Now more than ever, the growing complexities of cities call for a shift in the planning and development process. It requires the application of resilience theory to understand the dynamics and interconnectedness of systems in cities. Given the amount of literature on urban resilience together with its interpretations and application, many researchers have shared resilience perspectives applied to different urban contexts. Ranging from successful cases of resilient cities to those that have encountered urban failures.
Cities in their form still remain a place of special significance with inherent capacity to rebuild themselves (Beinart, 2005; Campanella, 2008). It is however unfortunate that, mainly within adverse circumstances that the concept of resilience has commonly been applied particularly in urban environments (Campanella, 2008; Wallace and Wallace, 2008). This trend is envisaged to change as the concept continues to grow with urban planners, managers and policy makers applying a more proactive approach particularly in influential decision making that embeds all aspects of resilience.
Urban resilience can be seen in the context of the physical urban landscape, socio- cultural frame, economic features, leadership in all spheres and environmental system that includes climate change and the ecosystem just to mention a few (Campanella, 2008). Urban areas are in a constant process of internal and external change. They decline or expand, developing new form and function, dealing with various difficulties such as segregation, changing demographics and spatial patterns, economic crises and global competition. They never fully enter a state of stability (Wikstrom, 2013).
According to Katz (1994) cities are complex and interdependent systems, extremely vulnerable to threats from both natural hazards and terrorism. A study by Godschalk (2003) reveals that the very features that make cities feasible and desirable such as their architectural structures, population concentrations, places of assembly and interconnected infrastructure systems are the same features that put them at high risk. Wikstrom’s study (2013) equates urban areas to other human or natural systems in the sense that they have the ability to recover from a disaster and the ability to absorb and
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adapt to change. According to Wikstrom, this similarity makes the concept of resilience ideal for urban settlements. Wikstrom adds that resilience has come to be regarded as a necessity to urban development in order to reduce the impact of the above mentioned changes, and instead increase the safety and well-being of cities and their residents.
Numerous studies (e.g. Leichenko, 2011; Godschalk, 2003; Van Vliet, 2001; Tiemey, 2002) have examined the role of resilience in urban settlements. According to these researchers, a resilient city is one that has developed capacities to help absorb future shocks and stresses to its social, economic, and technical systems and infrastructures so as to still be able to maintain essentially the same functions, structures, systems, and identity. To increase their capacities for resilience, Leichenko (2011) believes that cities will need to adopt urban planning and building design strategies that allow them to increase their abilities to better respond and adapt to the economic, social, and physical stresses they will face as they confront the challenges of increasing energy scarcity, climate change, and population change. Van Vliet (2001) concurs that such capacities include resources that enable learning, planning, forecasting, resisting, absorbing, accommodating to and recover from unforeseen changes within cities.
Campanella (2008) explored urban resilience in the City of New Orleans. The findings of the study largely support the importance of resilience to a city. Campanella asserts that a city or urban community that is not striving towards increased resilience is more vulnerable to risks and threats affecting areas such as water, food, energy, infrastructure, flows of goods and services as well as residential health and safety. In a similar study, Godschalk (2005) remarks that a resilient city is a sustainable network of physical systems and human communities. Godschalk, describes a city’s physical system as the as the body of the city, its bones, arteries and muscles. These include its built roads, buildings, infrastructure, communications, and energy facilities as well as its waterways, soils, topography, geology and other natural systems. According to Norris et al. (2008) a city without resilient physical systems will be extremely vulnerable to disasters. During a disaster, the physical systems must be able to survive and function under extreme stresses. If enough of them suffer breakdowns that cannot be repaired, losses escalate and recovery slows.
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Studies done by Godschalk (2005) and Miller (2014) maintain that human communities are the social and institutional components of the city. Miller describes human communities as formal and informal, stable and ad hoc human associations that operate in an urban area such as schools, neighbourhoods, agencies, organisations, enterprises, task forces and the like. To Miller, urban communities act as the brain of the city, directing its activities, responding to its needs and learning from experience. These researchers (Godschalk 2005; Miller, 2014) assert that in the event of a disaster, resilience is manifested if the community networks must be able to survive and function under extreme and unique conditions. If they break down, decision making falters and response drags.
In his study of what can cities do to increase resilience? Crichton (2007) found that resilient cities are constructed to be strong and flexible, rather than brittle and fragile. According to Crichton their lifeline systems of roads, utilities and other support facilities are designed to continue functioning in the face of rising water, high winds, shaking ground, and terrorist attacks. In the same vein Revi (2008) adds that future development projects in resilient cities are guided away from known hazard areas, and their vulnerable existing development is relocated to safe areas. Godschalk (2003) adds that their buildings are constructed or retrofitted to meet code standards based on hazard threats and their natural environmental protective systems are conserved to maintain valuable hazard mitigation functions.
Within this view, fostering resilience to withstand unexpected shocks is becoming a top priority for many. More so that even to date, effects of situations such as the financial crisis experienced in 2008, natural disasters in Asia, geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East and Eastern Europe are still felt (The Economist, 2014). Rodin (2014) quantifies the cost of urban disasters during 2011 alone estimated at over $380 billion with the largest impacts felt in New Zealand, Japan, Bangkok and environs. Even more recently, Nepal undertook its ultimate test of resilience through a 7.8 magnitude earth quake (CNN, 2015). The infrastructure collapse and loss of life illustrates the dire need for proactive application of resilience in Nepal.
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A study by Etingoff et al. (2015) on the resilience of New York City reveals that the city offers an instructive case of a resilient city. Etingoff et al. examined the city’s response to impacts on food supply by hurricanes, droughts, intense rain storms, rising sea levels. According to the researchers the city ensured that the food systems (i.e. the production, processing and distribution of food) were able to rapidly recover from the negative shocks and return to normal operations again.
Another example of an amazingly resilient city is New Orleans. Despite the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shock did not alter the underlying conditions that accounted for the city’s growth (Polese, 2010). In his paper on Urban Resilience and the recovery of New Orleans, Campanella (2008) argues that planning played a dramatic role in the resilience of the city of New Orleans. Campanella emphasised that well-rehearsed evacuation and emergency management plans can enable a city to endure a crisis with minimal loss of life as was the case of New Orleans. In addition, his study found that identification of multiple evacuation routes, provision of backup electrical or communication systems for emergency management personnel and provision of neighbourhood level shelters and catches of food and water also contributed immensely to the resilience of the city after the hurricane. Beatley (2014:127) explains: “resilience is often viewed as an important antidote or response to vulnerability. Resilient communities work to reduce or eliminate vulnerability. The notion of adaptive capacity is often a key feature in definitions of resilience, the idea that it is not simply possible or even desirable to return to a former condition or state and that entities (people, organisations and communities) should strive to learn from and creatively respond to disasters and disruptive events and trends and they should evolve and move from a crisis or disaster to a new and perhaps improved set of circumstances (but undoubtedly different)”.
According to Leichenko (2011), in resilient cities, fewer buildings should collapse, fewer power outages should occur, fewer households and businesses should be put at risk. Fewer deaths and injuries should occur. Fewer communications and coordination breakdowns should take place. However, in order for cities adaptive capacities to be able to ensure resilience of a city, they need to possess the four main attributes or
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characteristic of resilience. These include; Resourcefulness, Robustness, Redundancy and Response.
Constantinos (2014) suggests that barriers to resilience include a weak governance system resulting from political instability, immature local government structures, lack of services of metropolitan character, limited coordination between public and private sector, exclusion of climate change for the local or central government political agenda and favouring short term over long term planning. In addition, the UN report on Cities and Climate Change (2011) states that urban resilience may not be met if coordination between local governments and local economic institutions is not achieved. The same report emphasises the need to develop urban development models which will be inclusive for all parts of the population, thus promoting equity. Tyler et al. (2013) speaks about the incapacity of cities to integrate in their resilience plans. They suggest that plans of resilient cities need to include actions that touch on awareness raising, capacity building, infrastructure, ecosystems and development of knowledge and institutions. Grove, Hinson and Northrop (2003) provide an alternative of monitoring and evaluation of interventions considering societal changes and balance as powerful tools for planning to enhance resilience in any environment. In support of Grove et al., Elmqvist et al. (2003) argue that interventions, be it large or small, affect one another and can influence the overall resilience of the functioning grouping as well as the resilience of the area. This implies that urban resilience needs to be built by means of a wide set of interventions at city scale (Cartalis, 2014). Building resilience is forward looking, target driven approach to urban development that uses a wide range of measures addressing all elements of urban systems (Rodin, 2014).
While there is still considerable vagueness around what resilience thinking is and how it can be applied in urban system, there is a general consensus that it is a valuable way of engaging with the problems of urban development and informing interventions and future development strategies for the city (Cartalis, 2014). Bosher and Coaffee (2013) assert that the application of resilience provides a hopeful perspective on the challenges presented by global change to urban development and management and enables stakeholders in the city to engage with the complexities brought about by unpredictable
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perturbations and change create the conditions for a thriving, abundant and healthy urban environment.
To distinguish a city with the presence of resilience from that without, Arup (2014) propose seven qualities that a resilient city should posses to prevent complete breakdown or to enable appropriate and timely action to be taken. These qualities can be identified in physical and non-physical systems which if present means that a city is likely to be more resilient. These qualities are;
Reflective: The use of past experience to inform future decisions and modify standards and behaviours accordingly;
Resourceful: The ability to recognise alternative ways to use resources at times of crisis in order to meet their needs or achieve their goals;
Robust: A city with design that is well conceived constructed and managed. It should make provision to ensure failure is predictable, safe and not disproportionate to the cause;
Flexible: The willingness and ability to adopt alternative strategies in response to changing circumstances or sudden crises. This can be done by introducing new technologies or knowledge while still recognising traditional practices;
Inclusive: Processes should emphasise the need for broad consultation to create a sense of shared ownership or a joint vision to build city resilience; and Integrated: Processes should bring together systems and institutions to catalyse
additional benefits as resources are shared and people are requested to work together to achieve greater goals.
Wilkinson et al. (2014) concludes noting that, for resilience thinking to become truly institutionalised within any organisation, it must be embedded within its systems, logic and incentives from strategic to programme level. However, this occurs in the context of existing procedures, structures and capacities (Garschagen, 2013) and there will inevitably be cultural barriers to overcome to ensure resilience thinking is widely accepted and practised across the organisation. It is important therefore to anchor the
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step by step process of building resilience in an evidence based framework to clearly articulate it.