Urban resilience describes the ability of a city or urban community to withstand, recover from or adapt to man-made and natural disasters. This concept includes the resilience of physical infrastructure and social, health, and economic systems.
History According to urban historian Roger W. Lotchin, World War II had a profound environmental impact on urban areas in the USA. By 1945, Pittsburgh and other cities along the Mississippi River experienced levels of air pollution that are comparable to the Dust Bowl. World War II more directly impacted many cities that were the site of battles and bombings, such as Hiroshima, Chongqing, Stalingrad, and Dresden.
Environmental history first emerged as an academic research topic in the 1970s, initially focusing on rural areas. Pioneers of urban environmental history include: Martin Melosi, Christine Rosen, Joel A. Tarr, Peter Brimblecombe, Bill Luckin, and Christopher Hamlin.
In recent years, the concept of resilience in the urban planning of cities has become a point of consideration. Social scientists have taken increased interest in ecological resilience as the links between social-ecological systems are being examined. Urban policy groups around the globe are putting forward proposals to enhance the urban resilience of cities. The definition of urban resilience is no longer limited to solely the speed at which an urban system recovers after a shock.
Academic research focus Academic discussion of urban resilience has historically focused primarily on three threats: climate change, natural disasters, and terrorism. Accordingly, resilience strategies were often studied in the context of counter-terrorism, other disasters (earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, coastal flooding, solar flares, etc.), and infrastructure adoption of sustainable energy. Recent scholarship has begun to explore resilience at the national scale, and what enables states or peoples to continue as sovereign entities over the long term.Cochrane, L. & Wilson, A. (2026): Resilient Statehood: Why and How Some Nations Maintained Long-Term Independence and Sovereignty. Springer.
More recently, there has been increased attention on the evolution of urban resilience and the capability of urban systems to adapt to changing conditions. This branch of resilience theory builds on the notion of cities as highly complex adaptive systems. As a result, academic discussions of urban planning include plans informed by network science, involving less interference in the functioning of cities. Network science provides a way of linking city size to the forms of networks that most likely allow cities to function. These perspectives can provide further insights into the potential effectiveness of various urban policies. This requires a better understanding of the types of practices and tools that contribute to building urban resilience. Genealogical approaches explore the evolution of these practices over time, including the values and power relations underpinning them.
Investment decisions
Building resilience in cities relies on making investment decisions that prioritize funding activities that offer alternatives suitable for variable future conditions. Such decisions need to take into account future risks and uncertainties as risk can never be fully eliminated; emergency and disaster planning is crucial.The Professional Practices for Business Continuity Management, Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRI), 2017. Improvements in disaster risk management, for example, offer practical opportunities for enhancing resilience.
As of 2007, more than half of the world's human population lived in cities, and urbanization is calculated to rise to 80% by 2050. The growing urbanization over the past century has been associated with a considerable increase in urban sprawl. Resilience efforts address not only how individuals, communities and businesses cope with multiple shocks and stresses, but also exploit opportunities for transformational development.
One way that national and local governments address disaster risk in urban areas, often supported by international funding agencies, is through resettlement. This can be preventative or occur after a disaster. While resettlement reduces people's exposure to hazards, it can lead to other problems, leaving people more vulnerable or living in worse conditions than they were. Resettlement needs to be understood as part of long-term sustainable development, not just as a means of disaster risk reduction.Risk-related resettlement and relocation in urban areas The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), accessdate 25 July 2017
Sustainable Development Goal 11
In September 2015, world leaders adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The goals, which build on and replace the Millennium Development Goals, officially came into force on 1 January 2016 and are expected to be achieved within the next 15 years. While the SDGs are not legally binding, governments are expected to take ownership and establish national frameworks for their achievement. Countries also have the primary responsibility for follow-up and review of progress based on accessible, timely, and high quality data. National reviews of regional progress will provide information on global progress of the initiative.
Medellin Collaboration for Urban Resilience The Medellin Collaboration for Urban Resilience (MCUR) was launched in 2014 at the 7th session of the World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia. As a pioneering partnership platform, the MCUR gathers the most prominent actors committed to building resilience globally, including the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), The World Bank Group, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, Inter-American Development Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, 100 Resilient Cities, C40, ICLEI and Cities Alliance, and it is chaired by UN-Habitat.
MCUR aims to jointly collaborate on strengthening the resilience of all cities and human settlements around the world by supporting local, regional and national governments through provision of knowledge and research, facilitating access to local-level finance, and raising global awareness on urban resilience through policy advocacy and adaptation diplomacy efforts. Its work is devoted to achieving the main international development agendas set out in the Sustainable Development Goals, the New Urban Agenda, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction.
The MCUR helps local governments and municipal professionals understand the primary utility of the vast array of tools and diagnostics designed to assess, measure, monitor and improve city-level resilience. For example, some tools are intended as rapid assessments to establish a general understanding and baseline of a city's resilience and can be self-deployed, while others are intended as a means to identify and prioritize areas for investment. The Collaboration has produced a guidebook to illustrate how cities are responding to current and future challenges by thinking strategically about design, planning, and management for building resilience. Currently, it is working in a collaborative model in six pilot cities: Accra, Bogotá, Jakarta, Maputo, Mexico City and New York City.
100 Resilient cities and the City Resilience Index (CRI) A central program contributing to the achievement of SDG 11 is the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities. In December 2013, The Rockefeller Foundation launched this initiative, which is dedicated to promoting urban resilience, defined as "the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience".
The professional services firm Arup has helped the Rockefeller Foundation develop the City Resilience Index (CRI) based on extensive stakeholder consultation across a range of cities globally. The CRI is intended as a planning and decision-making tool to help guide urban investments toward results that facilitate sustainable urban growth and the well-being of citizens. The hope is that city officials will utilize the tool to identify areas of improvement, systemic weaknesses and opportunities for mitigating risk. Its generalizable format also allows cities to learn from each other.
The CRI is a holistic articulation of urban resilience premised on the finding that there are 12 universal factors or drivers that contribute to city resilience. The factors vary in importance and are organized into four core dimensions of urban resilience
A total of 100 cities across six continents have signed up for the Rockefeller Center's urban resilience challenge. All 100 cities have developed individual City Resilience Strategies with technical support from a Chief Resilience Officer (CRO). The CRO ideally reports directly to the city's chief executive and helps coordinate all the resilience efforts in a single city.
Medellin in Colombia qualified for the urban resilience challenge in 2013. In 2016, it won the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize.
Urban governance A core factor enabling progress on all dimensions of urban resilience is urban governance. Sustainable, resilient and inclusive cities are often the product of good governance, particularly including effective leadership, inclusive citizen participation, and efficient financing. Public officials also require access to robust data, enabling evidence-based decision making. Open data improves the ability of local governments to share information with citizens, deliver services, and monitor performance. Increased public access to information facilitates more direct citizen involvement in decision-making.
Digital technologies As part of their resilience strategies, city governments are increasingly relying on digital technology as part of a city's infrastructure and service delivery systems. This is not without risk: reliance on digital technologies and electronic service delivery has made cities more vulnerable to phone hacking and cyber-attacks. However, information technologies have had a positive impact by supporting innovation and promoting efficiencies in urban infrastructure, thus leading to lower-cost city services. The deployment of new technologies in the initial construction of infrastructure have in some cases even allowed urban economies to leapfrog stages of development. An unintended outcome of the growing digitization of cities is the emergence of a digital divide, which can exacerbate inequality between well-connected affluent neighborhoods and business districts and under-serviced and under-connected low-income neighborhoods. In response, a number of cities have introduced digital inclusion programs to ensure that all citizens have the necessary tools to thrive in an increasingly digitized world.
Climate change
The urban impacts of climate change vary widely geographically and across levels of development. A recent study of 616 cities (home to 1.7 billion people, with a combined GDP of US$35 trillion, half of the world's total economic output), found that floods endanger more city residents than any other natural peril, followed by earthquakes and storms. Below is an attempt to define and discuss the challenges of heat waves, droughts and flooding. Resilience-boosting strategies will be introduced and outlined.
Heat waves and droughts