Guest editorial: Challenges of the (anti) adaptive urbanization in multiple scales

Abstract

Dear Readers,It gives us great pleasure to edit the Special Issue of the International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment. As the guest editors of this issue, we called researchers to reflect on the questions of what makes regions, localities and urban spatial elements (anti)adaptive. How can the likelihood of urban elements' adaptability to disasters/stressors be defined? And how can urban elements' multifunctionality be a resilient response to ongoing changes in nature and human society? What adds multifunctionality to urban elements to boost urban adaptability? In this way, we hoped to shed light on the challenges of (anti)adaptive urban components at the neighborhood and regional levels. This issue looked for the concept of adaptability to propose regenerative and alternative urban development models to conventional urban planning approaches envisioning static urban conditions, departing from the complexity and vulnerability of urban systems to external stressors.Scholars from around the world contributed to the adaptability debate on a variety of scales. We would like to thank all authors, reviewers, the IJDRBE editorial board and the Emerald Peer Review team for their contributions to the issue's preparation. At the conclusion of the review process, a total of six articles addressing issues of urban resilience, risk assessment and disaster management on multiple scales were accepted for publication.The first paper, "Population resilience to flooding in the urbanised mangrove of Douala, Cameroon," was authored by Babette Linda Safougne Djomekui and Aristide Yemmafouo aimed to understand the mechanisms that contribute to the construction of the resilience of populations to urban flooding. They found that the rapid growth of Douala leads to vulnerabilities through the spontaneous occupation of mangrove areas, thus aggravating the impacts of the floods that occur. Afterward, the analysis of the individual and collective responses of the inhabitants of the study area highlighted resilience in action.The second paper, "An overview of the state of urban resilience in Iran," was authored by Nabi Moradpour, Ahmad Pourahmad, Hossein Hataminejad, Keramatollah Ziari and Ayyoob Sharifi, presents an overview of the state of urban resilience in Iran. To understand the current state of Iranian cities' resilience, Moradpour et al. involved different types of disasters and settlements and conducted a systematic review process on the concept of resilience in Iranian and international academic databases. After the identification, screening and eligibility stages, 153 articles were selected. Accordingly, the authors found that Iranian settlements show low physical, socioeconomic, environmental and institutional resilience, particularly in informal settlements and worn-out urban fabrics.The third paper, "The 'disaster cycle' (DC) and actors in disaster management," was authored by Murat Balamir. Criticizing the conventional graphical expression of cyclical disaster management activities, the author aims to d...