BUT WHAT IS RESILIENCE, AND HOW IS IT APPLIED TO THE URBAN WORLD? Psychological resilience is a central notion of Preventive Psychiatry, both in theory and in practice. The key assumption of this type of thinking is that economies, and economic subjects, must be made more resilient in a situation of global market volatility. If power supply fails, what happens to the other urban services? ... accounting for complexity and coupling inter-disciplinary understanding with a much broader concept of system performance. All human settlements sustain impacts every day. From an economic standpoint, it is important to note that for each dollar invested in disaster preparedness, an estimated five to ten dollars in economic losses are saved . Efforts to enhance resilience must be proactive, rather than reactive â bringing together all components of the resilience cycle (mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery). La recherche de la durabilité ⦠5 must-doâs on urban resilience in a time of Covid 10 April, 2020 15 April, 2020 Guest Bloggers Featured, Opinion city, CRI, resilience, urban. MaiÌta FernaÌndez- Armesto Senior Coordinator of the Resilient Cities Programme, UN Habitat in Spain, Gemma Noguera Editor and Publication Management Specialist of the Resilient Cities Programme, UN Habitat in Spain. âRESILIENCEâ IS A TRENDY WORD. Urban resilience is a concept that only recently has been actively undertaken by cities around the world. New Residential Development at Dál Riada House, Blackrock, Co. Dublin. The concept of resilience in the literature Understanding the concept of urban resilience requires knowledge of how resilience theory has developed. Social systems determine human Cities do the same. Urban Resilience Education â new International Master Degree Framing and implementing sustainability and resilience in the broad realm of urban studies is a challenge which few universities are poised to accomplish through their existing educational programs. When this happens, cities realize they are vulnerable and need to improve their capacity to act: preparing themselves, being proactive, determining how to deal with potential crises before they occur, evaluating various scenarios and failures, gathering all the relevant actors and coordinating them, including the civil society. Urban resilience is typically understood as the capacity of cities to bounce back or even bounce forward from a disturbance or crisis event. At other times, cities may experience a crisis or disasters such as floods or storms. Le développement durable serait alors larticulation dun principe objectif dinterdépendance et dun principe normatif déquité spatiale et temporelle (Laganier et al., 2002). BUT WHAT IS RESILIENCE, AND HOW IS IT APPLIED TO THE ⦠Although the concept has been defined in different ways by different epistemic communities, public health is considered a strong component within the framework for urban resilience adopted by the 100 Resilient Cities Network. It acts as a âone stop shopâ for resilience information and guidance, providing a comprehensive selection of the most relevant information on urban resilience, selected by the top European experts in this field and supported with the real life knowledge created by several case studies. Thatâs why the urban resilience responsible will keep on watching over the city to detect all possible impacts that may affect the city in order to be prepared for the new impact. 1 United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects, 2014; 3 Urban resilience is increasingly essential as the populations of the worldâs cities continue to grow, with 70% of the global population being city-dwellers by 2050 according to the U.N.,1 and cities facing greater threats from natural disasters and unprecedented social tensions. The Urban Resilience Investment Forum 2020 (Investment Forum) aims to bring together policymakers, private business and ï¬nancial sectors, international organizations, and other relevant stakeholders to discuss the current landscape of support for climate action in cities and the pressing issues in accessing ï¬nancing solutions and channelling investments to climate change mitigation and adaptation projects. The key conceptual elements of resilience are first identified and then reorganized with a focus on cities and climate change adaptation. The repercussions of each crisis depend on the cityâs preparedness to respond to specific predictable impacts, and the way citizens perceive and react to those impacts. The concept of âSustainable Communitiesâ of the World Bankâs Social, Urban, Rural and Resilience (SURR) Global Practice includes four key dimensions: First, Sustainable Communities are environmentally sustainable in terms of cleanliness and efficiency. These projects have also shed light on the more traditional approach to urban resilience enhancement across much of Europe, where there is a tendency to approach particular buildings, structures or local areas in a relatively fragmented and ad-hoc manner. However, reality is very obstinate: city happens to be made up by people that are becoming more and more informed and to work using complex technical systems. When people have a medical issue, they see a doctor. Urban resilience is a concept that can help cities prepare for the complex challenges of the 21 st century. Resilience implies capacity to respond to both chronic stresses or acute shocks, which can be social, economic and environmental, or combinations thereof. The multi-country focus of these projects has enabled us to develop a deeper understanding of the context-specific opportunities and challenges facing urban decision-makers in seeking to plan and develop more resilient cities. One of the core findings emerging from these projects has been the lack of a mutually accepted definition of resilience across Europe, with some partner countries reporting that there is no direct translation in their native language. “Over the past two decades the concept of resilience, and more specifically urban resilience, has gained increasing attention within the urban planning and development arena. Urban Resilience. Building resilience in urban settlements. Over the past number of years, FAC has been extensively involved in the urban resilience research field, tackling similar questions around the applicability and value of the resilience concept within city planning and development processes. Promoting a new focus on urban resilience is essential and it can be achieved by combining a solid infrastructure with agile and efficient management. In academic and policy discourse, the concept of urban resilience is proliferating. 2. Urban resilience means extending the concept of resilience from technical systems to social systems, particularly to cities, and their ability to recover and continue to provide their main functions of life, commerce, industry, government, and social gathering in the face of calamities and other hazards. In the developed world, the commonplace ones may be minor interruptions to water supply or electricity, strikes that affect commerce and public transport, service interruptions or even maintenance work that inconvenience users. 3Le développement durable, dans sa définition première, a pour objectif de ne pas compromettre le développement des générations futures tout en corrigeant les formes actuelles dinégalités de développement entre les territoires. Therefore, the first step follows the old psychological maxim: know thyself. In financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, the doctrine of resilience has become crucial. Yet despite its ubiquity, it is often considered to be a fuzzy concept, with varying applications across disciplines and national borders. In conclusion, to make a city resilient city stakeholders have to engage in a continuous process of improving resilience. These factors are extremely variable and depend on values as dissimilar as the smooth operation of the systems or the level of tolerance that each society demonstrates during these events. In this regard, there are two main ways to respond to climate changes: GHG mitigation and adaptation. Copyright © 2020 Future Analytics Consulting All right reserved. The HARMONISE and RESILENS projects have both attempted to address this, by developing online platforms to aid this process. It refers to a person's ability to cope with adversity and to recover. This evaluation examines the World Bank Groupâs evolving experience in building resilience in urban areas during the period 2007â17. FAC is a leading Chartered Town Planning, Development and Socio-economic Analytics Consultancy based in Dublin with an extensive project portfolio throughout Ireland. Resilience as a new urban paradigm. âRESILIENCEâ IS A TRENDY WORD. This project has recived funding from European Comission by means of Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, under Grant Agreement no. This perceived lack of clarity around the use of the concept in practice or on the ground has led to calls for a more thorough examination of its potential utility in the urban context. FAC is a leading Chartered Town Planning, Development and Socio-economic Analytics Consultancy based in Dublin with an extensive project portfolio throughout Ireland. FAC has extensive experience in town and village renewal, town and village health checks, and settlement profiling. If we stumble on a rock and fall, we analyze why it has happened, we try learning from our fall and preventing falling again. how geographers could enrich urban resilience research. The interconnectivity of an urban system encompasses all sectors and must be integrated, and not sectorial. Social theorists, especially human geographers, have rightfully criticized that the underlying politics of resilience have been ignored and stress the importance of asking âresilience of what, to what, and for whom?â This study presents a conceptual framework for analyzing urban resilience in the context of climate change. THIS CONCEPT HAS ITS ORIGINS IN SCIENCES SUCH AS ECOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY OR MATERIALS RESISTANCE, IS NOW BEING APPLIED TO ALMOST EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE INCLUDING THE PREDOMINANT HUMAN HABITAT: THE CITY. Urban resilience defined. Taking action now is embodied in the concept of building resilience to future events. In other words, we learn to be resilient. From his/her resilience office, that in some cases will be connected to sensors or control rooms, the responsible will monitor all key processes, visualize the consequences, simulate impacts, and store and use the associated information. FAC Submit SHD Planning Application in Dublinâs Markets Area to An Bord Pleanála, Introducing Our New Virtual Consultation Service, To find out more about FAC’s EU projects, please see the. The platform is structured as a step-by-step process which seeks to emphasise to the user that resilience is a process rather than an end point, and as such encourages continuous reviews of plans over time.”. Moreover, if this diagnosis were done in a cross-sectoral and coordinated manner, this would allow for resource optimization resulting in economic savings. Itâs the same idea with cities; they need a diagnosis from which appropriate decisions are made in order to restore smooth operations as quickly as possible. RESCCUE, the first large-scale European research and innovation project on urban resilience, led by SUEZ, has organized the online conference Urban Resilience in a context of Climate Change. While mitigation focuses on the source of climate change, adaptation Urban resilience is typically understood as the capacity of cities to bounce back or even bounce forward from a disturbance or crisis event. 700174. Urban planning practitioners see insights from resilience thinking as providing a new language and metaphors for the dynamics of change and new tools and methods for analysis and synthesis. compounded by preexisting vulnerability. Urban Climate Change Resilience The concept of resilience has been useful in addressing climate And, as resilient people, a resilient city will be able to recover its functioning fast and efficiently, and finally will learn from each crisis to face better the next one. Our project ... mobility. A Global Infrastructure Initiative. Resilience is defined as: âThe amount of disturbance that a system could withstand without changing self-organized processes and structures (defined as alternative stable states).â ... Below is a graphical representation of the concept of resilience. Unfortunately, awareness is usually preceded by some crisis which has had a significant impact. Second, Sustainable communities are resilient to social, economic, and natural shocks. But the process does not stop there: urban resilience is a dynamic process that requires constant revision and updating of the cityâs status. Strengthening understanding of how individuals, communities and places respond to water stress and how this impacts on the resilience of urban areas. However, like many grand concepts, it is inherently ambiguous. This includes: Planning events simulating and deciding accordingly. Le concept est donc hautement anthropocentriste et pour partie subjectif. A number of scholars have referred to the securitisation or militarisation of cities in recent years, and particularly in the immediate post-9/11 period. Urban planning is a technical and political tool and process that, when done well, is the best way to reduce risk. Once thatâs done youâll be able to experience the FAC website perfectly. And since nature and society are much more powerful than cities and cities are changing very fast, and present cities have a lot of weaknesses. As cities continue to develop and struggle with many challenges, urban resilience has become an important concept. The concept of resilience also reigns in the economic arena. Even though the concept exists in the scientific liter-ature since the 1970s and research on urban ecology has engaged with the concept mainly for introduc- As human bodies, cities are also complex systems that do not always work as foreseen and that have also their weaknesses. Improving by correcting and projecting current strategies to ensure the continuity of the city in the event of an impact, Preventing impacts by identifying potential risks, validating, relating and diagnosing hazards and vulnerabilities. The major efforts by the UNDRR to make our cities resilient have focused on the concept of urban resilience mainly related to climate change adaptation and disaster management, leaving wider sustainability challenges aside.  This ultimately will necessitate the development of more educational and training resources for urban decision makers. To make a city resilient we need to build up a network of urban services and infrastructures because, as in a human body, all functions are interconnected. Find out more. As such, cities are taking steps towards becoming more resilient and to protect their residents, their assets, and to remain functional during crises. In a globalized world, where all societies are finally aware of the planetâs limited resources, and suffer from consequences due to the lack of capacity to protect themselves against the disasters that threaten them, now is the time to take steps towards resilience by involving citizens and investing in education and training, so that our cities can be transformed into livable and safe places with the best quality of life, and, ultimately, more resilient. uncertainties and challenges, such as climate changes, has become imperative, and urban resilience has become a widely discussed concept (Leichenko, 2011). Urban resilience refers to the ability of an urban system-and all its constituent socio-ecological and socio-technical networks across temporal and spatial scales-to maintain or rapidly return to desired functions in the face of a disturbance, to adapt to change, and to quickly transform systems that limit current or future adaptive capacity. In HARMONISE, the platform enables stakeholders with varying educational and professional backgrounds to contribute and collaborate in the planning, design, construction, operation and management of urban built infrastructure.