Briefing: Visions of a resilient city

Abstract

Cities, particularly in the global south, face numerous challenges in responding to a rapidly growing population. Ensuring the wellbeing of urban dwellers, particularly in the face of known natural hazards and an increasingly unpredictable climate, is leading cities to take resilience-based approaches to meet these challenges. Arup and Engineers Without Borders UK hosted a competition to unearth perspectives from the next generation of urban professionals on what resilient cities might look like. From the top ten shortlisted posters, the key messages emerging were: (a) building urban resilience requires action and systemic change across all four key components of an urban system – infrastructure, institutions, knowledge, and ecosystems; (b) resilient cities are the result of multiple interventions including transport and energy, food security, urban planning and waste management; (c) resilience is not location specific and is distinct from disaster risk reduction; and (d) building resilience is a progressive and evolving process of urban development – more practical examples are needed to help visualise it.

Editorial

“…As a starting point, the briefing by Yanez and Kernaghan (2014) reports the outputs from a student competition that was established by Arup and Engineers Without Borders to uncover perspectives from the next generation of urban professionals on what resilient cities might look like. The briefing draws key messages from ten shortlisted projects that were focused upon different cities (the winning entry provided a vision for Oaxaca City, Mexico).…”