiques et politiques de la résilience.
Présentant un vaste panel transdisciplinaire d'approches théoriques reposant sur des résultats récents, tout en s'appuyant sur une grande diversité d'études de cas, cet ouvrage offre des perspectives aux acteurs, chercheurs et décideurs.

In the contemporary city two kinds of green spaces can be found: planned spaces and “leftover” spaces, remnants of former human activity where nature has taken over giving a sense of wilderness, referred as urban wildscapes. Overleaped by the dynamics of urban growth, these landscapes seem to lie dormant at what used to be the city edge, yet busting with hidden potential. Their properties, layered-ness, flux and indeterminacy, corresponding to their structure, function and way of perception, form the basis for urban re-wilderness, the result of a sustainable methodology approach for the regeneration of urban wildscapes. The methodology, consisting of three stages of actions, site preparation, intervention and future management, is implemented in a case study area located in the west entrance of the city of Thessaloniki. The approach adopted is based on the interaction of a series of layers that formulate a network of green infrastructure, made out of habitats, activities and connections, in an attempt to present the city dweller with an alternative urban landscape.